Artificial Faith

The urge to imitate something might be dated long before Plato with his mimesis and the strongest urge to make imitation would be located in China. “Made in China” label is perhaps the most numerous label in the world nowadays, but it doesn’t mean that other countries lost their appetite to make an imitation of nature.

The picture above was taken on August 5, some years ago. In fact, each year on August 5, during the celebration of the feast of the Dedication of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, a custom that commemorates the story of the miraculous snowfall is still alive. At the end of the Solemn Mass inside the Basilica, a shower of white rose petals is dropped from the dome, and at sunset on the same day, an artificial snowfall is performed as an attraction in the square outside. This performance of imitating nature might not be so dangerous, but some artificial imitations harm human beings.

For example, according to Wikipedia (accessed on October 22, 2014): On more than one occasion, Chinese-made products have caused global concerns about their quality and safety and resulted in large scale product recalls. In the 2007 Chinese export recalls, for example, product safety institutions in the United States, Canada, the European Union, Australia, and New Zealand issued recalls and import bans on a wide range of Chinese-made consumer goods, such as pet food, toys, toothpaste and lipstick, and a ban on certain types of seafood.

During the 2008 Chinese export recalls, heparin was announced by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) due to contamination of the raw heparin stock imported from China. During the 2008 Chinese milk scandal, an estimated 300,000 victims, along with six infants dying from kidney stones and other kidney damage, and a further 860 babies were hospitalized because some Chinese-made milk and infant formula were adulterated with melamine.

Faith never gets its perfection in imitation because it’s a relationship between human beings and the Ultimate Being. The act of hope emerges from the dynamic of that relationship, not from artificial reproduction. Artificial imitation tends to lead a person to superficiality, and in the long run, it creates a false faith that manifests hypocrisy.