Found at the cultish Hacker News website was this article from Carrie Arnold, asking How can you treat someone who doesn’t accept they are ill? It’s written with that particularly nauseating air of someone hep enough to know that big pharma execs would rape their own grand-babies for a nickle yet unironically belittle anti-vaxxers in the same breath. The more I thought about the article the more it quite frankly pissed me off, the way it condescends to anyone finding any logic which evades the author herself. For example, something only those who’ve personally had to suffer it know is how psychiatric wards in the USA are universally no different from jails, in that the imprisoned has no earthly control over when they might enter or be permitted to leave, and that their exit date rests completely on the extent of the system’s ability to profit from the imprisoned’s circumstances with neither rejuvenation or rehabilitation factoring into the picture anywhere outside of the brochures. Marketing disguised as concern, when nobody really needs theology or psychology to know right from wrong.
I just wrote about how the psychological work of Edward Bernays was inducted by the federal government as the libretto to follow, but psychology itself has taken sweaty grasp of all of every industry since the long decades ago when Freud was habitually wiping imaginary cocaine dust from his nostrils. In real psychology there is no such thing as a cure, only treatment which can be prolonged for as long as the bill-collectors wish. Completion and closure are replaced in all industries by ongoing maintenance and updates, newer models and newer formulas and newer jingoism always and forever promising that completion and closure which were dropped from the business plans ages ago.
And most curious is that while Christianity has always relied on regular, prolonged repentance to get to the spiritual finish line, Capitalists carjacking dogma have instead sold the notion of immediate gratification as the one, true path. Anything to spare the hard work of measurable redemption. Where everything else affected by Capitalism invariably transitions downhill at the point where demand is manufactured to meet supply, Christianity afflicted by Capitalism is trekking that line of thought in reverse. Manufacturing a need to push a thing is what religion has always been about, but the Christians of today largely are more concerned with traditional Capitalism, of manufacturing by order to show off how golden their ticket to heaven is, hoping to distract in the luster of self-important inanities.
With the recent Pennsylvanian grand jury report confirming how over a thousand priests abused over 300 children over the course of many decades, just in six dioceses, the public is left to wonder at the abuse history for the rest of the country. But teacher and author Anthea Butler sees the forest for the trees, making the entirely reasonable claim that the Roman Catholic hierarchy is a textbook criminal syndicate.
Always quick to demonize other belief systems for the crimes of the few, when Christians in general are not stoning to death anyone who eats shellfish on Saturdays or whatever then they’re already picking and choosing which elements of their own oh-so-important faith to abide by. Meaning that subconsciously they know their belief structure is flawed and it’s all a horse and pony show. But I believe pedophilia is generally most common among the religious and the wealthy, because both groups by nature avoid accountability. “I did that? My 50 lawyers say otherwise.” “I did that? No the devil made me do it.” They can do whatever they want because money or the afterlife is their get out of jail free card. And I’m not saying that all practitioners of any faith are pedos. But I am saying that I vehemently believe power corrupts. Not that power can corrupt, but rather by its very nature does it corrupt. There is no such thing as a good politician, in that same sense. To authorize is to corrupt, even when it’s in terms of corruption of self, because we are sovereign units of a whole.
Of the 190-some nation-states on Earth there are only about ten or so that are not in debt, and the Vatican is one. They ain’t going anywhere. The worst problem with followers is that they turn blind eyes to those they follow, whether its religion or politics. “You want to attack my priest, you must be a satanist or Muslim or a libtard or whatever.” We see that everywhere. “You want to call out my leader you must be getting paid by oppo forces, or if my side does something foul it’s nowhere near as bad as when the other guys do it.” If someone’s faith costs them their objective reasoning abilities, especially at the expense of others, then maybe they should rethink their values in life. Namely, who they put on pedestals and why, but also their insistence upon double-standards.
Anybody who believes their leader is beyond reproach is just plain fucking wrong.
When that body owns billions just in real estate alone it can afford to put out whatever propaganda it wants. Churches in every city with no taxes expected from them yet with a louder voice over political policies domestic and foreign than any other belief structure to the extent of major Republican and Democrat candidates required to bow for the church’s thumb’s up, even when the politicos are blatantly un-Christian persons. Only money can buy that level of influence. Persecuted, suuuuure. The reason the public doesn’t hear enough about pedo cases within the church, and never from the church directly, is because most of them are scared into suppression and the rest are $ettled out of court altogether. Like the parents of Michael Jackson’s victims, shutting up for the chance to become millionaires. Because greed is bigger than all religion.
Look at the high and might corporation Disney. So deeply troubled by years-old misogynistic but jesting social media posts from a movie director as to fire him, yet if the church wants them to hire a practicing pedophile, then thy will be done. The hypocrisy is unbounded.
When the largest church in history actively wields monetary power to impose things that run contrary to its own dogma, then no acts of contrition can save them, especially while the side-effect of unbridled Capitalism completely destroys life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all its uncountable victims. The act of attaining wealth is itself synonymous for the destruction of life, because wealth nor power can be achieved without lying, cheating and stealing. Which is decidedly irreligious a thing. Employers cutting corners to grow their bottom line manifest unsafe working conditions for the people actually earning the money, with the rushed, haphazard byproduct being over-priced poison, faulty products and crushed dreams out the wazoo. All so that some fuckers can make profit.
Newly-published research from economist Juliet Shor proves that the average modern American is permitted less holiday time than a Medieval peasant. Likewise, research from psychologists at the University of California, Berkeley has proven that the wealthy are more prone to selfishness and immorality. Yet in reporting on that research, William Wan of the Washington Post included this bias, (key bit emboldened for emphasis):
“That research has shown the rich cheat more on their taxes. They cheat more on their romantic partners. The wealthy and better-educated are more likely to shoplift. They are more likely to cheat at games of chance. In studies of charitable giving, it’s often the lower-income households who donate higher proportions of their income than middle-class and upper-income folk.”
Again, Wan shows the same tunnel vision of those faithful refusing to fully acknowledge the faults of their faith’s orchestrators to the extent of propelling prejudice. The slightest insinuation that wealthy persons are across the board more intelligent than those without substantial money is sycophantic. Wealth enables its keepers to attend pricier schools, but then it is indeed the wealth that brought them there and not any merit of their own. It’s merely a part of the game, getting the piece of paper that only means anything to their specific financial class. Those without the luxury of a guilt-free lifestyle accumulated from using and abusing others or inherited from someone who used and abused others, must work for what they receive in this life. Which usually, unfortunately includes proactively seeking out genuine education, whether contrasting mental notes with neighbors and co-workers and strangers at the pub or concerning physical job-training or staying up all night absorbing second-hand philosophy textbooks to better understand why their hard work never ever pays off. Money literally and manifestly enables one to escape the necessities of education as well as the consequences of going without. Like I’ve written before, Trump as but one of a plethora of examples is an idiot purely because he has been sheltered all his life, with gated communities by design blocking out the majority of what the world has to teach us.
And when the pearly gates are keeping its sins closer than its most earnest followers, then maybe all believers should reconsider the non-believers singing praises for which side of the wall freedom truly rests.