The secular is founded upon the shifting mirage of a virtual transcendence whose purpose is to give objects of desire and the desire itself an absoluteness, an impossible promise and a life and death imperative - a phantom authenticity. This affects all forms of desire, but one that is least avowed, namely familial desire (storge, Gemeinschaftsgefühl), the divination of the hearth and of the group, re-emerges in political desire, often poorly directed and subject to unconscious manipulation.