What single item in your opinion has lead to the enormous popularity of tattooing? While piercing is not as popular it also has surged. Is there any connection whatsoever to religion here? Tattoos have gone from a symbol of rebellion or dissatisfaction to everyday, normal folks.
The connection to religion you suggest here is tenuous at best. The explosion of tattoos and piercings our culture has seen over the course of the last few decades has a lot more to do with simple boredom (paired, as some other posters in this thread have already pointed out, with gradual market saturation of cheaper, safer, and more effective body modification techniques) than anything else.
When you get to the bottom of things, the phenomena is really little more than another niche aspect of Western consumer culture.
You could conceivably argue that Western public morality in general has witnessed a high rate of decay since the mid twentieth century, and that this has contributed to the greater degree of acceptance for traditionally taboo practices like body modification that can be observed in today's society. However, that's really about as deep as the connection can be said to go.
Some people might still get tattoos and piercings primarily on anti-authoritarian impulse, but there a quite a few people out there in the current day and age who do it simply because body modifications are currently considered to be fashionable.
We read of civilizations long before the time of Christ where tattooing was a ritual as well as some physical deformations for whatever reason the culture had. Tattooing is rising everywhere in the free world. Why? Why so many so quickly?
This insinuation is pretty seriously misguided.
The modern body modification culture cannot really be said to be linked to any sort of resurgent cultural "primitivism" simply because there has never been a primitive culture in all of recorded history with such a wide variety of body modification practices, or such enthusiasm for them, as the modern Western World happens to posses. Many practices which are almost common place in North America and Europe today (such as genital and nipple piercings, for instance) are virtually unheard of in most of the rest of the world.
Where they are practiced, they tend to be ceremonial or religious in nature (i.e. circumcision), rather than recreational.
Is it a fad or is it something much deeper?
I think it's primarily a fad. However, the question of whether or not it will remain popular as time goes by still has of yet to be answered.
I suspect that it will likely taper off to a certain degree in the next couple of decades, if only because conspicuous tattoos tend to be less than attractive on older people. This will likely turn a lot of young adults in future generations off to the idea.
We'll just have to wait and see if I'm right or not. :shrug: