Policy Bites: Megacults do not belong in government - or anywhere near it.

Why does even the #CPC want to give the appearance of kow towing to the needs of megacults?

Why do so-called secularists in the West pander to monastic, archaic, arcane, and ideationally atavistic large-scale cults like Buddhism, Hindu, Christianity, and Islam? The answer is clearly political and economic expedience. Something must be done to occupy (pre-occupy) the average and unlucky (and uneducated and unintelligent) in the population. Otherwise it might occur to them to be unhappy about being on the bottom of a pile that is very rich at the top.

Or – more to the point – it might occur to them to do something about it.

Turns out it is far less likely that this will occur if you install some nice fat, juicy, devious megacults and megacult narratives into the culture and society.

Well – usually.

Even Karl Marx knew that much, and you do not have to look very hard to find a thousand neoliberal capitalist free-marketeers that will tell you he was an insouciant idiot (The fact of his largely having completely changed the world and history does not seem to be enough to impress them.)

Do not get me wrong. I am neither a socialist nor a communist. Socialism and communism tend to tolerate megacults and their memetic narratives far too much. Communism can be a bit megaculty itself.

A bit.

At least, however, ‘cults’ of Mao and Marx notwithstanding, it keeps its feet on the ground - grounded in scientific naturalism.

After all. The odd bit of cult of personality is not foreign to Westerns and capitalists. The sagely among us will recall the cults of personality around Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The US founding fathers. The British Royal family.

Of course, these are all a far cry from a megacult that is built on the delusional premise that folk have an imperial, omniscient, omnipotent imaginary friend.

As for the wisdom of the ancient and sacred: sure - the ancients had some great thinkers. They had some great ideas too. It is just that religion – or megacultism - was not really one of them.

Not even then.

Ancient Greek philosopher Aristarchus of Samos had the first recorded heliocentric model of the solar system. That was a long time before Copernicus. Now that was a good idea. Many ancient cultures were consumate astronomers. The Greeks, Babylonians, and Mesopotamians, for example. There is some evidence (disputed) that ideas that form the basis of evolutionary theory began with Greek philosopher Anaximander. Another good idea (quite probably).

Okay - so religion arguably had some pragmatic benefit as what anthropologists and social scientists call 'cultural technology'. After all - the first agrarian societies had not long since learned to light fires and plant seeds, and their understanding of astronomy - for which the subject material was largely fixed in place - was arguably greater than their understanding of far more puzzling meteorology.

Sometimes any explanation and model are better than none.

Sometimes.

The benefit, however, was probably always mostly enjoyed by those lucky enough to be on the top of the – err – social and cultural pile. Moreover, existential angst has probably always been ‘a thing’. To be honest - that is likely the main reason for religion's success. That fact makes it easy to use as a tool of influence and control. After all - how else does one get hundreds of thousands of young men to sacrifice their lives in a conflict you started with your neighbouring tyrant over his niece’s virginity? (Or over whether we cross ourselves one way or t’other in religious rites, or whether the king wants to divorce, or whether poor yellow people in Asia might not do capitalism like we told them to).

Easy! You tell them that it is their duty and honour to do so for some imaginary sky daddy who will in all likelihood give them a bunch of young women and girls to have sex with in the afterlife. However that works.

In other words – you profusely bullshit them to death.

Added benefit is – it makes a lot more real girls available for the lords. And you promised those guys chattel and property.

Just saying.

At least the Islamic megacult offers some potential fun. All one gets from the Christian megacult is – more obeisance and more piety.

Damn.

Cultural technologies indeed.

So megacults are an old invention. As a cultural technology, it they have always been popular. However, the history of the conflict between the pious and the philosophical (not always separate camps, to be sure) is long and bitter, as Socrates knew all too well.

In other words - great thinkers always doubted that religion was a great idea. Certainly Hypatia was not overmuch impressed. Being as that she was very bright - this might be because of her ability to recognise that women generally did less well out of the megacult deal.

Monarchs, popes, and megacult patriarchs of all kinds have been using roughly the same formula since the time of the Pharaohs and the Ancient Greeks (at least!)

None of this megacult memetic nonsense is needed anymore, of course. Not since at least the close of the scientific revolution. Certainly not since the middle of the 20th century. Definitely not since the mid 2000s - well after the start of the information age and the advent of the World Wide Web.

China and the CPC at least have the right idea. When the CIA and Western intelligence agencies use megacult loons and their memetic narratives to start violent, genocidal, infidelophobic insurrection in China, the CPC respond with a mass psychological deprogramming process to rid the region of the problematic megacult memetic narratives.

Good job, China. There should be a lot more of it.

It is quite a lot more civilised than just killing all the megacultists – or everyone infected with the megacult memetic narratives. Other nations like the US seem to favour the more ‘killy’ approach. However the US has megacults of its own calling the shots, and so – no surprises there.

After all, if you are deluded enough to think that some ruler of the universe is your best pal and has given you permission – and even dominionist directives – then: why hesitate?

Although they do still pander to megacults far too much, it is well known that the approach of the Communist Party of China to megacults is otherwise rational and far superior to that used by governments in the West, and in most of the rest of Asia.

It really is not a good look to have delusional megacultist Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison at the helm of government. After all - when all is said and done, and when all things are considered equal (as the saying goes), and - you know - 'ceteris paribus' on the prevailing and important conditions and variables, as we philosophers put it: adults with omniscient imaginary friends are clearly mentally ill.

The DSM-5 really does not get them out of this diagnosis, try as it might.

Neither Tony Abbott nor John Howard were any better, and neither are either of their respective irrational, delusional megacults (Catholic and Methodist).

When people with such delusions are in control of foreign and domestic policy – then all kinds of strife are bound to occur. I, for one, am far from happy or secure in the knowledge that the monumentally nutty #Hillsong megacult and its memetic masters have significant influence over how we deal with China and regional security issues.

Domestic policy does not fare any better. Structural genocide – and real genocide - against first nations people, has been prevalent in Australia’s political history. The recently discovered genocidal graveyards of Canada’s megacult-controlled orphanages were not a surprising, nor an uncharacteristic outcome.

The Commonwealth is not so much about the common good, as it turns out.

Except for Japan and Vietnam, megacults and their memetic narratives of one kind or another prevail almost throughout Asia. There are also surprisingly few bastions of non-delusional rationality throughout Europe.

Australia’s secularism needs to get real, and really scientific. It needs to get that way sooner rather than later. Now, in fact. We have pandemics and global environmental disasters to contend with, and no-one’s imaginary friend is going to be the least bit useful for dealing with any of these very real, purely natural problems.

In fact – in the age of COVID and hypersonic missiles, Scott Morrison and Michael Pompeo’s (respective?) imaginary friends need to be permanently put out to pasture. Megacult delusionals like Morrison cannot be allowed in government any longer.

Democracy is not healthy if it refuses to be informed by the best science that we have available to us. Some things – like the weather – are not beholden to democratic determinations (although if the democracy is presided over by delusionals, then the problem certainly could end up being exacerbated). They are certainly not beholden to anyone’s imaginary, omnipotent friend. Psychotherapy and cognitive behavioural therapy are available for the delusional bereft.

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