I wish more people would see our police state through that lens, because hell and heaven never kept people in line and the state will do no better. It's all just metric-driven management... in the long-run, nothing really keeps the masses in line.
Amen. What keeps a society stable for a long time is allowing the masses to go out of line on a regular basis without too much collateral damage. It's like letting some steam escape from a boiling pot so it doesn't boil over.
This is essentially what elections are for: to let people revolt against government power without resorting to violence. But if elections are perceived as not valid, or as ineffective, they can no longer release that tension... and to your point, eventually the masses will get out of line one way or another. The longer it takes, the messier it will be.
Authoritarian governments are not even really intended to create long-term stability. They are corrupt in a very essential way: the people running them know they can't last forever, but they don't care as long as they can give themselves a great life, and put off the explosion until after their (natural, comfortable, long-delayed) death.
But surely that's a strawman. No one thinks religion would stop all evil or all people, but there certainly seems to be some kind of psychological effect from being brought up in such a framework, which can be observed, for instance, in latent guilt and residual fear of hell and judgement that happens when people leave certain christian sects for instance, which is totally absent and baffling to those not from such a cultural background.
I think its eminently feasible that SOME people are being 'held in line' through explicit or implicit fear of rules/authority/sanctity/hell/punishment/purity/etc provided by religious and social structures.
Even if you use DDG, you go to a site with GA on it, google cdn, maybe facebook too, anything with those icons to share with a social media site.
Even searching for symptoms. I was searching for something my girlfriend mentioned the other day and now wondering if I'll start seeing some kind of ad related to the issue.
It's not good.
I eventually became a moral nihilist in theory, but someone that recognizes the importance of values in practice. (like a classical liberal against gambling.) And to tell you the truth, I don't know the proper, working way to instill values and work ethics (especially the latter) in people or kids. I, for once, suspect that I came to appreciate a respectful manner through seeing others shoot themselves in the foot by maintaining a rebellious attitude and feeling disgusted with poor manners at times.
Right-wing Millenials who aspire to be good parents often came to appreciate family values/religious values through the same way I did. by rejecting "degeneracy".
Note: I am not saying that right-wingers are morally superior.
Every ban invites testing no matter the consequences. Counter-intellectual cultural engineering can mitigate inquisitiveness in the short-term, at the cost of leaving the state blind and vulnerable to disruption.