Some years ago I was affiliated with the Coptic Orthodox Church and in our specific church there was some controversy with a priest abusing his authority. I had posted what had been done and my feelings about it and was urged to take the post down by church members, people I respected, as I was threatened with a lawsuit. So I took it down and of course nothing was done by the clergy. This incident shook me and my faith. I started questioning Christianity as a whole, the doctrines, the history, the dogma, everything I had been taught and everything I had learned. When I had opened my eyes I seen all the errors and problems, all the contradictions, literally everywhere. Because of my inflammatory post I lost a lot of followers, my book sales came to a halt and I was essentially an outcast at church. So, I stopped caring at all. The Orthodox is no different than the Catholic Church, perhaps more homophobic but their clergy operate exactly like the Roman Church. They protect each other, not the laity. So, I really couldn't care less about it.
Sunday, January 18, 2026
Transactional nature of capitalism leads to mistrust and delusion, a hypothesis
There are countless shows and podcasts seeking to understand why people delve into delusion and or the general mistrust of anyone who has any expertise in virtually anything. I have not been able to look at the literature on the psychology of this and not being an expert myself, I am not guaranteed to understand any peer reviewed paper on the subject. I want to make that known that I am not an expert, just a lay person hypothesizing about something that I have long pondered. Why are there so many people mistrustful of, say, medical experts? Those same people will take advice from a random person with absolutely no expertise speaking on a subject they are not qualified to speak on over the internet, but mistrust the people who have spent their lifetime dedicated to said subject. Why are people generally distrustful of people?
Capitalism reduces everything to a transaction. You only do something for someone because you get something from it, generally money or something of value. This means that in every interaction every person in the back of their mind, be it consciously or unconsciously, think "What does this person want?" or perhaps "What are they seeking to gain from this interaction?" Helping someone or doing something for someone is meant to be what it is, altruistic without the intention of receiving anything in return. But capitalism says "Don't do anything for free." Therefore as capitalism speeds towards fascism the transactional nature of every encounter ramps up. Every call could be a scammer, every incident could be a false flag, etc. In my hypothesis I believe that these minor encounters lead us to doubt the intentions of more major encounters with powerful corporations, which is not unwarranted necessarily, or encounters with experts who may have an ulterior motives. Why would any expert just give us information for free? It could not possibly be because they care about what they do and they care about informing the public, it has to be ill intentions because they must be seeking to benefit.
Capitalism strips all human interaction of its merit and turns everything into a transaction and the transactional nature of capitalism only gets worse and the worse it gets, the more you are going to see cult like mentality around virtually any subject. A general mistrust of any and all experts in virtually any field. The odd veneration of their idols who are more like the general public telling them what they want to hear. I suspect, but do not know for sure, that this is the beginning of delusion and because of its implication of capitalism perhaps nobody has thought of it?