From Humble Origins
Our species’ defining strength is our infinite adaptability. As evolution shaped our intellect and cooperation, so, grew our ability to change the harsh world around us to ensure our survival. We first adapted ourselves to nature and then nature to ourselves. We’ve made our homes in sun-soaked islets and Himalayan peaks, under midnight suns and in the vacuum of space; we have not only survived but thrived in a range of conditions no other creature can parallel. Human history is a testament to our adaptability.
But this adaptability also enables us to endure suffering and hardship and to gradually become inured to them until we no longer even notice. In an individual, this is a coping mechanism for trauma; in a society, this is how the powerful maintain control. Whatever power is captured through physical violence is maintained through this mental violence of indoctrination and miseducation. We forget that there was ever a time when we were free, until we can no longer even imagine it.
Lives of Quiet Desperation
As we tamed the natural world and developed new ways to increase our perceived quality of life, so grew the complexity and inter-dependency of our species. Each adaptation required new structures: an agreement to fulfill our new responsibilities, a rule to govern our interactions, an authority to enforce the rules, a punishment for defying that authority. Each step in the inexorable march of progress built upon the previous foundations, slowly crafting an emergent system with little forethought or planning. Each of these rules transferred a little more of our autonomy to a power structure that was entrusted to serve and protect us all.
But of course, those that had power when these new structures were formed– the rulers and leaders that built their power on exploitation and violence– shaped these systems to preserve their power and protect themselves from the masses, the victims of their exploitation and violence. Some claimed divinity from God, some relied on the power of the sword.
Each incremental advancement of technology went unnoticed, each encroachment of rules and structures whose cost we did not fully grasp went uncontested, each small erosion of our self-agency by powers deemed greater than our own went unchallenged– or at least unsuccessfully challenged. For thousands of years we’ve stacked these bricks, unsure of the final structure but compelled to continue by some unseen motivation. Most of us are content never to seek the true architect; some believe that it must be some sinister cabal of shadowy figures, pulling puppet strings for their own amusement. Few of us see the truth that there is no architect.
Thus we find ourselves in the present, still stacking brick on top of brick and somehow blind to the purpose, and even more blind to the cost. What once began as a tower has slowly become a tomb. This concept of society— an inevitable structure resulting from our species’ struggle to survive and improve our quality of life– has now become a self-perpetuating Leviathan, a system unto itself that serves only to ensure its own survival.
The machinations of this system appear to operate outside of and in opposition to ourselves. This rules our daily lives, defines our shared history, and shapes the future toward which we collectively march. As our species has grown and this system has become ever more complex, so too has our sense of alienation from it. Thus is the irony of modern man: the systems that shackle us can only do so because of our collective participation in them.
Few celebrate this arrangement; we begrudgingly accept this system and carry on in helpless complacency or we resist it and attempt to reduce its theft of our agency. But so complex and comprehensive is its reach that there exists no true option to reject it, and seemingly no opportunity to abolish it. Most resign to it and spend their lives chasing the happiness it has prescribed for us; some spend their lives lashing out and fighting for a way to escape.
A Future Lived in Past Tense
We are conditioned from birth to accept the world as it is. Aspirations and dreams are constrained to what is deemed possible, not what is deemed right and just. We are imbued with tradition and culture and social norms, all of which compel us to think and behave as did our predecessors. This is a justifiable evolutionary strategy; our past behavior has ensured our survival thus far, therefore it is likely to continue doing so.
But what is the lasting value of these traditions? Religious traditions largely serve to allow the powerful to demand our obedience with threats of eternal damnation. Socioeconomic traditions protect the power of the ruling class by telling us that a handful of people controlling the vast majority of the world’s wealth is not only acceptable but in fact the best possible option. Cultural traditions preserve tribalist tendencies and maintain an innately-competitive, us-versus-them mentality.
To this day, the vast majority of our species is subjugated by these traditions. Indoctrination from birth into religious beliefs, exploitative capitalist models, political ideologies, and most recently, our consumer-centric identity obsession through lifestyle and products. The faulty foundations of these modalities are ignored; every new idea is created and reinforced in the context of these predefined structures and any idea outside of these rigid lines is deemed radical and unrealistic.
The plight is getting worse, fueled both by technological advancement and the alienation of modern man. The increasingly unnatural state of existence has formed a deeper discord within man than ever before, one that he is desperate to reconcile. But the current systems have powerful tools to manipulate this discontent in their favor.
Over time, the rulers have learned to make just enough concessions to keep the masses complacent, but they do far more than enough to ensure that we remain powerless. For every hard-won protection or right, there are countless attacks on our most basic weapons, from budget cuts and disenfranchisement to genocides in sovereign nations unfavorable to the ruling class.
Man is caught in an endless cycle of production and consumption, the majority of both having no tangible value except to preoccupy us and rob us of the energy or desire to perform deep thinking. The labor required for our survival is exhausting and unfulfilling. The material pressures of survival in the Global South– access to clean water and medicine, poverty wages demanded by the global economy, food and housing instability– and the artificial pressures of society in the Global North– rising costs of living, job instability, insurmountable debt– impose a constant, low-level stress that makes deep thought nearly impossible.
Entertainment is vacuous and short-form, meant to keep us addicted to a stream of empty amusement; information, often inaccurate or deliberately false, is spoon-fed in algorithmically-generated bites meant to keep us addicted to a stream of empty outrage. Modern society provides opportunity only for shallow thought, because deep thought is dangerous and destabilizing.
The Path to Enlightenment
The Unholy Church of the Savior Self does not denounce society. Human inter-dependency and cooperation are not only crucial to our survival, they are a fundamental aspect of our species. Moreover, human connection enriches our individual lives and defines a life that is truly worth living.
However, the Church explicitly rejects the imposition of one’s will upon another, whether through intellectual indoctrination or physical coercion. Each capable individual must have the right to assess and analyze every action and to consent to their participation within it.
These tenets are not at odds. Self-reliance and self-determination can (and must) coexist with inter-dependence and cooperation. The Church seeks to redefine both our interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships, for one is not possible without the other. The writings of the Savior Self teach us to restore our inner humanity through reason and self-determination and to restore our outer humanity through compassion and cooperation.
Make It Plain
Liberation is self-determination. The Savior Self seeks to restore in our population the capacity and the desire to collect and analyze information and to act in accordance with our individual beliefs. We must eliminate prescribed morality, submission through indoctrination, and consent through coercion; these are the pillars of the hierarchy that has ruled our species throughout history: organized religion, politics, and the ruling classes.
The only power that these systems wield is the power that we give them. By accepting their terms and their rules, we allow our oppressors to continue their reign. By believing that the current system is in our favor, we allow them to commit their violence in plain sight. By believing the current system is wrong but cannot be changed, we enslave ourselves.
The Unholy Church of the Savior Self asserts that the current systems must be abandoned. These systems inflict physical, tangible harm and suffering on all of us, to varying degrees. They also inflict a spiritual harm by robbing us of our innate humanity by discouraging knowledge, reason, self-agency, and compassion.
Abandoning these systems does not mean revolution. In fact, sudden revolutions– peaceful or violent– are antithetical to the mission of the Savior Self. Any such revolution would simply impose a new system on people who may not have consented to it. Thus, the Church supports the idea of opt-out rejection of the current systems by building parallel structures: new, consent-driven modalities that effectively exist largely outside of the current systems and serve as an alternative for those who wish to participate. Parallel structures are ideas such as worker-owned cooperatives and autonomous communes.
The Church offers no prescriptive solution to these issues, for that is antithetical to the mission of the Savior Self. Instead, the Church serves as a forum to encourage reasoned discourse, mutually-assisted enlightenment, and self-organization of parallel structures to facilitate the rejection of existing systems.