Sigmund Freud once said that because of people's desires, which if allowed to be followed to their natural ends would prove fatal to society, there would always be a need for some kind of control. Freud was a product of the intellectual and cultural paradigms he had been born into, of course, which is why his study of the human mind never included those who were born wholly outside of societies that had, at their core, an ethos for fabricating consumers just as much as submissive obedient citizens.
Reinhold Niebuhr touched on this idea, and how the controlling elements of society were the root of so many of modernity's woes, in his book, Moral Man, Immoral Society. Such an idea was even echoed in Rousseau's quip that "man is born free but is everywhere in chains."
The seed of this control starts with the acceptance of irrational beliefs, including the idea that it is necessary for any given society to have a ruler or king of some sorts, which children are first conditioned to "believe," and then fashioned to become emotionally addicted to and dependent upon, through religion.
From this apple, which teaches them their Church or their religion is "like God, knowing right from wrong," all other structures of power find their legitimacy, and thus their control. Religions then claim that the "desire" a person feels, the "hole" they seek to fill, is one that can only be filled by God, rather than a genuine freedom from such ecclesiastical control.
The "believer," by this point, has long since abandoned the notion that their "faith" is actually the root of the very problem it purports to solve, or that it is simply a control mechanism disguised as, and indeed marketed as, the only "true" ticket to freedom. (Even the devil would be impressed with this ability to sell bondage by labeling it as "freedom" but that is how all marketing works, if you think about it. That's why H.G. Wells said "advertising is legalized lying.")
Like a drug pusher who has convinced his addicted consumers that the only cure for what ails them is more of the drug he's pushing, so religion works everywhere to convince people that the longing desire they have for freedom and happiness can only come from religion, even though religion is always the first link in the many chains we are conditioned to wear.
And like religion's claim to be selling "freedom" through the imposition of its dogmatic requirements for "salvation," so the "believer" enthusiastically works to forge their own chains by convincing themselves they are necessary to defend agaisnt all those who think they are simply insane.
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