This article on the priest's role in fact tells you almost nothing about the role of priests.
https://www.historydefined.net/what-was-a-priests-role-during-the-middle-ages/
What you want to know is how a medieval farmer's life would differ if they didn't have a priest.
It tells you one fact: they would pay fewer taxes. (Traditionally 1/3 of their grain harvest - a detail not present in the linked article.)
How did the farmer feel about his priest? Aside from doing rituals, how did a priest spend his day? What roles in the social fabric fell to the priest, and were they any good at these roles? They weren't trained - okay, did they need to be trained? Public school teachers, for example, are identical regardless of whether they've "qualified" or not. The relevant skills are like muscles. You can't train muscles by sitting for lectures on lifting technique. (Also the skills are inherently deviant, but never mind.)
"This created the ludicrous situation where people attended Mass, and neither the priest nor the parishioners knew what was being said meant."
Social role: every Sunday had mandatory rest. No matter how tyrannical your local lord, the farmers would be able to sit down and relax for a few hours every week. The "ludicrous" motions were merely an excuse for an important function.
Of course excuses were lies, so a genuinely holy religion says farmers must rest because rest is the commandment.
Nevertheless, having found one excuse-function dyad, we must suspect there are others. Priests were idle: what function did that serve, if any? Were they idle de facto or merely de jure?
"It was and still is a stricture of Roman Catholicism that priests should be celibate and not marry. But in practice, this was widely ignored. "
Because it was and still is a bad, unholy rule. Ignoring it is pious.
A genuinely holy religion avoids impious rules, but never mind.
"In time the Reformation would lead to a significant improvement in the methods used to train priests."
Who said it? Know them by their fruits. Prima facie, "training" the priests led to destruction of the Church. Improved it out of existence.
We still don't know how a regular medieval farmer related to their priest.
This is like describing a heart and failing to mention that it pumps blood. Is this genuinely a heart, or is it merely a muscle cancer? From the linked alleged-description, we can't tell the difference.
How the farmer felt about their priest is a nonphysical fact. You may even, perhaps, call it spiritual. This feeling dominated how the farmer chose to interact with the priest, and thus was a primary driver of the social role. Because materialists cannot discuss this fundamental property, in the end they cannot discuss anything of substance at all, material or otherwise.
P.S. Speaking of excuse-function dyads, English vicarages ended being UBI for geniuses, which as it turns out is a great idea. Unlike peasants, given the chance to be idle and indolent, very few geniuses choose to be idle. Rather, it merely removes anything which competes with their natural desire to show off and express their genius. The profits of such a plan vastly exceed any costs, especially the cost that some non-geniuses pass the test anyway and some geniuses nevertheless choose to become useless degenerates.
13 comments:
I love this kind of critique of religion as a fake power structure. The kind of person who does this is always deeply religious, but unaware of it.
Like, they think they're rationally exposing some kind of corruption, and yet, they're the kind of person that puts a rainbow flag filter over their normiebook profile picture.
The religion that says, "of course, I'm not a religion" is Satanism.
Devout Satanist. We can safely assume anything they particularly disparage is a form of holiness.
Exactly!
"Oh those people constrained by rules are total chumps, here, we have no rules!"
You ever been to a psychic fair? Filled with the type of person who wants "connection with God" and, practically, the benefits of that religious affiliation, without actually having to do anything to get it.
"I want all the benefit of love without my performance being judged".
Goes back to your unconditional love post. Satan loves you unconditionally, which is why Satanists join up.
Oh man!
>assume anything they particularly disparage is a form of holiness.
Fair trade is holy, yeah?
Which is why these people are all "communists"
Trade is cooperation is holy.
Nitpick: Satan hates you unconditionally, but the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. (According to the kind of person who goes for Satanism.)
I'd agree with that.
Also, reviewing the original article more, it appears that people are just jealous of priests - envy of course being a deadly sin.
"He doesn't have to work in the field to eat and since, you know, no god, what was he doing of value?"
As usual, if someone doesn't understand how something works, it isn't of value.
There are people that legitimately believe that preventive maintenance is a waste of time. The pathology model of healthcare, too.
Pride is an even deadlier sin.
"If I don't know how it works, nobody can possibly know how it works." Why, it must not work at all...
It's funny, I have always admired people very deeply who understand things I don't.
But then, I have the capacity to understand some things.
Perhaps then this is the true benefit to the hierarchical/(patriarchal even) social model - you keep people as tightly enclosed in a sphere of their own understanding as possible, which leads them to naturally respect the idea of "understanding".
I certainly think that local neighbourhoods should by default be insular.
Think not: city wall.
Think: cell wall. A gatekeeper every 1000 feet or something.
For regular folk, never going more than two miles from your house is a good thing, not a bad thing. At least, it's good for the rest of us.
Totally agree.
Dunbars number and IQ are both real thing, and creating social structures that violate these principles as often and egregiously as possible is a recipe for disaster.
Well, it's a recipe for your high IQ, insular types being able to easily exploit the proles.
They deserve as high a quality life as possible.
(Although, isn't it funny how people who are "pro animal rights" are not against the idea of a paternal social model? Hmmm. What deadly sin is that, not noticing? )
I think they do notice and merely lie about it.
You can check by telling one. They know exactly what they need to say to deflect it. Why would they know that in advance? Hmm?
That would be the deadliest sin: falsehood.
>They know exactly what they need to say to deflect it.
But is that something they know, or a behaviour they exhibit to remove cognitive dissonance?
Try to get a global warming supporter to explain how the greenhouse effect works during the day.
Try to get them to provide a source saying that is has an effect during the day.
CIA lie by omission tricks infect people.
I'm starting to really, really strongly believe that consciousness is a gift that evil fucks wish to take from me.
"You willingly participated in your own delusion, Winston..."
>consciousness is a gift
Implies the right strategy even if it's not literally true.
--
I recently realized I have hard proof of p-zombies, because I myself was a p-zombie during the childhood amnesia period. Maybe I'll do a post on this at some point.
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