The Neoliberal Globalist Technocracy as a Religion
A world ruled by “experts” with personal righteousness and tribal membership on the line (by S.M. White)
Understanding the foundations of why things are the way they are:
In order to understand the world, we live in today we have to understand some things about human nature. Particularly because the way the world is arranged now is based partly on the coercing of human nature.
There are some altruisms about humans:
- We’re tribalistic: We like to be on a team that we think is going to win. We like to fit in, to be liked, to be safe, to be successful. We like for our team, the group, or ideas, or where we live to win against some benchmark. This is why for example people root for local sports teams even if they have nothing else in common with them than the location they happen to be living.
- We like to be righteous: This is a big one. There is a part of human nature that wants to be told the “well done good and faithful servant” from God or another proximate authority. There is a sort of desire for approval from God for what we do and don’t do that is in all of humanity. We can see this transactional nature every religion ever made by man has the element of a heaven or reward based on our deeds, what we have to offer. So, it’s a works-based salvation, and a works-based justification. You see this at a smaller level based on children just wanting the approval of parents even after they grow up. This is a common reflection in human nature. Righteousness (our good-enough-ness), and validation of our own personal righteousness is a common desire of all humanity.
Shaped by the past 100 years:
We also need to consider the huge impact that the United States of America has had on the world in the past 100 years. The fact that it was things like our blue-jeans and factory-farming filled grocery stores that brought an end to the world shaping cold war with the Soviet Union has helped shape the world we live in today. Namely the idea that the blessings of the “good life”, of humanity thriving, is to be found through human ascendency through capitalistic means and wealth creation. That’s what won out from the more purely collectivist worldview that the former Soviet Union was. Today there is a mix of capitalistic-communism in China that appears to be a third path, but I would seek to convince you in this essay that the worldwide zeitgeist driving much of what is going on is based on a goal of personal prosperity through technological and wealth advancement. In regards to a type of religion, this can be seen as the proximate “heaven” that is the goal and helps explain why things are the way they are in the world today.
Understanding the different models and why a technocracy ruled by elites is the model today:
Just as with the soviet vs American model of governance, mankind has been trying different forms of government in the modern age with varying forms of success and or misery. Mostly the battle lines of how a nation should be governed has been defined by things like freedom or collectivism, or Right-wing or Left-wing. There have been governments that have partnered with religion, some that have been atheistic, others that have mixed collectivism style socialism with capitalism, and others that have sought to maximize a libertarian model.
A policy that was determined in a libertarian US think tank in the 1990s was that free-trade and globalism is the path forward, and it seems that particularly with the advent of the World Wide Web everyone has bought into it and that this is the model. The internet has helped open up the world to everyone (particularly big corporations) and so experts have determined that places like the US shouldn’t really make many things, but that things should be made in poor nations (or in the case of China places where the government subsidizes cheap labor to make it impossible for anyone to compete with them). Rather than making or building things, young people in the US were supposed to go to college, get degrees in sociology, and STEM and never really get their hands dirty with making anything, including things like masks or pharmaceuticals, or computers, or smart phones. That could be and should be made elsewhere. That’s the “free market” after all, which is a good thing, or so we’re told.
Understanding some of the effects on US culture:
As it turns out not everyone was cut out for this predetermined national/global human categorization model policy, and so this created a divide of societal underperformers. One example would be white Millennial males lacking the desire for a white-collar knowledge-work skill-set became involuntary celibates because they couldn’t compete with and win the affections of a young lady who had a degree and required more a more socially and economically competitive partner. This manipulated cultural environment in-turn created even more competition and an even more conditional (arguably less human) nature to relationships in the US where less marriages occurred, and with men of potential better character being replaced by those who are just more ambitious, successful in the system and more prone to the more simplistic utilitarian view of the harsh reality of winning and losing. I would argue that it helped foster less human compassion and a more cold and narrow people focused on others as a resource to be used.
Understanding the idea of “expertism”, a world ruled by technocratic elites and think tanks:
It’s ironic that the one most prominent outlet we have for extreme individuality, the ability to choose our own gender is itself a sort of mandate from the top. A social pressure pushed down on us that must be accepted and approved. Who applies this pressure, and why? How do they do it?
Today’s globalism is a world where things are made in the cheap places, and computer screens are occupied in the “rich” nations, where we produce little, but mainly deal in knowledge work and our economy moves forward based on consumption of things made in the cheap places, but also, we consume the information itself, the media, the entertainment, the games, the factory food, the “good life” (or so we’re led to believe) things. It’s more of a hedonistic consumerist pseudo-utopia that even the poor can enjoy.
People are mostly convinced of the “good life” what they should do or not do by these experts, by scientists, doctors, social-experts, and know-better-than-yous. They’ve replaced looking at government as purely left or right, or religious, or libertarian. This is a layer above that. It’s a view that the best decisions for everything are made by these elites. Experts in healthcare, and solving global warming, and solving wars, and poverty, by experts. There is a sort of faith that this is the way to go, the next evolution of governance is a sort of worldwide economy ruled by elite experts.
Understanding how to herd cats, through tribalism and righteousness:
How do you get everyone on board for a global agenda? Aren’t’ all politics local? How do we herd cats? How does one nation or one group of people that may be on the right or left or center, or atheistic, or religious, or whatever someone might think all get on the same page for think-tank inspired globally calculated agendas?
The answer is through a sort of technocratic information-driven religious experience. Remember the two points about human nature, we’re tribalistic, and we want to be righteous. So, what better way than endless secular sermons through institutions that are on board with the technocratic globalist plan? So, from education, to music, to movies, to books, to institutions, to corporations and their commercials, to the news media online, in print, or streaming news things like “global warming” , “social injustice” and other cultural imperatives are preached. We’re shown endless evidence of what’s wrong, and then the (unbiased) “experts” tell us what needs to happen to make it right.
We need economic policies. We need to make different kinds of cars. We need to pump the market. We need to recognize and elevate the right people and their plight. We need to power our houses differently, and we need to live in certain new ways. For people who are already religious, or for people who have abandoned traditional religions, this becomes their new religion, or at least a supplemental religion. It’s a secular religion with righteousness on the line.
This can carry over into other things like no-mask to mask wearing to double-mask wearing, or certainly people don’t want to be an unrighteous racist by having the wrong border policy. This is all controlled by whoever controls the information. They control the narrative, so they get define who is culturally-orthodox or who is a cultural-heretic, and they control the information evidence to back up either thing.
What follows cultural heresy is cultural damnation, cancel culture. Cultural-heretics get shut out of middle-culture for being unrighteous and disagreeing with the experts. The alternative to cultural-heresy is cultural-orthodoxy. Agree with the media-priest sermons and what is righteous and you’ll be righteous, you’ll be safe on the righteous path. You’ll be blessed with the comfort and safety of full membership into the “good people tribe”. You’ll have nothing to fear, on the contrary, you’re vindicated. You’re a good person with full tribal benefits to live in peace and safety because you do and think the right things. For you, you’re justified. So, it’s a works-based secular religion based on fear of condemnation and hope of reward.
Conclusions:
Parts of this are a world-wide phenomenon, but it’s most intense in the Anglosphere, particularly the United States. At this point there is almost no part of any policy or information that makes its way to you that is not a part of a certain tribe that ultimately agrees about the big picture of rule by a technocratic global elite. They only disagree about things like priorities, emphasis, focus, and other details. They all agree that experts need to control all our decisions, and they all agree that they get to control what experts control our decisions. Really, they are more qualified, because there’s not a lot of good independent thought going on in the world that they’ve already been controlling the information, what gets rewarded and punished, and what people should pursue and think.
This, I think, was not as much a planned takeover of things, but more natural. With a sort of policy agreement that experts are good things (who could disagree with that?) those over our institutions naturally sort of set the table for themselves to be the elite rulers because they have the money and the power, and a majority of those they are ruling over generally ignorant, naïve and ultimately malleable masses of people who can’t think for themselves. People that have been indoctrinated by the systems in place that helped make them that way. For the masses to be herdable is a problem the elites have nearly solved.
If anyone starts to think for themselves, and comes up with any alternative or populist movement, the information priest-craft goes to work labeling, demonizing, and showing the worst elements of that movement. If that doesn’t work, it seems like they even plant information or people in these movements that cause them to self-destruct as bad movements eventually.
My thoughts are that this is just the way things are, and we have to deal with it. Ultimately against the backdrop of left vs right, collectivist vs individualist, socialist vs capitalist, theist vs atheist it seems that enough people from each of those sub-triable categories think that a neoliberal globalist technocracy where experts are given control of most things is a happy meeting in the middle. The fact that many things are coerced by control of information and the manipulation of people thought carrots and sticks applied to human nature doesn’t seem to be seen as a macro level problem. Instead endless news cycles define the relevant issues for all those who think they are thinkers. Stories on national politics, social ills, election, ecological, financial and other issues relating to the pandemic to fill most of that mainstream intellectual space, and the solutions are always political. Political, where the ruling experts that determine which experts tell us how to live, and move, and have our being…
As for me, I don’t like it, and I don’t think it will end well, but I am going to continue to try and think through it as to what is best for me and my family with the limited resources and abilities that we have. I’m going to live where I think its better, and that there is less trouble, and to do business as best I can. Perhaps this is like what the elites themselves do at one level. Insulate themselves from the worst effects of world they help create. Yet I hate the system that I’m a part of. I never would have created it, because I don’t see people, even experts as basically good, or unassailably honest and for me, I don’t see the prospect of a perfectible utopia, or that this is meeting in the middle. For one thing they’re way too optimistic about human nature, and also, they don’t seem to factor in bias. We’re just supposed to trust the honesty and goodness of the nameless-faceless globalist think-tank created policy that those who govern, and the information priesthood prepares for our thought consumption as if it’s given by basically good people and will be basically for our good. Because they care. Really? In the words of Joe Biden “come on man!”
PostScript:
This little Saturday morning essay was a little outside my normal topic and writing style, and I would be remis if I did not mention that while I like things like safety, comfort and the good things in this world, this is not my ultimate home. This is why I don’t seek to overturn anything per say except generally the household of the god of this world, Satan, whom Christ has bound and his house is being pillaged even now by the proclaiming of the gospel as the Holy Spirit uses that in the lives of the elect. There is simply no form of worldly governance that will not ultimately represent itself in various forms and to varying degrees of severity against Christ, and His people.
Christ told us that the world will hate us because it hated Him. That is true. I am not the enemy of people, but of Satan. Our battles are spiritual, which is why sharing the gospel with whoever the Lord puts in our path is the way to go. This short life we have in this present evil age is best spent planting churches and helping churches, and seeking to love and disciple people in Churches. Our churches need to be Christ centered, and particularly centered on the gospel, which is His person and work to save sinners like me and you. There’s the good news. That’s the ultimate good news, because it’s about an eternal life where true justice and goodness does reign. I’m so thankful for the active obedience of Christ! That’s my true hope! That’s my good news. That’s good news to all who rest their hope on the righteousness of Christ.
Other resources on the phenomenon of informal secular religion:
Michael Chrichton, Environmentalism as a Religion: http://www.hawaiifreepress.com/Articles-Main/ID/2818/Crichton-Environmentalism-is-a-religion
Davis Zahl, Seculosity: How Career, Parenting, Technology, Food, Politics, and Romance Became Our New Religion and What to Do about It