Reading Shelby’s book last year really changed how I understand not just America, but all kinds of things about all kinds of societies. I think he’s onto something about people in general and how moral-religious rituals in cultures center around guilt and absolution and the creation of a priestly class who gain moral (and perhaps political) authority as a result.
There’s a deep need in us to confront our feelings of guilt and duty and prove that we have correctly identified what sacrifices the gods demand and what proper sacrifices must be made. And here are these people who know what the correct sins are and know the correct way to absolve and appease. So we should all listen to those people, confess our sins before the priesthood, and be purified (or as near as possible) through the confession of sin and by giving our money to and listening to the priests.
The signs of this kind of thinking are everywhere. People literally refer to systemic racism as the “original sin” of our culture, even our own president. And the faithful demand tithes and confessions to address it. And there is definitely a priestly class and there are definitely followers and devotees of the faith, missionaries and zealots and indulgences paid by the wealthy to secure their place in heaven. There are special religious terms and ideas, a sacred language (as well as a sense of what is profane and cannot be uttered).
And it’s all powered by this fundamental (perhaps not incorrect) intuition that all humans have that there is some internal failing or incompleteness on our part, that there are some necessary truths to face and sacrifices to make to set ourselves on the right path and the right side of that judge, that ideal that condemns us by our failure to reach it. And we have priests and teachers who want to rise up and tell us what it is and how we can fix it.
This is such a common occurance throughout history that I think it touches on something we all grasp intuitively but explicate inconsistently and incompletely in every age. This is just the latest religion, the latest faith that seeks to address that concern. The question is, how well founded is it? Is it an accurate description of the world and of history and of ourselves? And does it solve the problem effectively? Does it create a consistent and coherent way forward that yields some real positive results? Does it properly understand and diagnose the problem and the solution? And that’s where I think sensible people can see that the answer is actually no, on both counts.
Making Nobody Happy 