A Christian megacult woman of entitled and delusional influence

I just rewatched the episode of Living Black that was scripted to promote architect of the Voice to Parliament Professor Megan Davis - acolyte of Christian megacult fundamentalist Noel Pearson.

The first thing that is obvious is that Davis' culture is evidently less Indigenous than it is - narratively and otherwise - Europeanised and Christianised.

Responding to a generously laudatory, fawning, and doting interviewer sporting a heavily panegyrical scripted interview (that it seems likely Davis has perused before the interaction), Davis articulately set out her autobiography, explains in clear terms the basis of her expertise in drafting frameworks for Indigenous human rights protection and what the basic objectives of such a process are, and rhetorically lionises Indigenous elders. Yet it is immediately apparent that she is nothing like most such elders.

Davis evidently has more expertise and intellectual depth and firepower than all of her father’s elders and ancestors. Moreover, her personal and religious culture are nothing like that of her father's ancestors. Her language and culture is the intellectual and academic language and culture of a European-Christian megacultist law-school academic from a Group of Eight University (most of the largest of these universities have an Anglican college attached to them and The University of Sydney has the biggest Anglican seminary in the country.)

So to be clear, I have no problem at all with an Indigenous woman being highly educated. That is superb in every way that matters (and it matters a lot), and I am in awe of Davis' achievements, drive, and conscientiousness. On the other hand: the disingenuous Christian megacult's dominionist and entitled culture we could all really do without, because it is intrinsically infidelophobic, misogynistic, and ridiculous. (Davis could certainly do without it.) It has also been devastating for Indigenous in Australian history, and it is bizarre and concerning that Davis has not properly abandoned it.

Davis talks about the importance of normative frameworks for universal rights for Indigenous (something she is an expert in) and situates herself between everyday Indigenous people and the state as a legislative and cultural normative standards-bearer and intermediary. She notes with concern the socio-cultural power imbalances that problematise mob negotiations and engagement in treaty-making with the state.

Yet there is a clear sense conveyed that to Davis, Davis is the only worthy architect of the only worthy solution. Belief in one’s undertakings is, as she says herself early in the interview, important. Yet there is intellectual and epistemic humility missing that undermines her claim to intellectual, dispositional, attitudinal, and epistemic flexibility. Proud, capable women are generally heroes of mine. Stubborn, rigid, doctrinaire megacultists (religionists) - not so much.

I am reminded by her interview that there is such a thing as a very smart idiot. Davis claims that intellectual and epistemic flexibility are defining features of her ideology and modus operandi. Yet she is essentially still running the rigid anti-intellectual cultural program instilled in her by a presumably fundamentalist Protestant megacult mother, by a similarly delusional mentor (Pearson), and by her internship drafting international legislative guidelines at the UN - an institution that is also hopelessly influenced by megacults.

If Davis was truly intellectually and personal-culturally flexible, and genuine in her putatively fawning approach to the culture of her father's ancestors, then she would drop the Christian megacult narratives that drive Pearson's views and imperatives. If she has abandoned Pearson's (and her presumably her mother’s) megacult fundamentalism (she's not saying, but it seems unlikely) it seems yet to affect her intellectual and professional culture in such a way as to make her an appropriate architect of a Voice of Indigenous people regardless of how many legal clauses and guidelines she can pen.

Of course being an adult with an imaginary impossible friend whose bizarre, arcane, nonsensical edicts one feels that one must obey and that others must also obey is bound to be debilitating in this way. Mental disorders often involve rigid thinking – and religious delusional disorder is no exception.

It is ironic that Davis complains about simple-minded politicians who trade in dumb tropes (she clearly has little respect for them and considers them intellectually inferior, and in many cases she is right.) Her own tropes are old, tired, and subservient to a Christofascist-dominionist metanarrative. Yet she’s unable to see it, is not admitting to it, and cannot even see – let alone face - the cold hard fact that the Christian megacult is absolutely not only 100% not Indigenous, but in Australian history it has been positively anti-Indigenous with little-to-no exception.

Were her intellectual and epistemic culture and habits as flexible as she claims then I suggest Davis would be able to show more respect to people like maverick Lydia Thorpe, and she would perhaps discover that in such an expression of cultural and epistemic humility she could find a very real way of influencing the Australian government towards something like a treaty. Via an elected indigenous senator.

Moreover, that it has not dawned upon Davis that a parallel bureaucracy with no actual power that simply puts a political buffer between Indigenous and legislative empowerment can make the right difference is telling. As it stands her condescension and disrespect towards the likes of Thorpe is not only belittling and reflects badly upon her, but it is unambiguously an expression of Christian megacult elitism and the delusional entitlement and deranged memetic doctrines upon which it is based.

If she builds her (quasi?)-legislative edifice and drives the well-funded machine of marketing psychology and propaganda people might come, but that doesn't mean that the edifice built has merit. That depends upon other things entirely than sophistication of structure of a - what? Quasi-policy and quasi-legislative framework that further subsumes the sovereignty of Indigenous under the sovereignty of the Anglican Crown?

If an edifice such as Davis is spruiking is based upon Christian megacult entitlement and delusions – which it ultimately obviously is if the inclusion of references to the sovereignty of the Crown in the Uluru statement are anything to go by (and they are) - then it will prove to be just more Christian megacult-inspired structural genocide by Christian megacult metanarrative. There's nothing culturally, socially, or intellectually normative about that delusional, entitled, infidelophobic rubbish.

It is the culture of the Christian megacult that makes it difficult for 'the mob' and 'mobs' to negotiate with the state in the first place precisely because that megacult's grand narratives are the very same narratives of actual, structural, and narratological genocide and cultural erasure inflicted upon Indigenous throughout the history of colonial and 'post-colonial' Australia.

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