The way out of our ideological era

Our institutions became illiberal and decayed under a very modern kind of religion, which ultimately fails everyone

“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.”

—George Orwell

We’re living through a wave of orthodox worldviews that insist they aren’t a religion while behaving exactly like one. When I use the word ‘religion’ here, I don’t mean prayer or faith. I mean a system of moral enforcement sustained by ritual, taboo, and the policing of heresy: all social functions that can exist in a secular bureaucracy, too. If you’ve spent time in academia, corporate America, or just payed attention during COVID, you’ve seen how critique was stifled and ordinary people forced into lockstep. Thankfully, we’re able to have more open discussions, a sign we’ve turned a corner, at least in some places, for the moment. But it’s critical we confront exactly what happened, the fallout we’re still dealing with, and how we can do better. Without lessons learned, the cycle will simply repeat. Truthfully, I don’t think Americans ever wanted any of this, even as Canada, the UK, and Australia keep doubling down, to the detriment of their economy, their culture, and social trust.

The main difference in today’s religious era is that the high priests wear cardigans, speak softly about “inclusion,” and run HR departments and education systems. The beaurocratic state quietly replaced the church. It’s branded leftist by many because it frequently is, but that’s not even the root of the issue. The real issue is managerialism as I went through specific to my sector of marketing previously. If a certain brand of collectivist conservatives were in control for a long enough period of time this story would look somewhat different, but still have the same critique. I don’t want that to happen either and have to write about that in a few years. Poor stewarding of society by activists pushing agendas always lead to rot.

Some people don’t believe this was/is happening, but read this essay on why young men follow antisocial extremists like Nick Fuentes, Andrew Tate or Hasan Piker and see for yourself the perspective from one parent (I’ve heard many similar stories from people I know personally that are some version of this, as have many of you). And with some estimating the groyper movement has infected 30-40% of certain youth cohorts in one way or another, we shouldn’t brush this aside or ignore it (even if it’s not quite this high). If you don’t understand any parts of this paragraph it’s because you’re not paying close enough attention and I’d encourage you to read those two essays closely before continuing today’s post.

One more piece of this that almost nobody in power wants to talk about is how all of this felt from the inside. In field after field, as this Compact Mag story explores, you can see the pattern in their own numbers: writers’ rooms where white men went from roughly half of lower‑level TV writers a little over a decade ago to barely more than a tenth today, newsrooms that flipped from majority‑male and overwhelmingly white in the mid‑2010s to near gender parity with a much smaller share of white staff, and elite universities where white men still dominate older, tenured chairs but make up only a small minority of new tenure‑track hires in the humanities and social sciences. Let’s ignore that this was (probably) illegal and (definitely) discriminatory. You could argue that some correction was overdue, but if you’re the generation hitting the wall just as these rules kick in, the lived message (everyone is obsessed over lived experiences, but many people for some reason can’t hear this one) is that your demographic is a problem to manage rather than a person to evaluate, and you stop seeing institutions as flawed but basically fair and start seeing them as rigged. That perception matters more than any DEI statement, because it’s exactly the sort of ambient humiliation and exclusion that sends some men into apathy and porn, others into fringe “hustle” niches, and a non‑trivial minority into the arms of people who promise revenge and restoration instead of competence and shared standards.

It’s important to stress that none of what is happening here is good for anyone, not for those who actually want more progressive ideas in the population, nor for those who oppose them. Even many liberals have commented that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives as just one example of beaurocratic control were not accomplishing what they set out to achieve. I have read post after post from DEI professionals on LinkedIn commenting it wasn’t working as implemented. I’m really unsure who is left that thought it was a good idea in this form. Rather than creating any genuine equality or understanding, it undermined trust, unity, and open discussion.

I’ve talked about this in the past and was brushed off by some commenters, because people want to pretend none of this is real. But as a Jew I continue to personally witness how this ideology is toxic and weaponized against myself and others, now by both the far left and the anti-social right. I’m motivated to write about this again because I clearly see the problem, since my survival might depend on it one day (please read some history if you think that statement is extreme). American antisemitism is a youth movement and it’s due to this identitarian phenomenon that sees us as the enemy. Data from sources as diverse as Democratic pollster David Shor, the conservative Manhattan Institute, the Yale Youth Poll, and more show that the younger someone is, the more likely they are antisemitic. If you haven’t noticed it’s because you aren’t a target and so live in a world of luxury beliefs. Enjoy it, maybe you’ll get lucky and no one will target you, but I personally don’t want anyone to live like that. And you’ll likely eventually be a target too, it all depends where your identity sits in the hierarchy. All this is wholly illiberal. There shouldn’t be a tiering of identities you don’t even control, only accomplishments. That would actually be liberal - a focus on the individual. This is what built our world, and is the ethos that will let it continue to prosper.

Anyway, if you walked into a modern classroom or even just seen pictures online it was pretty clear what has gone wrong. The walls were covered not with equations, maps, or poetry, but slogans. Words that once belonged to politics became scripture: diversity, equity, inclusion, allyship, belonging. In some schools, there’s a flag for every cause, a pronoun chart on every wall, and even land acknowledgments before classes (Canada now routinely does this everywhere and made it a part of everyday life …it’s awkward). To some, this appears like a good thing and a mark of moral progress. To anyone who’s lived long enough to recognize religious behavior when they see it, it’s clearly a form of religious worship. And note, I don’t think the people who follow it are evil. They were simply taught this is what they’re supposed to promote.

If you still can’t see it or need it spelled out, this was all the quiet establishment of a new faith, a civic religion without gods but full of saints, sins, rituals, and heresies. It filled the void of traditional religion for many. It has its own vocabulary, its own original sin (privilege), its own path to redemption (allyship), and its own prophets (academics, HR managers, and celebrity activists). The irony is that this new religion emerged precisely in institutions that once prided themselves on secular neutrality: schools, universities, media, and corporate offices. To reiterate again, this creeping religiosity in our institutions is harmful whether it leans collectivist left or right; none of these places should play host to any form of imposed orthodoxy.

You can’t escape the above by graduating, either. The same soft-totalitarian grammar also dominates corporate life. The HR department became the new confessional booth, where employees are expected to publicly affirm their moral purity through diversity statements, pronoun signatures, and training modules that border on the absurd. Wall Street was using it to pump assets, because of course they would. Hollywood, once a place of real artistic experimentation, functioned like a propaganda arm of this ideology with every script run through the same moral filter before anything is shot. The result is content that looks different on the surface but feels exactly the same underneath: moralizing, predictable, and safe. And while this all may be ending, the effects are going to linger in the culture for a while.

Meanwhile, people are starving for something real. The institutional obsession with optics has stripped culture of authenticity. Movies are no longer made to explore the human condition, but to signal virtue. Corporations speak in moral platitudes while laying off workers. Schools preach empathy while punishing dissent. It’s all surface, a therapeutic simulation of goodness that is in reality destructive to society. All this is happening against an economic backdrop that’s dishonest, brought to you by the same PMC beaurocrats.

And the young? They notice.

They grew up in classrooms that feel more like indoctrination chambers than places of inquiry. Boys in particular learn early that all their instincts are wrong: that to be male is to be suspect, that to disagree is to harm, and that the highest virtue is docility. They graduated into a world of HR trainings and DEI audits, where the same scripts are repeated in softer tones. They were never taught healthy masculinity. By the time they realize the system isn’t neutral, that it quietly despises them, they no longer trust any of it: not schools, not universities, not media, not employers. All this very much succeeds in turning them into doomers. Even a small percentage of young men being this way is alarming if you have read any history at all (as always, the people unconcerned are simply illiterate of the pattern we are seeing).

With the world we’ve built we shouldn’t be shocked when some of them turn toward more radical alternatives. They’re not pulled by extremism so much as they’re pushed away from normal society by hypocrisy. A culture that preaches empathy while practicing moral exclusion breeds resentment. The more the institutions lie by insisting they’re “nonpartisan,” “scientific,” or “neutral,” the more young men and women recognize the truth: they’re being trained rather than taught. Without any good alternatives, they end up following extremist podcasters, or perhaps simply exit normal society to sequester themselves with pornography and gambling (read this story if you haven’t, it’s emblematic of something very sick).

Education should be the immune system of a free society, teaching students to question, to doubt, to think. Instead, it’s become a vector of infection, spreading one sanctioned worldview everywhere it touches: schools, universities, HR departments, Hollywood writers’ rooms, social networks, even advertisements. Every sphere now hums with the same tone: polite, polished, and suffocatingly uniform. Some percentage of kids will always rebel against institutions, but the numbers are becoming larger, and the rebellion is now toward darker, more dangerous places.

If you’ve ever wondered why culture feels sterile, why movies have no risk, why corporate language sounds like sermons, or why young people are cynical to the bone, this is a big part of the reason why. The new religion conquered the old temples and didn’t stop there. It colonized every place that once made meaning. And it caused institutions to systematically weaken themselves by prioritizing identity metrics over merit at the exact moment they faced structural challenges, raising questions about whether media, academia, and culture are actually stronger, more trusted, or more respected as a result.

The way out isn’t to replace it with another ideology. This would just keep generating backlashes, there is a physics to culture that everyone wants to deny. People want to double down on insane things on their cultural team thinking a more extreme version will help, while just the opposite is true. The way out is to remember what education, art, and work are for. Not indoctrination. Not therapy. Not the endless purification of language. They exist so human beings can learn, create, and grow freely, imperfectly, honestly. They help guide young people toward more morally good paths and stabilize society. They help you become a real person, not devolve into an insufferable managerial class drones or enraged culture warriors fighting other groups instead of collaborating like adults.

If we forget this basic truth, it’s no wonder we end up confusing going with the crowd for being good, treating identity-driven branding like real virtue, and letting empty slogans pass for actual thinking. And we’ll keep wondering why many young minds of future generations feel utterly faithless and lost. Not because they lack religion, but because they’ve been force-fed one that ultimately fails everyone.