Social Elites

Nails in the Religious Coffin: Sex, Drugs, and Contraception - Beliefnet

We are the world's sweet chosen few.
The rest of you be damned.
There's room enough in Hell for you.
We won't have heaven crammed.

If you don't teach your children that little ditty, or at least smile when they recite it. You had better find a new Social Support Group (SSG). It is necessary for the socialization of children that they think their group is the elite group in society. When they reach the teen rebellion years a few might question that concept. They may have friends whose elite seems more attractive or better than theirs and try to change their 'colors.' Or an attractive potential mate may make changing 'colors' a part of the deal. I use 'colors' as a designator for any elite, religious or secular. It seems to be a human trait to choose colors in clothing to identify the elite group to which they belong. In fact this may be main purpose of clothing. Certainly bundling up in cold climates is necessary, but even in tropical areas a sarong or breechclout is socially necessary.

This is how societies evolve, or in the memorable words of Niven-Pournelle "Think of it as Evolution In Action."

As an additional point of fact, should my SSG decide that it was superior in an objective sense to any other SSG - to the point of endorsing the sentiments of that song - it's personal utility to me would decrease dramatically.
nieciedo

Noted and agreed. But to use the personal utility sense of superior for you and those in the SSG would you not agree that is superior to other SSGs so that at least an ironic use of the ditty might be possible. (As intended in the original, irony in print is very problematical, I probably should not attempt it but it is just too useful.)

My Educated, Rational SSG is certainly not objectively superior to the uneducated faith SSGs that do not see the irony in the ditty. Nor is it objectively superior to many other SSGs in the community. In fact in many ways it is objectively inferior to, for example, the investment banker SSG. They make a whole lot more money than we do. And one cannot consider raping the poor and middle class to be objectively bad. Nonetheless, I will do my best to indoctrinate those that are important to me into the mores of the ERSSG so that perhaps in the evolutionary sorting out of SSGs it will survive.