The Crisis of the Holy Trinity of Power

The Bankruptcy of the Church, Politics, and the Economy

Even in the times of early human communities, the leaders of the era sat around a campfire, and this has not changed much over the centuries. The development of human civilization has been defined by a peculiar, vertical power structure—the institutionalized holy trinity of politics, the economy, and religion. Historically, these systems once served to organize society, distribute resources, and establish common moral frameworks. By the 21st century, however, this hierarchical model has reached its evolutionary limits and has become permanently obsolete.

Dogmas have passed their expiration date. Change is triggered by information itself, simply through its emergence. That is, our scientific and technological knowledge automatically overrides the possibilities and limitations of our previous framework. The branches of power are now focused exclusively on maintaining their own positions. Below, we explore how these three pillars have become the greatest obstacles to social progress, and why a complete structural renewal is inevitable.

The Illusion of Politics: The Crippling of the Collective Psyche

The modern political elite—regardless of the ideological mask it wears—has lost touch with the real needs of society. Public administration and legislation have degenerated into a bureaucratic machine that makes decisions based on the principle of the “weakest link” and the “lawnmower approach” (leveling everyone down). In practice, this means the system does not support excellence and innovation; instead, it adjusts the social standard to mediocrity, stifling genuine understanding and creativity. Not to mention lobbying, which has “crept” into political public life over the past decades as an accepted channel of influence, even though the very concept—that the decisions of elected representatives can be swayed—contradicts fundamental democratic values. This results in a kind of cognitive dissonance among the populace, which it attempts to dull through the relentless binge-consumption of multimedia content, rather than through practical action.

The classics of sociology have already described this phenomenon: Max Weber called bureaucracy an “iron cage”—a system that, in the name of rationality, gradually deprives the individual of the opportunity for free choice. The totalitarian systems of the 20th century (the information censorship of the Soviet planned economy, or the state-party press control of the Eastern Bloc) are extreme but well-known examples of where it leads when power becomes the sole gatekeeper of information flow. In today’s democracies, this takes a more subtle form: the 2013 Snowden affair highlighted the extent to which state organs can collect and control data without the public’s knowledge—which aptly illustrates that the monopoly on information is not unique to dictatorships. Furthermore, it is an interesting observation of power dynamics that restrictive rules applied to various crisis situations are often not revoked once the crisis has passed.

Power has recognized that the most effective tool of control is the monopoly of information and the artificial division of society. The hegemony of the mainstream media has ended; it has lost its perceived objectivity (which it perhaps never truly possessed). By withholding and distorting information, politics has caused immeasurable damage to the collective psyche. It has created traumatized generations burdened with delusions who—lacking critical self-examination—pass these false data and fears on to one another. Today, politics is no longer about representing the community, but rather the management of institutionalized manipulation and division.

The Destruction of the Economy: The Structure of the False Personality

The global economic system is perhaps the most destructive element of this trinity. The profit-oriented corporate sphere and the financial elite operate by hiding behind a “false personality,” devoid of any moral and ecological responsibility. They have made the world believe that infinite economic growth is possible on a planet with finite resources, albeit at the expense of the population. What is truly alarming is that hundreds of millions force this delusion upon themselves every weekday morning without questioning the foundations of their value system.

Initially, demands for quality were the primary considerations in the formation of the capitalist structure. Early mass production could not afford shoddiness, nor was that the goal. Companies were proud of their products and took customer satisfaction seriously. They built trust, not structure. Then something happened at the dawn of the last century; the owners tasted blood, economic morale changed, and significant profit was no longer enough. The new goal, the redemptive idea, became profit maximization at any cost. They even convinced us that this was necessary because of our lifestyle—that we constantly want new things in our lives, and the system is merely serving that demand, which is simply the price we pay. The manipulation of consumers is somehow always left out of the equation.

Planned obsolescence is not a theoretical concept: the Phoebus cartel, established in 1924—in which the leading lightbulb manufacturers of the time (including General Electric and Philips) agreed to intentionally limit the lifespan of their bulbs to one thousand hours—is one of the earliest documented proofs that artificial scarcity was inherently built into the structure of consumer society. This same logic lives on in today’s electronics industry, which economists like Kate Raworth, in her work Doughnut Economics, identify as the fundamental contradiction of a model based on endless growth: on a finite planet, infinite material growth is mathematically unsustainable.

The system has ruthlessly exploited the Earth’s raw materials, while artificially generating scarcity through planned obsolescence and compulsive consumption driven by the media. Power likes to call this mass psychological and economic manipulation “free-market capitalism on democratic foundations.” In reality, it is neither. It is a self-sustaining, speculative mechanism built on the vulnerability of broad strata of society and the massive manipulation orchestrated through the cooperation of the branches of power, while the profits are skimmed off by a narrow elite of owners. When an economy places profit above the quality of human life and the survival of the planet, it is no longer an economy—it is destruction. Therefore, it is expected that the dissatisfied population will once again take control into its own hands and, if necessary, update its social achievements.

The Discrediting of the Churches: The Dogmatic Dead End

The third pillar of the trinity of power, institutionalized religion, has become a tool of mental control rather than supporting the spiritual development of the individual. Over the centuries, churches have rigidified into dogmas, and their personnel, burdened with human frailties, have rendered them unfit to fulfill their original, transcendent mission.

One of the best-known, symbolic cases of this hypocrisy is the affair of Galileo Galilei: the Catholic Church condemned the astronomer on charges of heresy in 1633, and only officially acknowledged the error in 1992, during the papacy of John Paul II—nearly 360 years later. Similarly well-documented is the medieval trade in indulgences, against which Martin Luther’s stand in 1517 ultimately led to the Reformation: this historical moment in itself proves that turning spirituality into money and power is not a recent problem, but a recurring pattern of the system. In the 21st century, the worldwide abuses and scandals uncovered within the Catholic Church—and the reluctant apologies dragged out over decades that followed—show the modern continuation of this very same pattern.

The hypocrisy in the system culminates in the fact that while it constantly tries to maintain the illusion of divine infallibility and absolute moral authority, on a historical scale, it is repeatedly forced to retroactively apologize for its own mistakes, sins, and atrocities committed against humanity. Churches have attempted to monopolize faith, institutionalizing spirituality, which has effectively cut people off from genuine, inner understanding. Transcendent experience and freedom of religion are the inalienable, sacred rights of every human being—but their practice no longer requires intermediary institutions that trade spirituality for power and wealth.

Anyone can pose the following question to artificial intelligence with this prompt:

Investigate the alternative historical scenario: what would have happened if the Roman Catholic Church had consciously broken with secular power alliances around 1900, renounced the primacy of protecting wealth and authority, and consistently acted according to the teachings of Jesus throughout the entire 20th century. Analyze how it might have changed history if the Church had stood on the side of the poor, the oppressed, peace, the equitable distribution of wealth, human dignity, social responsibility, and non-violence in every situation.

Note: Has anyone noticed that reports of the spontaneous appearances of saints have decreased in direct proportion to the emergence of moving image culture and the spread of technology? Media tools show us much more precisely what to believe and how to believe it.

Change as a Natural Process

In nature, every system—be it a cell, an ecosystem, or a society—periodically seeks a new equilibrium when the old modes of operation no longer serve development well enough. This is not a flaw or a collapse, but a natural rhythm: systems grow, adapt, and then take on a new form when necessary.

The same is true for human communities. The political, economic, and religious institutions that have served society for centuries have reached a similar point of transformation today. This does not necessarily mean they were bad or have failed—rather, it means the world they serve has changed around them, and now they too must change to continue creating value.

Just as a tree does not live with the exact same leaves its entire life, social systems cannot remain in the same form forever. The question is not whether there will be change, but how we can shape this process consciously, cooperatively, for the benefit of all.

The Path of Change: Horizontal Thinking and Network Culture

How do we get from obsolete vertical power structures to a viable future? The answer lies not in desperately patching up the old systems, but in a fundamental qualitative shift in thinking. This shift points away from hierarchical (vertical) subordination toward coordinate, collaborative (horizontal) structures. As the article The Horizontal Vertical Thinking highlights, instead of linear, command-driven logic, we need a much more open, decentralized approach built on collective intelligence. This horizontal approach allows individuals to connect directly with one another, without central intermediaries and artificial control.

This transformation is not an abstract, artificially invented utopia, but nature’s purely mathematical response to increasing complexity. According to the rules of complexity, when a system—whether biological, ecological, or social—reaches a critical level of intricacy, centralized control becomes unsustainable. The solution is network culture, the emergence of open-source, self-organizing community systems. The essay The Network Society details how these network architectures provide much greater flexibility, resilience, and innovative potential. The “social operating system” of the future is built from decentralized communities, shared resources, and open knowledge bases—following precisely those fractal and network principles that have made nature’s survival and developmental strategies successful for millions of years.

The Paradox of the Internal Qualitative Leap

It is an interesting paradox that while vertical power in macro-level social structures is being replaced by horizontal networks, in the internal development of the individual, this transformation happens exactly in reverse. As stated in the article The Horizontal Vertical Thinking, liberation on a personal level means that the individual is finally freed from attention-consuming, superficial “horizontal problems”—from mere material struggles and artificially generated conflicts. As these unnecessary burdens are shed, the concept and demand for qualitative expectation levels emerge within them. This is an internal, vertical ascent toward higher consciousness, genuine values, and deeper understanding.

A beautiful, dual dynamic thus unfolds: while a kind of healthy equalization takes place in the outside world within macro systems, and socio-economic cooperation becomes entirely horizontal and egalitarian, the individual simultaneously undergoes a qualitative dimensional leap within. This personal, vertical ascent is the guarantee that the new, decentralized network society will not sink into mediocrity. Instead, it can become a free and value-based community of sovereign individuals with high internal standards, where horizontal cooperation is sustained by the vertical quality of the individuals.