Why do members of the flock listen to, and worse still, believe, this priestly crap called proper interpretation? And yes, seemingly it doesn't make sense.
On the surface it looks irrational. It isn’t. What you are seeing is adaptive self-betrayal, not stupidity. A person whose spine breaks from overwork does know, at the level of sensation, that something is wrong with the world. Pain is an information signal; it is not ambiguous. But knowledge does not automatically become action or speech. Between pain and revolt stands a filter of what is survivable to think, say, and share.
Here is what the mechanism the looks like.
First, admitting that the world is wrong is dangerous when you cannot change it. If a person openly agrees that the system exploiting them is unjust, they face a problem they cannot solve. No leverage, no exit, no allies with power. That produces despair or rage without outlet. The psyche avoids that state. Reframing pain as personal failure reduces existential threat. “It is my fault” is painful, but it is manageable. “The world is wrong and I am trapped” is not.
Second, repeating the priest’s logic to others is a way to stabilize one’s own fragile equilibrium. If my suffering is meaningful, virtuous, or deserved, then it must also be so for you. If I let your pain be unjust, then mine becomes unjust too and I cannot afford that realization. So I police your interpretation to protect my own. This is not cruelty; it is defensive consistency.
Third, shared moral language creates belonging. When people repeat the same explanations as sloth, greed, pride they signal loyalty to the group. In environments of scarcity and fear, belonging is safety. Questioning the moral frame risks isolation. Many people would rather be wrong together than right alone.
Fourth, once pain has been turned into sin, reversing that interpretation threatens identity. If I have built my self-respect on endurance, humility, and sacrifice, then admitting that these were imposed, not chosen, collapses my narrative. That collapse feels like annihilation. So the story must be defended even against direct evidence.
So when a suffering person repeats to their neighbor, “You should be grateful,” or “This is your pride,” they are not ignorant of pain. They are protecting a meaning structure that keeps them functional.
The priest supplies the template. The people propagate it because it lowers psychological cost in the short term. Long-term damage is irrelevant to a system optimized for survival under constraint. People do not defend lies because they believe them; they defend them because abandoning them would make life unlivable.
