Our Secular Priests

A recurring feature of human society is the class of people who set themselves apart from the rest of society to function as the keepers of public morality. They usually set themselves apart through self-denial, which is a way of showing themselves to be purer than the rest of the lot. It is thought that the Jewish prohibition on eating pork, for example, is a way to set the Jewish people apart from the rest of the people by abstaining from what was considered a dirty animal.

This is why every religion has both dietary laws and prohibitions on certain types of common behavior. It may be that these only apply to the holy men, as was common in the pre-Christian world. They can also be standards against which people measure themselves, as in the Christian world. The ancient shaman was someone expected to sublimate his urges as a sign of his purity. Christians, of course, have many rules that are guides for adhering to Christian ethics.

In the post-Christian age, the priestly class follows a similar pattern. The people we call the managerial elite and their performative proxies in the media have many ways of demonstrating their purity. In fact, we have the phrase "purity spiral" to describe when a group of these people engage in a competition in which they try to prove they are the purest of the bunch. Many of the moral panics over the last decades have been the result of purity spirals that spun out of control.

The public act of piety is another feature of human society. The great man may not be in the priestly class, but he could show his piety by supporting them in some way or by engaging in a public ritual directed by the priestly class. Scipio Africanus was famous for his public acts of piety, which he used to inoculate himself against claims of civic impropriety and corruption. In the Christion era, great men would build cathedrals and monasteries to demonstrate their fidelity to the Church.

We see the same thing in this age. Public figures kneeling in front of the cameras, allegedly in solidarity with the blacks, was no different than the ancients sacrificing a bull to the gods. When they forced their employees to kneel, it was another way of signaling their virtue to each other and the rest of us. The Covid panic, in many respects, was nothing more than a purity spiral among the managerial elite. It is why it had so many outward symbols of obedience to the god of Covid.

Another aspect of this is that the people performing these rituals in public or setting themselves apart through self-denial is that they probably do not think too much about the truth of this stuff. The kneelers did not think much about it at all. They just assumed that they had to show their fidelity to that which everyone else in their class was now sure would provide forgiveness. They were kneeling in order to gain forgiveness on behalf of the sinners called the masses.

You see it in this strange clip of the newly elected leader of Canada. His first public statement after the election is about Gaia. "We have an enormous opportunity to bring climate change into the heart of every financial decision." After some meaningless managerial drivel, he then promises, "We can deliver the net zero world that you've demanded, and that our future generations deserve." He is saying that he will lead his people to the promised land of salvation.

Of course, his faith is not in God, in the Christian sense, but in people like himself who show themselves as our superior by believing in boutique ideas like climate change and a "net-zero world." In the ancient world, the priestly class would identify themselves with ornaments on their person. In the Christian age, the priest has an easily recognizable costume. In this age, the priestly class sets itself apart from the rest of us by babbling about nonsense things like climate change.

Note that in this age, the pointlessness of the belief is important. Jews not eating fish or seafood had some practical benefit. Cleanliness had utility. The rituals of the Christian churches provided a way to bind the people to one another in a common ethical framework and common purpose. Other than setting the believer apart, the boutique beliefs of our self-declared priests are pointless. The sanctification of George Floyd appealed to our betters because of its absurdity.

Another reason why holy men find ways to set themselves apart as purer, cleaner, and less human than the rest is they have an underlying contempt for man. The shaman is always warning about the dangers of enjoying life. The priest is always looking for a sinner to torment. The modern clerisy is always seeking some way to display their contempt for the pleasures of regular people. They set themselves apart by setting themselves above that which they despise, their fellow man.

It is why the modern priests are more lethal than those of the past. They inherited the Christian distain for this world and the joys within it. Then they bolted onto it a class consciousness based in contempt for the people over whom they rule. Add in the minority's natural paranoia and the result is a ruling class that seems to be hellbent on pulling the roof down on Western society. It is not that they hate you. They hate everyone, but they really hate you.