Book Review: Dieu et L'État (God and the State)

The government is the contemporary Holy See.

In the 19th century, Bakunin mentioned that workers did not have enough time to read books, learn how to read, or even enjoy a hobby. In that era, ignorance was often a result of labor itself. But in the 21st century, many workers do have time to read books, and people actually read many books. Information is everywhere. Schools are everywhere. Universities are everywhere. Yet people still do not resist, and many do not even suggest something outside the system. Why?

This may not be a mystery at all.

Modern societies do not simply suppress resistance by force. They also certify knowledge. They decide what kinds of ideas are practical, respectable, useful, or realistic, and what kinds of ideas are treated as radical, unrealistic, or useless. Schools, colleges, media, and public institutions do not merely teach facts. They also teach people where the boundaries are.

People may read many books and still never question the walls around them.

This is how a system hallucinates people into believing that everyone has a fair chance, that anyone can become successful, and that the structure itself is fair as long as they keep playing inside it. People are allowed to dream inside the system, reform inside the system, negotiate inside the system, but the moment they question the structure itself, they are suddenly unrealistic, radical, or extreme.

The nation presents itself not as one historical structure among many, but as if it were natural and inevitable. Legally, the nation says that it generously gives rights to citizens, as if freedom itself were a gift handed down by institutions. But none of us personally agreed that political figures should permanently stand above our freedom and define the limits of our lives.

And then those same institutions speak in the name of neutrality.

If law is truly pure and universal, why does it so often fail to reflect the ordinary worker? Why are sacrifices always demanded in the name of a National Agenda? Why do a few institutions decide what millions of people must endure?

The government is the contemporary Holy See.

It no longer wears religious robes, but it still decides what is acceptable, punishes what is not, and asks people to trust it anyway.

Religions - Is it always suppression?

Bakunin also mentioned that religion limits citizens from resisting, and in many ways he was right. Religion often teaches obedience before doubt, convention before criticism, and inherited truth before personal questioning. People are often born into a structure of meaning long before they are able to challenge it.

And yes, religion has often been used to suppress people.

However, I do not think that is the whole story.

In some cases, religions actually helped people resist and seek new possibilities. For a good example, the 68 Movement, or the Hippie Movement, had many influences from Hinduism and other spiritual traditions outside the dominant Western framework. Those ideas did not simply produce obedience. They also helped many people question materialism, hierarchy, war, rigid morality, and social conventions.

Some concepts such as karma are also widely understood in the 21st century, even by people outside Hindu traditions. Of course, that does not mean religion is always liberating. Religion can suppress people, but religion can also give people another way to look at themselves and the world.

Consequently, religion does not always produce one fixed result. Its effects differ depending on culture, history, and personal interpretation.

That is where I do not fully agree with Bakunin.

Personally, I still believe that deity is a part of the human being. Gods are ghosts from the past. They are made from fear, hope, suffering, imagination, and memory. I do not believe there are supernatural beings ruling over humanity.

But human beings preserve symbols for a reason.

Not because they are literally true, but because they carry memory, ritual, meaning, and reflection.

That does not mean religion should lead us.

We may preserve religion as memory, culture, symbolism, or moral reflection. But religion must not lead us. We must lead it.

Science is too vulnerable to make a logical nation.

Science is valuable because it changes.

Science is not sacred because it is always right. Science is valuable because it can admit that it was wrong and correct itself.

That is precisely why science should never become sacred.

Science is not enough to become a final political truth, because science itself changes with time. It corrects itself. It argues with itself. That is its strength. But that is also why it should never become a political doctrine.

A theoretically logical nation sounds rational and efficient. It sounds manageable. But human beings are not machines that can be permanently adjusted into one standardized model.

A system that forces adults to behave only within one final model of correctness begins to resemble the Bed of Procrustes. The citizen must fit the system, instead of the system adapting to human complexity.

That is where science becomes vulnerable to power.

Not because science is false, but because states can use scientific authority as if it were final truth.

And once people are no longer allowed to doubt, criticize, or disagree, that system is no different from a religion.

This is why a logical nation can still become monstrous.

It may speak in the language of reason, but reason also becomes dangerous the moment it refuses doubt.

Bakunin attacked religion because he believed it made authority sacred.

But religion is not the only thing that can become sacred.

Anything becomes dangerous the moment it refuses doubt and demands obedience.