Original sin in its original form might now be confined to certain communities who are still apologising to the One True God, but we certainly have a replacement for it and for its deeply unpleasant sense that you just can’t win. People, it seems, still want the repetition of comforting, closed ideas, a sense of in-group and out-group; they want to learn their prayers, they want to repeat them within earshot of other believers and they still take any opposition as evidence of heresy, of people who have not yet been brought into the light. But, as with original sin, it’s the people facing down this new orthodoxy who stand to bring about any sort of meaningful appraisal of what it means to be here, now. The banal concept of ‘privilege’ is failing to indoctrinate everyone, and this can only be a positive.
