More priests and better priests
How to protect the public when our Ministers of Truth turn rotten.
During the Covid hysteria, something always bothered me about all those instances when Dr. Anthony Fauci would appear on television to dispense truth and wisdom — and edicts. Don’t forget the edicts.
Why on earth did the bulk of the public believe this guy and his pronouncements, almost as if they came from “on high”?
It reminded me in a weird way of Catholic priests back in the days when they used Latin in the mass and most of the flock was uneducated.
Stay with me, it’s not that insane an association.
The connection is that members of the “priestly” class speak in a language and with a lingo that the vast majority of the laity doesn’t understand. With Fauci, it’s epidemiological terms and statistics and models. With the priest, it’s Latin.
In both cases, the wise and saintly one spouts a bunch of unintelligible stuff to the audience, followed by a commandment or two. All of which is gobbled up by the flock.
It’s a system that is ripe for corruption and abuse.
But the more I thought about it, I realized that the basic model of priests and laity can’t really be “fixed”. In thousands of human structures, you’re going to have a few people with a certain kind of knowledge and expertise trying to educate masses that don’t have that knowledge.
So how do we protect ourselves from bad actors in the priestly class? And yes, in this scenario I’m categorizing Fauci as a bad actor.
I think the answer has to be more decentralization. Break apart the monopolies and oligopolies that control “the truth”. If you have bad gatekeepers, tear down the fences.
An unregulated Internet helps with this a lot. A couple years ago Dr. Jay Battacharya was howling his objections to the Fauci regime in the wilderness, largely unheard.
Now he has his own podcast and a big following. Fauci on the other hand (and the monopolistic institutions he represents) have largely lost the trust of the public.
This is a good trend. We need more of this.
It’s impossible for the masses to “learn Latin” in this metaphor. We will always need priests. It is important that we cultivate a system where we inspire and attract more priests and better priests.
Now, go forth and be priestly, people. And if you want some of that priestly knowledge (no Latin, I’m afraid) this is a great place to get it.
Naturally,
Adam