Some mysterious logic of the cult

• Regimes that try to deal with scarcity and threat tend to be utilitarian – they make their decisions on the basis of interests; 
• regimes that try to deal with abundance and security tend to be ethical – they make their decisions on the basis of stewardship; and 
• then there are the regimes that try to deal with raw power tend and to be ideological – they  make their decisions on the basis of some mysterious logic of the cult. 

It is ironic that the regimes that slavishly served some ideological mission are the ones that ignore the concerns of the people and end up obsessed only with wielding the power that enables them to fulfill some self-appointed mission. They ignore the concerns of the people because the mechanisms for serving the people have broken down under the pressure of societal collapse. 

The regimes that service the ideology of the cult come to the fore as the incumbent institutions of the social order begin to come apart. The ruling elite cannot see the people because the institutional mechanisms for transmission between the body politic and the ruling heads has siezed up. The nation has become hard-necked. A hard-necked people has lost its natural base of institutional intermediation. 

The remedy for hard-neckedness is the mitigating institution of the temple ministry. The cult of the temple ministry replaces and thereby mitigates the impulse of the cult of the ruling regime.