People Enjoy The Expertocracy Filling The Gaps Left By Christianity’s Exit

Announcement Next week I am on vacation as I prepare for the Cultural Event of the Year. There will be no new posts: there may be classic reposts.

Regular readers know my name for the managerial state is Expertocracy, a word I think is more evocative of our predicament, given we are run by self-credentialed, high-titled Experts who now rarely call themselves managers. Whichever term you prefer, the end result is the same.

Yesterday we saw that, as everybody knew, belief in the Devil, among other persons, has dwindled these last two decades, and now only about half of Americans express any belief, and given differences in definitions and practical meanings, the real number is probably less than half. The reasons don’t need to be rehearsed.

Except one. Which is the loss of confidence in authority of the Church. There is also, of course, the obvious negative feedback. Less belief leads to less confidence; less confidence leads to less belief.

The point is this: the Church provided most with a trusted institution to define for them Official Truths. Not just in religion, but in morality, politics, even science, which we can define as understanding how the world works. This was adequate, because the great majority of people never need move beyond simple ideas.

Everybody knows Chesterton’s quotation: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” This may be true, but it remains to be seen where that anything comes from.

Well, history and common experience tells us. Official Truths have been replaced in ex-little-o orthodox Christians by our very own Expertocracy.

What’s more, people like it that way.

Pew confirms this in their new survey “­Most Americans favor restrictions on false information, violent content online”.

Most Americans say the U.S. government and technology companies should each take steps to restrict false information and extremely violent content online. However, there is more support for tech companies moderating these types of content than for the federal government doing so, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

Support for both technology companies and the government taking steps to restrict false information online has grown in recent years. For example, the share of U.S. adults who say the federal government should restrict false information has risen from 39% in 2018 to 55% in 2023.

There are niceties to this. Such as “Democrats are more supportive than Republicans”, which can be no surprise, but maybe the stark difference can: 70% vs. 39%.

Majority support comes “even if it limits people from freely publishing or accessing information.” Nobody is ever really against censorship. It just depends on what is being censored.

Support for the Expertocracy’s controlling Official Truths jumped from 39% to 58% in just five years (with all the usual caveats about uncertainty in these numbers). Three of those years being the Expert-created and Expert-exacerbated covid panic.

We recall our litany. If there is Official Disinformation—which rulers, Experts, and a majority of people desire—there must be necessarily be definitions of Official Truths, which are the logical contraries of Official Disinformation.

We’ve also said that if there are Official Truths, there must be an agency or agencies in charge of producing, promulgating, and policing these Truths. The policing is exactly what most desire. And which is exactly what the Expertocracy produces, either directly in the government or in major corporations, the difference between these two entities narrowing.

Experts provide Official Truths in all subjects, fields, and endeavors, mimicking the Church. Or, rather, providing what most used to seek in the Church.

Now if, as I’ve also said before, the Official Truths were themselves universal necessary truths, as the Church provided, then there would be no difficulties. Yet readers here well know the Expertocracy’s Official Truths are anything but necessarily true.

It’s not only uncertainties passed off as certain, and the rank scientism replacing morals, but the outright lies passed off as Official Truths, lies used expressly to control the population. Lies which were carefully chosen as propaganda, and, as regular readers have seen, damned effective.

The vacuum in guidance created by the Church’s fading in importance has been filled by Expertocracy. People are now so used to this form of rule that they’re willing to have Experts police Official Disinformation. Which is to say, to have Experts suppress actual Truth.

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