Our animal minds, from an early age, are drawn to strange sources of power: the dead dog on the side of the road, the dirty magazine down by the creek, the gun in dad’s closet. No amount of civilization can fully repress the impulses sparked by these talismans. The adolescent boy kneels and prays before these idols, scrounging pages of pornography from vacant lots or his father’s underwear drawer, playing the gunslinger in video games to reenact news footage of soldiers at war. Proper society castigates the child for his hedonistic worship. I have built him a church.