Religion

Thiel makes it exceedingly clear that this movement should be viewed through the lens of religion, and we should oblige him. Only then can we understand its true aims. Here’s my take: This emerging tech cult admires religion for its rigid hierarchies. But unlike traditional conservative power structures where God sits atop the pyramid, these tech prophets place technology at the summit, with themselves as its high priests. Instead of divine authority flowing from God through patriarchal figures, authority flows from technology through its billionaire interpreters, who see themselves as humanity's saviors.

It’s a clever sleight of hand: by positioning technology as the ultimate authority, they position themselves – technology’s creators and controllers – as its earthly representatives. And by slowly melding their bodies with technology, they slouch toward some kind of high-tech transubstantiation in which they hope to rise above mortality and claim godlike powers.

As I have written before, this belief system maintains many elements of the conservative belief system that cognitive scientist George Lakoff calls “Strict Father Morality.” It includes familiar hierarchies: men above women, whites above other races, wealthy above poor, and employers above employees. But it adds new dimensions: the technologically enhanced above the unenhanced, the algorithmically optimized above the naturally evolved – and the trillionaires above the billionaires above the millionaires above everyone else.

The current Israeli war on Gaza continues a long history of attacks on and elimination of the Palestinian Christian community in Gaza, Jerusalem, and the West Bank. Since 2007, the small but long-standing Christian community in Gaza has declined from three thousand to about one thousand living in the Strip today; in the West Bank and Jerusalem, the larger Palestinian Christian community of about 50,000 has faced a similar decline over the past few decades.

In large part, this population decline has been driven by the stresses of Israeli occupation, apartheid, and siege in Palestine and facilitated by the greater welcome extended by many Western countries to Christian as opposed to Muslim Palestinian emigrants.

However, as Ramzy Baroud points out, the elimination of the Palestinian Christian community is also convenient for Israel, as it “is keen to present the ‘conflict’ in Palestine as a religious one so that it could…brand itself as a beleaguered Jewish state amid a massive Muslim population in the Middle East.”

“The continued existence of Palestinian Christians,” notes Baroud, “does not factor nicely into this Israeli agenda.”

The LGBTQ movement—first the campaigners for gay and lesbian rights, and now for transgender rights—deserve credit for shaking up our thinking. They’ve made a compelling case that most of the old beliefs about gender were arbitrary taboos, trapping people in lives that confined them and made them miserable. Just as we’ve rejected stereotypes about how women or people of color were “meant” to live, we’re now confronting these stereotypes in turn.

However, every step forward provokes a backlash from those who benefit—or seek to benefit—from oppression. The Catholic church (and, sad to say, Richard Dawkins) are clinging to the notion that all the old beliefs about gender were fine as they were and nothing needs to be questioned or changed. They continue to insist that people should be compelled into roles determined at birth, with no regard for what those people want for themselves.