Contributors:

Lyric, Pip

Potes: Not to get sociology on main but sometimes I think about how the Abbey fits right into what Karl Marx/ Marxism considers religion to be.

To elaborate, most of Marxism sees religion as an “ideological apparatus” which is a fancy word for “this shit basically just exists to tell poor people what to do" because that’s what the Abbey does! Its whole thing is a set of rules! It doesn’t worship a kind god or smthn. Just. Do these things and the evil weevil outsider won’t get ya

And these rules all benefit the ruling class! 3rd one is basically “hard work is pure and shitty work is still purifying” which makes ppl think aw well this work might suck but I won’t rebel bc this is good and anti outsider. I mean- Campbell, the guy in charge of the rule making religion, doesn’t even pay attention to the rules lmao which shows us that yeah these are basically just for the little people

Lyric: i genuinely hate campbell a lot. sometimes the ghost of martin luther possesses me and i become enraged at clergy living in luxury.

A lot of why i feel so strongly about the abbey and (against my will) found myself connecting with martin as a character is b/c of what i've experienced/studied and my personal history with religious institutions respectively

Pip: i dont have as much personal Trauma tm wrapped up in the church (esp not catholic shit since my school was lutheran) but i still have several bones to pick and a lot of Thoughts

and the abbey is interesting bc like someone said, its not About a god so much as it is against one. its entire thing is about hating and reviling the outsider and promoting unity thru fear and revulsion of a sacrifice/scapegoat on whom they pin the blame for evil and badness and around whom they can gather and unite people thru feelings of righteousness. its mob mentality as an institution and i'm amazed at how structured it is given the inherent anarchy of its conceit. it's like a perpetual witch-hunt that's devoted to the chase and not the capture. they need the outsider perhaps more than anyone because without him, their institution falls apart - they rely on his existence to take the blame and take the fall for misdeeds and to excuse their atrocities as being part of their eternal righteous crusade. i don't think its a coincidence that their motif is light and fire - like burning a witch.

they're designed to be faceless and inhuman and inhumanly Clean and Sterile (again with the fire), and with their pretty gold masks and clean aprons. as much as they claim to be part of the everyman, their very design distances them from humanity and from the common folk in their cleanliness and use of the colours black and gold and white (pure black dye is expensive, as is gold/golden metals, and pure white cloth requires careful cleaning to maintain its Purity) - their entire design is about separating them from the people they supposedly protect as well as from the outsider. they're all about protecting the status quo and encouraging mob mentality - they have a whole thing about rejecting wanderers because the only reason they could be wandering is bc other people have cast them out for some reason. they're about homogeneity, with their masks covering their faces and with their rejection of anything Abnormal or outside the ordinary, no matter how benign that may be

they give me the creeps like theyre so well-designed but god i absolutely loathe them more than anything else in the game. most other things are people acting alone or acting enabled by power but the overseers and the abbey are like....their entire purpose is oppression and culling anyone abnormal without mercy. their whole purpose is to dehumanise and in doing so they very clearly have lost their own humanity

the "everyman" is a myth bc they aren't for anyone. no human being. bc they've lost their own humanity, symbolic in their inhuman masks. and like someone said, they disproportionately target the lower classes, which in turn encourages people to feel disenfranchised and turn to places other than the abbey. which then provides the abbey with more pickings

more fodder for the hounds. more fuel for the fire. more proof that poverty and living outside the pure and right lifestyle leads to deviation from the strictures and from holiness and that the lowest people are perverse and inherently inclined to turn to heresy like the dirty animals they are. and so the shepherds of the abbey must cull the flock. and that fear keeps people in line and keeps encouraging people to push other people down and stand on their shoulders, break their backs so they may climb above the others, anything to prevent them from sinking into the muck of the lowest denominator

Lyric: god its just such a vicious cycle. and its. hrrrng that violence is very real and tangible both in the game and the irl events that violence is possibly based on

Custy: Oh yeah this reminds me heavily of the stories my parents tell of communism ngl. It really reminds me of how the system, like, encourages a very "every man for himself" mentality and everything and I'm going crazy because I'm thinking about how that applies here too with the Abbey

Pip: i'm not super familiar w the history there but yeah. communism has never really been implemented in the real world. people are too used to wanting power and people who are/were used to power are loathe to give it up, and will always find some way to re-obtain it at the expense of others while couching it in lovely language about the good of everyone

Custy: Top 10 Stories that Haunt me: How when they [in Vietnam] started doing, like "re-education" where they would arrest people who were "against the state" (mirroring heresy ig) people would accuse others of being anti-commie just so they could benefit from reporting and like, shit

Some people do it out of spite too 😔

Hiaen: Throwing the people against each others is the staple of controlling institutions, honestly. Like you don't need to watch people if you persuade them to watch each other

Custy: Like severely villianizing (?) and making the Outsider/general heresy like such a bad thing makes it real easy to like, lock down on the lower class ig? Cannot form words but

Pip: i mean its repeated over and over thru history. people are afraid of persecution by those supposed to protect them, bc the "protectors" benefit, even profit, off of indiscriminately harming as many people as possible as long as they can twist the situation to make it look justified and use the fear they invoke to keep the populace even more in line. it enciurages a culture of distrust and suspicion between people and encourages people to believe the only ones they can trust are the very institution or idea they're afraid of. and so they seek to prove their loyalty and fervour and devotion to the cause and make themselves above blame by throwing other people forward and under them to take the fall, both because it shows how devoted they are and how watchful and dedicated and god-fearing they are. and because if people are tearing into someone else then they're safe for now.

fuck, you see it in severe cases of online purity/"discourse" culture, even

Hiaen: Like you don't need to watch people if you persuade them to watch each other

Pip: this exactly. its in the abbeys best interest to encourage distrust among the people and make them afraid of each othr and of strangers because its the perfect way to keep them watching each other

Custy: One thing about communist systems is the same thing, they encourage distrust among each other so that they don't realize who the real enemy is and stuff