In 1974, just before I left the WCG, I picked up a book called “EarthWalk” by Philip Slater. I had never had such an eye opening experience before that time. “EarthWalk” was one of the most profound books I’ve ever read.
This article by Ralph Haulk is from 2011, and is being republished here.Â
Recently, I was reading from his blog, http://philipslater.wordpress.com and discovered the essay on the trap of purity. It is related to much we have discovered when we left the CoGs. A part of that is quoted below:
“But all cultures have safety valves that help release the tensions created by this twisting of our genetic makeup. Cultures survive only when theyâre impureâwhen they accumulate inconsistencies and contradictions like lichen on a rock.
Medieval Europe, for example, had a Feast of Fools, during which nobles and peasants exchanged roles, priests were the butt of practical jokes, and all the usual taboos and rules of deference to oneâs superiors were abolished for a day. Similarly, the Japanese have a tradition that anything said while drunk must have no repercussions in their daily lives. Since people are more complex than any system of ideas, these contradictions and inconsistencies are necessary for a culture to survive. As Mumford put it:
‘This tendency toward laxity, corruption, and disorder is the only thing that enables a system to escape self-asphyxiation.’Â Some early Christian leaders, like Paul, portrayed celibacy as the highest good. But if this principle had been enforced for everyone the Catholic Church would have disappeared like the Shakers, who never reproduced themselves. Mumford attributes the longevity of the Catholic Church to its ability to absorb contradictory traditions:
âIt is not the purity of Roman Catholic doctrine that has kept that Church alive and enabled it to flourish even in a scientific age but just the opposite.â
It survived, he says, because of the many ideas and practices ‘seeping in from other systems of thought and other cultures,’Â Â Â especially that of the Greeks, and later, of science. Not to mention the pagan elements (Santa Claus, Christmas trees, Easter eggs) incorporated into the Christian religion as it swept through Europe.”
Slater’s description above opens up the idea that cultures cannot survive by being totally “pure”. By focusing exclusively on perfect obedience to a set of rules or laws, they eventually go extinct from lack of adaptation. Slater brings out a parallel to this idea in “EarthWalk”:
“There is a cybernetic law that states that the more probable a message is, the less information it provides. The information contained in a message, for example, decreases with its repetition”.
What we see, then, is a comparison between the “probability” of a message, and the “purity” of a message. By emphasizing the purity of a message, that is, Â the “truth” of an unchanging nature, Â we increase its probability, but we reduce the information it contains for useful adaptation to the world around us. If any “message(Catholicism, Mormonism, any ‘ism’)” is repeated to the point that we cannot accept variation, we will lose our ability to adapt to necessary change.
If you compare this to my last essay regarding genes and the “Cambrian Explosion”, you will notice a parallel between the action of genes and the need for “purity” in any social system.
What Richard Dawkins calls the “genetic replicative algorithm” is an action by which genes perfectly copy themselves from generation to generation by controlling as much of their environment as possible, to avoid change. That is, the genes select a process of “purity” to ensure that no alterations occur in their replicative process. If the “memes” of a culture are extensions of the genes, then we can easily see the evolutionary connection between a culture seeking “purity” and the gene pool seeking to avoid change and thus control its replicative environment.
What we see in both the culture or religion, and the process of genetic replication, is that “information”, that which lacks predictability, is a threat to both genes and cultures. This means that cultures, as extension of the genes, will seek to minimize choice, or options that threaten the reproductive integrity of the culture.
What is immediately realized from this is that religion is a process developed naturally in evolution, and, while it serves purposes of survival in environments with little change, it threatens the life of species in environments with what economist/futurist Robert Theobald called the “Rapids of Change”.
Religion, as generally recognized, is nothing more than a cultural evolutionary strategy to reduce stress within a culture by reducing its options. The more “purity” maintained in a culture, the less uncertainty it experiences, and therefore less stress.
Slater has shown a link between genetic replication and the strategy by which cultures avoid uncertainty, by pointing out the basic law of information theory. The more probable a message, the less information it contains. The more “religious” a person is, therefore, the more adept he or she becomes at strategies that avoid constant change. This suggests that religion is merely a useful evolutionary strategy. Once we become aligned with a “universal truth”, we are inclined to seek out those who agree with that truth. “Purity” can only succeed if it proselytizes. Slater continues below:
“Cultural systems force living things into boxes. Inconsistencies create air-holes that allow these living things to breathe. Every cultural system must have contradictions in order for its participants to remain human, Â because human beings are inconsistent and have contradictory needs. Weâre active and passive, organized and impulsive, aggressive and gentle, cooperative and competitive. Yet every cultural system tends to suppress some part of that complex humanity.
So when a culture changes,  it eases the process if parts of the older tradition survive, even whenâespecially whenâthey contradict the values of the new one. Vestiges of the joyful celebrations of life and nature that characterized pagan cultures softened the impact of the death-oriented, otherworldly Christianity that was imposed on Europeans during the Dark Ages. Easter eggs, a pagan fertility symbol, helped Christians feel that there might, after all, be something to be said for life here on earth.
Healthy cultures are packrats. They donât throw away anything. They keep odds and ends of customs that contradict their dominant values.”
Slater has again pointed out another parallel of cultures and genes. Once a culture is “informed” with inconsistencies and aberrations, it isolates them often by putting them in jail, placing them in therapy, putting them in mental institutions, or ways that isolate the aberration, but maintains the “information” provided by the aberration or inconsistency. Organisms have this same tendency by incorporating what used to be called “junk DNA”, which, as Dr Sharon Moalem points out, are actually former viral DNA, which the organism uses for future reference. This DNA provides a kind of “database” which the organism can use in many ways, from “jumping genes” that randomly populate newly formed brains, allowing greater individuality, to reference of the viral DNA to create defenses against new viral infections.
In that same sense, cultures act as “packrats”, storing inconsistencies and aberrations as a “database” to study and identify the nature of each behavior, just as the immune system “tags’ and identifies each new viral invader and neutralizes it in the body.
Slater then makes comparisons to more modern cultures:
“Communist bureaucracies could not have functioned at all without the system of official bribery carried over from Czarist days, and capitalists who are most dogmatic about free markets are the first to seek government subsidies and try to control prices through collusion. Ceremonious Brits adore making fun of pomposity, and materialistic Americans are addicted to sentimental movies proclaiming that the best things in life are free. In 1635 the intensely utilitarian Dutch went mad over tulipsâthe most useless of plantsâpaying astronomical sums for a single bloom and almost destroying their economy. And while the early 1950s were notoriously obsessed with planning for future success, the most popular song was âChe Sera, Sera.â
When an old cultural system begins to give way to a new one its inconsistencies come under attack. There is an increase in fundamentalismâa call for ideological purity. These are seen as attempts to shore up the old system, but they actually weaken it further.”
In Jewish history, the Jews were faced with this same problem. They were allegedly commanded to obey the laws of God perfectly, and avoid the “leavening” of other nations. That is, they were not to be “informed” by the inconsistencies and paganism which other nations offered. How could the Jews successfully live among other cultures if they were not permitted to conquer and control those cultures? If they truly had the covenant with God at Sinai, why wouldn’t God have led them to victory over all other cultures, so they could enforce their truth on the world?
The reason, assuming there was a God who did so, is stated above. Had Israel been successful and enforced “God’s law” all over the earth, the very purity by which Israel was forced to live would actually destroy the evolutionary ability to adapt and grow with their environment! Israel’s “success” could not have depended on the conquest of other nations and a world ruling kingdom, since that very success would have doomed them to eventual extinction!
The Jews, therefore, offered an interesting solution: while maintaining the “purity” of their holy text, the Torah, they began to record a system of rules and laws(Mishna, Gemora, and Talmud) which allowed them to adapt to the cultures and societies around them, even incorporating various ideas from those cultures, while maintaining the “purity” of the Torah only by giving it “lip service”, the very thing which Jesus had allegedly condemned in his ministry. “Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men(Mark 7:7)”.
In genetic systems, there are the “germ cells” which maintain the “purity” of sexual reproduction. These cells are not altered by viruses. The basic information necessary for sexual reproduction is passed on, and the organism maintains its identity in a species. The somatic cells, however, are influenced by viruses, and can be altered by the “information” provided by viral DNA. The Jews had maintained the “germ cell” purity of the Torah, but had created an adaptive “somatic cell” system composed of the Talmud, which allowed them to adapt to the “cultural DNA” of other civilizations.
Christianity and Islam followed much the same model, by creating a “DNA” of print, allowed by Gutenberg’s printing press, which passed on the basic replicative information of the “germ cell”, while allowing for the constant speciation and splintering of interpretation of various religions, until we have thousands of religions that provide for constant adaptability in the West today.
The main difference, however, is that individuals can read either Bible or Koran for themselves, creating even more individualist diversity for competition and adaptation among systems. Notice what Slater proposes as a result of this “informing” process:
“The Protestant Reformation in Europe was an attempt to âpurifyâ the Catholic Church of its contradictions and compromises with paganism. It sought to suppress the cult of the Virgin Mary and reestablish the supremacy of the Fatherâto make Christianity a more perfectly patriarchal religion and de-sacralize âMotherâ Nature.
The result of this new purity was to weaken popular commitment to Christianity altogether. Atheism and secular humanism grew rapidly, and European churches never again held the sway over public life theyâd once had.
The power of kings, which in medieval times was limited by the nobles and hedged about by custom, reached a peak under the reign of Franceâs Louis XIV, who detached the nobles from their land base and brought them to Versailles. As continued by Louis XV and Louis XVI, it was the purest form of monarchy that ever existed in Western Europe, and for that very reason was the beginning of the end.
Centralized power achieved an even purer form in the 20th century dictator. The dictator had no limitations at allâno concerns about legitimacy, no traditional obligations attached to the role, no restrictions based on custom. The dictator was authoritarian power at its absolute purest, and hence an unmistakable symptom of its decadence. Nazi Germanyâs Third Reichâthe purest and most perfect expression of Control Culture that ever existedâlasted only twelve years. And today the former Axis powers are three of the most vital democracies in the world.
The purest forms of a social system always appear as it decays. Often, when a system is ailing, its believers try to strip away its contradictions, leaving a system that is more pure, more rigid, and hence more fragile. Mao Zedong couldnât tolerate the âlaxity, corruption, and disorderâ in Chinese communism. By launching the Cultural Revolutionâtrying to strip away all traditional values and entrepreneurismâhe smothered the system and opened the door to capitalistic and democratic reforms.
In a viable culture, customs, ideas, and myths may fall into disuse, but theyâre never thrown out. Cleaning out the cultural attic means junking the counterpoise that keeps the whole structure from getting too one-sided and collapsing.
The âpurificationâ efforts of fundamentalist ideologues are symptomatic of terminal illness. Radical leftists in the past have often crippled themselves through the same egoistic devotion to ideological purity, preferring to go down with the ship singing ânearer to the left than theeâ rather than share a lifeboat with conservatives and compromising liberals.
Mumfordâs âlaxity, corruption, and disorderâ is an ironic phrase, but itâs the way contradictions are viewed by ideologues. Purists believe theyâre trying to âreviveâ or ârevitalizeâ a system when they call for a return to âbasic valuesâ or âfundamental principlesâ, but since itâs the âlaxity, corruption, and disorderâ that protect a system from self-asphyxiation, theyâre in effect smothering it. Theyâre more committed to the idea of the system than the compromised reality. Theyâre not only willing to go down with the ship, theyâre willing to sink it to prove their devotion.
Slater has correctly analyzed the problem, but the “neoconservatives” and the evangelicals are trying desperately to “return” to a purity which the United States never possessed, nor was it born of such ideas. The “original intent” of the founders was basic to the paradigm examined above: for those who chose, the Bible could be used as the “germ cell” of future security, but the nation grew and prospered on its “laxity and disorder”.
In reviewing “Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships” by Janja Lalich and Madeleine Tobias, one of the things which struck me was the “No Win” situation in cults. It’s one which most of us in the Radio / Worldwide Church of God have had to suffer through: You can’t (as you point out above) make the “pure” doctrine work, but yet, you absolutely must. Whether it is the factor of “Doubling” with a self-contradictory compartmentalized or bounded choice, there isn’t any way to win. Are you to stand up for your religion and stand out? Or are you to remain silent and let “the mouth” of the organization speak? All sorts of contradictions crop up which can’t be resolved. Which is it? Go to your “brother” and resolve conflict or go to the minister? I remember the days when the minister was to know everything and to decide everything.
Should we actually build character, or did the ministers really have to come into our homes to open the cupboards and check for white flour and white sugar? My neighbor pointed out that this is cultic behavior of intrusive control in our discussion (he has the sole video on the DNArefutesBI.com website with a live person in it).
Purity doesn’t seem available in any practical way in the real world. Any cult leader that tries for it is doomed to one failure or another. Especially damning is the attempt of repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia: It certainly is good news that the women can vote locally, but they still can’t drive vehicles without risking being beaten with 10 lashes of the whip against the back. This is an environment where the venue is kept “pure” by restricting people from bringing Bibles into the country. It isn’t clear what benefit all the purity has brought to the people there, and many are happy that the leader is now relaxing some of the restrictions and allowing greater freedom in the country.
My personal observation is that the greater the effort is to control people to make purity, the more quickly the community deteriorates. It takes a lot of force and energy to restrict people into unnatural frameworks of behavior a la 1984 style. The resource intensive intrusion into lives just doesn’t have a large enough payoff in the long term and it seems like entropy sets in rather vigorously.
You may take note of the following as support for some of your exposition:
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/doublex/2011/09/pregnancy_evolution_a_new_nature_genetics_paper_may_explain_why_.html?gt1=38001
Really do watch the wrap on that one and address it quickly: These sorts of articles seem to disappear rather rapidly without any recourse of finding them again.
Thanks for the link. âItâs like theyâre a parasite in your gut except theyâre a parasite in your DNA and all they care about is making more copies of themselves,â said Lynch.
That was my point earlier. The basic drive, or “prime directive” to borrow from the terminology of “Star Trek”, is for the gene to replicate itself. We are a culmination of a lot of once in dependent systems whose main goal was replication and survival, which began to co-appear in a more complex system we call the human body.
” But the new work suggests that the transposonâs role might have been much broader âthat thousands of copies of MER20, which spread throughout the animalsâ DNA, might have helped to regulate hundreds of genes that respond to estrogen and progesterone and could have helped the womb sustain a longer and more complex pregnancy. In other words, the DNA invasion might have moved us, to some degree, not toward pups in a pouch but babes in a Baby Bjorn.”
There is likely a connection between the mobility or migratory nature of early humans, and this need for pregnancy. A fetus could be nurtured more easily if the hunter-gatherers didn’t have to focus on limited egg laying territory for the hatched babies.
“Of course, modern pregnancy is a complex beast. Researchers donât believe the transposon incursion was sufficient, by itself, to explain the shift toward pregnancy in placental mammals like us. For one thing, the current work doesnât address the evolution of the placenta itself. Nor does it zero in on immune changes that have long been viewed as necessary for more sustained gestation. âYou clearly need to alert the immune system that that thing in the uterusâ that only shares half the motherâs DNA âis not a parasite and is not to be rejected,â as Lynch himself points out.
The “alerting” of the immune system, actually occurred millions of years before, with the constant exchange of viral DNA, which built up a “strategy” over time, to recognize and “tag’ viral DNA, and then neutralize as part of the overall database. Those “infectious” DNA were dependent on symbiosis for survival, of the destruction of the host, so they simply captured the replicative process of the cell, cranked out a blueprint known as RNA, and then replicated themselves.
“Large gaps remain in these parts of the story. But the invasion of rogue DNA may be one crazyâand importantâtwist in the tale of modern human pregnancy for which we ought to be oddly grateful.”
Since it accommodated a more migratory lifestyle, humans could give birth at most any place, with the immune system not yet fully developed, but the mother could nurture the child with milk.
At this point, I might also pint out that there is a link in types of cancer with the reproductive process. Until fairly recently, leukemia was mostly associated with children, and it was a a disruption of the immune system. Cancerous tumors, however, began to appear more frequently among older males and females, and tend to focus on the organs associated with reproduction, such as prostate, ovaries, breasts. It is my thinking, and I’ve said this for many years, that viruses will at some point be discovered as a cure for cancer in general.
In college, I pointed out to my anthropology teacher, who was more open-minded than most, that “someday, I don’t know when, but you will hear of a discovery in which bubble babies can be injected with a virus which will trigger an immune response”.
I told him that in 1980, and asked him to keep it in mind. In 1991, I saw on CBS news a “landmark discovery” that an immune response could be triggered in bubble babies by injecting them with viruses.
The virus has long been used for genetic engineering, basically “loading’ the virus with specific DNA for targeting certain reactions. But the virus is the ‘engineer” behind the evolution of all life forms and their immune systems.
As I hope to point out later, this does not destroy the idea of God, but is actually stronger evidence for an intelligence that designed the process.
“Or are you to remain silent and let âthe mouthâ of the organization speak? All sorts of contradictions crop up which canât be resolved. Which is it? Go to your âbrotherâ and resolve conflict or go to the minister? I remember the days when the minister was to know everything and to decide everything.”
it seems to me this is settled in Matthew 18:15-18. All disagreements are to be settled first between the two involved, or then “two witnesses” are employed, after the rule of deuteronomy 19:15, and if that fails, go to the community or church, and let them decide in a way that is equitable for both parties. If your adversary still doesn’t like it, treat him as a “Gentile or tax collector”.
That doesn’t indicate Jesus approved of either tax collectors or those with financial interests to solve the problem, which also has implications for modern day courts.
Ralph, in my experience, the ministry of the Radio / Worldwide Church of
God shortcutted Matthew 18 as long as it was convenient to them. Disputes about viable proveable facts which violated the preachments of the church were met with swift retribution without Matthew 18 ever being pursued.
The most blatant example of this is when a UCG couple had to go to court for a restraining order against a stalker in United with the church elders and deacons at odds with the court which swiftly rendered a verdict to issue the restraining order. The ACoG was in direct violation of the dictims of the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians 5.
The truth is that the official position is to pursue purity while engaging in corruption because purity just doesn’t work well in closely controlled despotic environments.
Strictly from a biblical perspective, the WCG was never a church of God, nor are any of the other churches. It is impossible to choose to become a member of “God’s church” by choice, even from the biblical perspective, not to mention the fact that we have no proof there actually is a God.
This is one reason why the “purity trap” tends to corrupt and destroy. Whatever choices we make by human reason, no matter how strictly we try to follow truth, we will end in failure. HWA had some decent ideas he borrowed from other churches, in a hodgepodge of facts that made sense, but there is no possibility of men organizing in Gd’s name legitimately by “making sense”.
If we could make such choices by logic or reason, those choices are subject to language, which are then subject to algorithms, which are then translatable into computer programming. If we could devise a system of “purity” in any sense, it could then be programmed, so that we wouldn’t need ministers, leaders, preachers, or “holy men”. We could simply consult our laptop each morning and know what to do.
This is pretty much basic to the teachings of both Paul and Jesus. Whatever you claim as truth, you must be able to prove, and if not proven, there is no need to follow you, which corresponds to Matthew 24:23.
There are no human churches, no human systems of rules, dogma, or doctrines, that represent God. This is true of both a biblical perspective and from simple logic.
“The truth is that the official position is to pursue purity while engaging in corruption because purity just doesnât work well in closely controlled despotic environments.”
Exactly. Corruption is unavoidable. It’s necessary to exist, which leads us right back to Paul’s statements on the impossibility of escaping “sin.” If we as individuals can’t make such choices, how can we expect any human system of rules to be any more perfect? Yet that is the mistake we make over and over and over…
This reminds me of what Jefferson said as to purity within a series of generations.
“We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.”
He carries this forth when he spoke about loading up debt on future generations as being unjust. Further, he saw that the nation would always be in a state of decline from its founding days. That corruption, despots, tendencies towards a centralized government would eventually lead towards tyranny.
Jefferson was educated unlike the last few generations of Americans.
Who to blame?
How about what to blame.
The creation of a tightly regulated/controlled society is part of the purity trap. The USA now days is built mostly on American liberal ideology. Their idea has been to create a more just and equal society. What they have created has reached its peak and is now in a state of rapid decline.
Jefferson was right of course. Continued freedom and strength of the nation was dependent on its “educated citizenry” to control the government so that it would not stray from its appointed role as dictated by the US constitution.
But he also saw the future when he wrote:
“Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.”
I’ve been involved on anther forum with a bunch of theologians, one of whom is reasonably intelligent, who sent me an email titled “How to Interpret the Holy Spirit”.
Here’s the deal, and I’m sure you’ve heard it before: He says that since there is no natural, logical way for the human mind to grasp “God;s truth”, we must use “higher” logic. What are the rules of the logic? Well, they have to be revealed. But who gets to reveal them? I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count.
I quickly responded to him with some insults I learned in the marines, which I will not repeat here, but “moron” was one of the nicer words. He quickly responded that there is no place in logical argument for ad hominem. I responded, “what logic? You just cancelled all the rules of human reason, which makes insults and ad hominem as valid as anything you say to me, since you can no more prove the truth of your statements than I can prove you are all the names I called you”.
Every step after that is then predictable. The “humble” approach of spiritual superiority: “I was once like yoy. I thought I understood all things, but God showed me a higher way, a deeper understanding”.
Of course it does no good to ask him to explain or even show why the bible itself makes him out to be a liar. It is satanic to try and prove him wrong. Instead, I must “humbly” ask God to help me prove him RIGHT, to see the vision God has revealed to him. What a moron.
Ralph, I’ve had occasion to visit people in mental hospitals and have been close by while several people have had their psychotic break.
What you describe here is nothing short of my experience with patients with mental illness.
The philosophies may or may not be internally consistent (some are amazingly internally consistent), but do measure up to real world data… at all. The criteria is always the same with the mentally ill: Either you agree with me, or you just don’t have it in you to understand. End of discussion.
My frustration with such people in corporate management and the religious arenas has reached ever more dizzying heights as they reject sanity in favor of what they “feel” is true and right.
As a snide note: I note with appreciation the last thing my IT Director told me before she RIFfed me: “I don’t know what I’m doing”. I guess she was honest because she thought it would have no effect. She had told me the year before “We know who you are” and had her first and second manager / supervisor meeting at Snake Lake (noting that Scripture claims the demons told Christ the same thing). No I don’t wonder, for she is not just a liar, she is the mother of it.
All these people are in about the same category and think they have all truth when they have nothing at all worth while.
Ralph, I’m glad you told him off. We need more of that sort of thing happening. [I’m working on doing the equivalent same thing to the crap Dixon Cartright pushed at me.]
I met a man a few years ago who was a Seventh Day Adventist. Apparently he had inherited a “depression” gene so sever that without treatment, it would lead to suicide. His father and uncle had both killed themselves.
This gentleman was intelligent and well educated, but totally devoted to the SDA doctrines. His devotion ed him to the point that he believed himself well developed enough in the “faith” to stop his meds. His body was found a few days later, out in the woods, beside his truck. He had suffered a self administered shotgun blast.
Some people, unfortunately, need this type of authority, and will even believe it to their own destruction or family members. I believe it is an evolutionary “leftover” where collective identity served the best interest of survival. People read the ible, or any “holy book”, and as Hoffer pointed out, they start developing pretty much the same strategy, selected by their nature, to “justify the truth” of a message.
PT Editor, a nice statement I almost missed:
quote>”The creation of a tightly regulated/controlled society is part of the purity trap. The USA now days is built mostly on American liberal ideology. Their idea has been to create a more just and equal society. What they have created has reached its peak and is now in a state of rapid decline.
Jefferson was right of course. Continued freedom and strength of the nation was dependent on its âeducated citizenryâ to control the government so that it would not stray from its appointed role as dictated by the US constitution.”<unquote
Most likely, this need for a tightly controlled society is part of evolutionary needs. If we look at a culture as an organism, it will develop rules over time to maintain its "immune system" against all invaders. Unfortunately, from my study of more recent history, we have the "neoconservatives" who have taken the old "classical lineral" idea of less government and more freedom, and turned it into "collectivism light", pretending to champion individualist causes.
George W. Bush, for example, came up with "compassionate conservatism" which made me wat to puke when I heard it, because it is "liberal light".
Bush, like LBJ before him, decided that government can finance guns and butter, and proceeded to run the economy into the ground. I spent the last six years of the Bush presidency trying to war people what would happen.
It's not democrats versue republicans, it's demopublicans, or republicrats. I like the "republic-rats" idea better, as it gives a common animal to represent both parties. For the US, its "immune system" is based on money and wealth expansion. "What's good for General Motors is good for the rest of the country".
Corporatism has merely spread to the churches, and "positive thinking" is the religion that succeeds, as long as we positively contribute to the growth of the corporation.