Is The Sacred Wasteful?

Wine that’s spilled into the ground as a libation; animals that are wholly burnt on the altar; Chanukka candles that are to be “looked at, but not used [for seeing]”—these are but a few examples of the common idea that the profane is what’s useful and the holy what is useless, excessive, wasteful.

Of course you can make a utilitarian case that such “wasting” isn’t really “wasting”; time off from work helps us be more productive, you will say! The experience of the altar—like that of museums and opera houses and nice public parks—releases more dopamine into the world. But is such a view of the holy not an attempt to co-opt it, to justify it within profane parameters? There can be a neuroscience of happiness, but can there be a neuroscience of holiness?

Not everything that is wasted is sacred (e.g. trash, excrement)—but one could argue that this is because these are the discarded remains of something that is useful (as opposed to something that could be used but is intentionally retired from use.)

From an efficiency point of view, it is either difficult to value what is holy or else the holy can only be justified in terms of efficiency (like an office “perk” that increases employee engagement).

Yet a sense of the holy seems to be a common, if not universal need—pointing to a fundamental experiential tension between efficiency and sacred uselessness (X for its own sake).

Given this fundamental tension, how much holiness (non-utility) do you think is optimal and how do you speak about an “optimal amount of holiness” when it seems to be a contradiction in terms?

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