Religion will of course evolve toward destruction, maybe never being totally gone though, if it is allowed to evolve that is.
What I mean is that any religion born of ignorance will face off against science and discovery until it gives so much ground that it remains only as a thematic, and not a series of edicts and answers. God is often said to be in the gaps, but as the gaps get narrower so does the ground that god can be stood on. We inevitably get to a point where the belief in a deity is an act of hope, not certainty. When the peasant knew nothing it was easy to say that “god did it”, not so now when the peasant has the internet and a semi solid education to lean on. Some people, including me, would be almost certain that if the teachings from biblical storybooks were held back until a child had developed beyond puberty then there would be no religious people save for those that felt the need to retreat into a doctrine that offered them relief from, or justification for, their misdeeds or inherent wayward nature.
It’s only with a willful ignorance that the hard-liner can hold on, we are back in the realm of the Dunning-Kruger psychological postulate, where the necessity is to not know so that confidence can remain high. To people like me, those that like to think, there can be no answer to such questions derived from the books written by man. Reason being is that we realise that we have no body of evidence to steer us toward this, nor do we have a single unifying theory of what this deity resembles or wants. We have known so little for so long, and we know so little yet that in our most honest of days we would admit that the universe remains mostly a mystery. Our confidence in paracetamol is because it has proved itself an effective treatment for pain, but if we apply the same measure to religious devotion we do not find the same results. This they call “mysterious ways”, which is a cop-out. When a child dies of bone cancer before its 10th birthday and at the same time Usain Bolt wins the 100m gold and crosses himself in deference to the deity he believes helped him to be the achiever he is, we see the epic paradox. The premise of this is that the deity cares about sports and does not care about illness. Some would ask if a deity described in this way, even if proven, would be worth our fealty?
Paracetamol works to some effect for all people, faith works retrospectively for those that have it and by their own efforts go on to do great things. To hear a person or a tribe described as being favoured by a deity is the warrant of powerful men to take from weaker men because all other reasonable justifications concerning inequality fail to make whatever is intended acceptable to those that might take action to make it not so. Monarchies are supported by the idea that some persons are made better by being born into certain circumstances or blood lines, dictators look to churches to support their despotic rule, legislation arises to fuel the ill will of the pious because they wish to foist their narrow view on the masses. It is an obvious power play, played by the powerful plain and simple, and most of the time I don’t even believe that those using it have any conviction at all. Religion is a truth for the non thinker and a tool for the ruler.
I have noticed, and maybe so have you, that too often that which gets to describe itself, to create a self-narrative we might say, paints a picture of expectation rather than reality. We must continually assess what is more likely, that those with luck, inheritance, or networks that enabled them, are going to act to make the world or even their vicinity a better place, or that they will use every advantage they have to leverage greater reward for themselves whilst massaging their image in your mind so as not to face the threat of being revolted against? I am personally sick of being encouraged to feel bad and intervene in the relief of problems caused by the greed of oligarchs, by those very oligarchs. Celebrities want to play a game of soccer for your money and their image, what they do not want to do is pay the same per-pound amount that you do in taxation. Yes they pay more, but as a percentage they pay less because you likely don’t have an accountant.
I agree that there must be a glue that holds society together, there must be some idea that we all can agree to and abide by, it just cannot be religion and that is simply because we’ve tried it and it does not work. For most of human history there was religion that created the structure of tribes and societies, then came science and thinkers, and literature so that ideas could be shared with all persons. Philosophy stopped being merely an intellectual pursuit and became the fabric of coffee house conversations between working men, ideas of emancipation flourished, religion fell away. Along comes two world wars that shook the foundations of the world and changed the way western societies thought and the conditions that could be accepted. In the post war years the west strived to put rules in place that prevented serfdom and ensured minimal remuneration and dignity for common folks, the monarchy in the UK faded into a tourist attraction rather than a ruling class. Humanity developed the structure of basic rights and began seriously nodding to the great works of JS Mill and Immanuel Kant regarding how we should live. The generation that opposed hitler changed the world, made it better and hopeful.
Then Raegan, Bush, Musk, Bezos, Elison, Trump et al happened. Well this century is not exactly only these people, or just Trump, I may be mistakenly attributing a movement to a man. Let’s say the circumstances for the rise of such a person happened, and he became the face and the perfect living embodiment of all that is wrong with society today IMHO. I personally blame more powerful actors than he, Steve Bannon is my suspected No1 on this subject, a more horrific global actor I don’t think I have ever known of, and I include Hitler and my ex-wife in that assessment (I’m joking, her mum was much worse!).
This started out as religion and now we are on Trump and his enablers, what gives Wilson? Well, it’s all tied together. He uses them, and they use him, power enabling and grabbing more power from places of power. He is not a man that has faith, but he has a usefulness to pretend to be of faith if it suits his quest, and it does, and they find him useful also because it lets them into a democratic institution that primarily acted to ostracise them in perpetuity (the US constitution separates church and state). Religion desperately needs a revival, its numbers and its revenue have been way down recently, as I pointed out before this is because of natural attrition, people getting smarter and knowing more. So it is as useful to powerful actors as they are to it. Let’s at this point recognise a fact, that the truth of any proposition is not proved by support, true things are provable not the result of belief or persuasion.
The point of thinking about why these twin evils are linked is to explain why knowledge is under siege by so many affects of power. It would seem like the US administration having declared war on truth and science was merely the product of stupid thinking by stupid people, but it cannot be so easily explained that way. We must not fall into the trap of thinking that they are all just a cohort of dummies, that would be to let them off the hook. No, I believe that they do know better, but our ignorance and desire to be pleased by information rather than informed by it has a usefulness to them. If you can throw anything into doubt, green energy, democratic process, rights, education, science, history etc, you can then control the narrative better going forward because people hold less solid base views of truths. This gaslighting process makes us the people look to those that have confidence and espouse certainty as the locus of reality and information. And that is the goal. Once established this method makes a serf of a former thinker.
Let’s assume that Bannon, Trump, Musk et al, have a will to become richer than they currently are, which is what we do assume (falsely), then to what end we must ask? There comes a point where a person has much more wealth than a lifetime will allow them to reap the benefit of in purchasing terms, yet if they still try to use their wealth to capture more objects within a capitalist market we need to look elsewhere for motivation. The goal cannot be wealth, it must be what wealth enables. This leads us to think about power as a currency, the power to play with the lives of others, to make as many people into pawns on their chessboard as possible so as to build a legacy that outlasts them. A legacy allows for the holding of power beyond this life. Nobody remembers your great uncle Gary, people born today will know the names Jefferson, Churchill, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Orwell, Ramases, Tutankamoon, Beckham, Judas, and many more, and for different reasons.
Trump is being used by the powerful to ensure the continuation and justification for their power, the bargain he gets is to be remembered in history. People of ego wish to live on in some small way, they are too important in their own head to die twice (in reality and memory), they want their name to be on monuments and in history books. Trump has achieved this even if it is an example of how not to do business, politics, relationships etc. I will personally remember the fucker when he is gone as the worst stain on humanity that occured in my lifetime, I don’t know how you will view him after he is gone but I hope it is not favourably.
pinkfloydpsw's Blog 
Leave a comment