It's easier to see what (I think) he's grasping for when considering other religions. For example, consider the way that strict Islam maintains a large gap between the status of men and women in terms of authority, deference, autonomy, wealth allocation, etc. The exclusive authority of imams to decide certain questions of dispute and of …
It's easier to see what (I think) he's grasping for when considering other religions. For example, consider the way that strict Islam maintains a large gap between the status of men and women in terms of authority, deference, autonomy, wealth allocation, etc. The exclusive authority of imams to decide certain questions of dispute and of social behavioral rules can put leaders whose rule was established on a different basis (i.e., they inherited in as successor to a dynasty) in a subordinate position, at least on those matters.
More important than establishing and influencing the manner in which social rank is granted and perceived is the cutting off of certain highly destabilizing channels in the great and perpetual social game of jousting for higher rank. In particular, the game of signaling greater righteousness through competitive sanctimony necessarily involves the effort to undermine the established normative understanding and equilibrium, for example, consider "critical theory". The opportunity to criticize existing traditional norms and introducing moral innovations sets off a process of ideological entrepreneurship that need never end and can (and historically has, repeatedly) quickly degenerated into free for alls that run to greater and greater extremes of fanaticism leading straight away into descents into mass madness, misery, and murder until, one way or another, some powerful force puts a stop to it to restore a stable order, usually by means of making it clear than anyone thinking about rocking the boat that way in the future is going to find themselves sleeping with the fishes.
It's easier to see what (I think) he's grasping for when considering other religions. For example, consider the way that strict Islam maintains a large gap between the status of men and women in terms of authority, deference, autonomy, wealth allocation, etc. The exclusive authority of imams to decide certain questions of dispute and of social behavioral rules can put leaders whose rule was established on a different basis (i.e., they inherited in as successor to a dynasty) in a subordinate position, at least on those matters.
More important than establishing and influencing the manner in which social rank is granted and perceived is the cutting off of certain highly destabilizing channels in the great and perpetual social game of jousting for higher rank. In particular, the game of signaling greater righteousness through competitive sanctimony necessarily involves the effort to undermine the established normative understanding and equilibrium, for example, consider "critical theory". The opportunity to criticize existing traditional norms and introducing moral innovations sets off a process of ideological entrepreneurship that need never end and can (and historically has, repeatedly) quickly degenerated into free for alls that run to greater and greater extremes of fanaticism leading straight away into descents into mass madness, misery, and murder until, one way or another, some powerful force puts a stop to it to restore a stable order, usually by means of making it clear than anyone thinking about rocking the boat that way in the future is going to find themselves sleeping with the fishes.