While They Sleep: How Myths Keep the Masses in Chains

 Why the Stories We Defend Are the Tools Used to Rob Us Daily

They pass the basket with polished smiles while the streets remain hungry and the children remain uneducated in the real workings of the world. They call it tithing, an untaxed pipeline that moves money from the poor to gilded pulpits while public hospitals beg for syringes and schools starve for books (Barkan 2013). The myth machinery hums quietly in these Sunday gatherings where people are taught to love the chains that rob them daily.

They do not teach in schools how the myth of deferred heaven made colonialism a holy duty and made submission a spiritual virtue. They do not teach how the same myths were used to anesthetize entire nations while rubber, diamonds, and labor crossed the oceans (Rodney 1972). Instead they teach children to recite dates of battles and names of kings, ensuring that true history remains hidden in the footnotes of unread journals (Fanon 1963).

When the rare soul dares to question this machinery, they are branded antichrist, a threat to the carefully maintained illusion that obedience is salvation and rebellion is damnation (Mbembe 2001). Those who revolt against exploitation in the name of faith are crucified in gossip and excommunicated in whispers, while the myths remain safe, intact, and operational.

The faithful defend the same structures that oppress them, mistaking piety for truth, and docility for virtue. They kneel before the same altar that teaches them to ignore the exploitation of their labor and resources, believing poverty is a spiritual test rather than a systematic extraction (Marx 1844). The myths remain profitable for those who sell salvation and maintain the machinery of global inequality, while the masses remain in line, singing hymns of escape as they pay for the maintenance of their own cages (Chomsky 1999).

This is not faith. This is a well-oiled business that trades fear for compliance, promising eternity while billing monthly, a transaction sanctified by the myths we refuse to question.

The Holy Business of Extraction

They call it giving to God, but the receipts are printed in the offices of men. Every Sunday, baskets circulate with quiet urgency while the faithful nod in agreement, unaware that these tithes often flow into untaxed coffers, financing religious empires that protect the interests of the elite rather than the needs of the people (Barkan 2013). While schools crumble and hospitals ration needles, megachurches expand their parking lots, sanctified by the myths that promise blessings in the unseen future in exchange for obedience today.

This is not simply charity. It is a financial structure woven into the machinery of social control, maintaining a population in perpetual hope that their sacrifice will be returned in spiritual dividends while their material conditions remain stagnant (Du Bois 1903). Religion, functioning as an ideological state apparatus, has historically aligned itself with systems of economic extraction, blessing the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few while prescribing humility and patience to the many (Althusser 1971).

During colonial expansions in Africa, Christianity was not simply a faith introduced for spiritual enlightenment. It became a strategic partner to imperial powers, softening resistance among indigenous populations while facilitating the seizure of land and the extraction of resources (Rodney 1972). Missionaries prepared the ground for merchants, and pulpits blessed the trade routes that exported gold, rubber, and human lives across oceans (Fanon 1963). The myth of eternal paradise was used to pacify communities, urging them to submit to foreign rule under the promise of salvation in the afterlife while their present lives were drained for profit.

This spirit of economic extraction wrapped in religious myth has not changed. It has adapted, finding new forms in tax exemptions for megachurches, prosperity gospel messages that frame poverty as personal failure, and doctrines that sanctify the accumulation of wealth for religious leaders while their congregations struggle under economic pressures (Bowler 2013). The same mechanisms that justified colonial looting are used to justify the quiet looting of local communities through religious obligation.

Believers, driven by faith, unknowingly protect the same structures that contribute to their social and economic immobility. Tithing becomes a ritual of compliance, a practice that signals loyalty to systems that often serve political interests aligned with the elite, ensuring that dissent remains muted and that questions of economic justice are silenced under the rhetoric of spiritual discipline (Mbembe 2001).

Religion, when aligned with oppressive systems, ceases to be a tool of liberation. It becomes a sophisticated means of maintaining inequality, preserving the myth that submission is virtue and that questioning injustice is sin. As long as the myths remain unchallenged, the machinery of oppression remains well-oiled, extracting wealth and silence from those it claims to serve while rewarding those who benefit from its continued operation (Chomsky 1999).

The Myth of Escape

Migration is often framed as salvation, an escape from poverty, violence, and the failures of home. Yet this narrative frequently serves as a sophisticated tool of global extraction, draining the intellectual, physical, and emotional labor of the global South into the service of the global North while cloaking itself in the myth of personal freedom (De Haas 2010). It is a myth that conditions people to despise their homelands, seeing them as sites of endless suffering, while glorifying distant lands as havens of opportunity, ignoring the historical and ongoing processes that created these imbalances (Rodney 1972).

Religious myths often reinforce this desire to flee. The promise of a “better life” abroad becomes intertwined with notions of divine favor and destiny, transforming migration into a spiritual journey rather than a symptom of systemic inequality (Mahler and Pessar 2006). This belief aligns seamlessly with the global economic structures that require cheap labor and intellectual capital from the global South while maintaining the myth that migration is an act of personal agency rather than a result of structural dispossession (Massey et al. 1993).

Educational systems rarely illuminate the forces that make people abandon their homes. They do not teach how economic policies, debt traps, and resource extraction perpetuate poverty and instability, nor do they critically examine the colonial legacies that continue to shape global inequalities (Fanon 1963). Instead, education often amplifies the idea that the only path to success lies elsewhere, subtly preparing individuals to leave, to serve, and to hope for acceptance in systems built on the extraction of their potential (FitzGerald 2014).

The myth of escape thus serves as a safety valve for the global system. It removes potential dissenters, draining communities of those who might resist or rebuild, and transforms them into remittance senders who sustain local economies without challenging the structures that forced their departure (De Haas 2005). Migration, framed as a personal triumph, often becomes a tool of depoliticization, turning systemic crises into individual struggles while those who remain internalize narratives of inadequacy and failure for not leaving (Bakewell 2008).

Religious and secular myths together sanctify this departure, portraying migration as a test of faith and courage, masking the exploitative conditions of migrant labor, racial hierarchies in host countries, and the psychological toll of displacement (Khosravi 2010). This illusion of escape provides comfort to those who leave and those who stay, sustaining the structures of inequality that rely on a constant flow of labor and resources from the South to the North while maintaining the appearance of opportunity and progress (Castles 2010).

To dismantle the myth of escape is to confront the global economic and ideological systems that produce migration as necessity. It is to reclaim the dignity of home, recognizing that leaving should be a choice, not a consequence of systemic dispossession masked as destiny.

The Curriculum of Obedience

Education is presented as the pathway to freedom, yet what is taught often becomes a carefully curated program of obedience that sustains the myths of the system while erasing the realities of global extraction. Instead of training minds to question, many education systems condition them to comply, teaching sanitized history and selective narratives that protect the economic and ideological structures of power (Freire 1970).

Students learn to recite the dates of independence while never studying the financial systems and political mechanisms that continue to enforce dependence (Rodney 1972). They learn about the abolition of slavery while the curriculum ignores the emergence of new economic forms of bondage in exploitative labor systems, debt cycles, and wage slavery that preserve global hierarchies (Fanon 1963). Education often transforms the colonial past into a closed chapter, ignoring how colonial logic persists in contemporary trade practices, cultural narratives, and geopolitical strategies (Ngugi 1986).

This curriculum of obedience is not accidental. It functions as an ideological tool that maintains the system by presenting myths as history while discouraging critical consciousness (Althusser 1971). Education systems, particularly in postcolonial societies, were structured by colonial administrators to produce efficient clerks and managers who could maintain the machinery of the system without questioning its foundations (Carnoy 1974). Those who attempt to decolonize the curriculum or introduce critical pedagogy often encounter institutional resistance, revealing that the purpose of education under these structures is not liberation but management.

Moreover, while the rhetoric of education promises mobility and empowerment, the economic realities it produces are often contradictory. Graduates enter job markets shaped by neoliberal policies that enforce precarious labor, low wages, and high unemployment, maintaining dependency while blaming individuals for their economic failures (Chomsky 1999). The myth that education alone guarantees economic security ensures that systemic inequalities are explained away as personal shortcomings rather than structural conditions (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977).

Education also plays a key role in sustaining religious and cultural myths. Many institutions, through mandatory religious instruction, reinforce doctrines that align with the interests of political and economic elites, teaching spiritual obedience alongside academic obedience (Bowler 2013). This dual conditioning ensures that individuals internalize the myth that their suffering is a divine test while systemic violence goes unchallenged.

The curriculum of obedience thus produces subjects who are technically skilled but politically docile, equipped to sustain the system but unequipped to challenge it (Freire 1970). It is not simply what is taught that matters, but what is omitted, distorted, or silenced in the educational process that shapes the consciousness of the masses, ensuring that the myths of the system remain intact while the realities of exploitation continue.

To dismantle the curriculum of obedience is to reclaim education as a tool of liberation, to demand the teaching of economic systems, power structures, and histories of resistance, enabling communities to understand the mechanics of their oppression and imagine new structures of freedom.

Branding Rebels as Devils

Power sustains itself not only through force but through narrative, and one of its most enduring strategies is the branding of dissenters as dangerous, deviant, or demonic. Those who question the myths sustaining economic and spiritual oppression are often labeled rebels, heretics, or enemies of social order, casting their refusal to comply as moral failure or spiritual corruption (Fanon 1963). In many religious contexts, the term antichrist or its equivalents becomes a tool of control, framing critical voices as threats to collective salvation rather than as necessary agents of liberation (Mbembe 2001).

Historically, this tactic has been essential to the maintenance of colonial and postcolonial domination. Figures who resisted colonial exploitation, such as Patrice Lumumba or Amílcar Cabral, were framed as destabilizers rather than freedom fighters, their visions for sovereignty and justice distorted into narratives of chaos and violence by those invested in the extraction of resources and the maintenance of global hierarchies (Rodney 1972). These framings provided ideological justification for foreign interventions and internal suppression, transforming struggles for dignity into supposed threats to civilization (Fanon 1963).

Religion, when aligned with oppressive systems, has often played a pivotal role in enforcing these narratives. Spiritual leaders who benefit from economic and political alignments preach submission as virtue, framing resistance as sin and spiritual disobedience, while dissenters are presented as enemies of God’s will (Bowler 2013). By positioning the questioning of religious myths as rebellion against the divine, systems of power insulate themselves from critique, transforming moral communities into enforcers of silence.

This branding strategy is evident in how modern movements for justice are treated. Environmental activists, anti-extraction campaigners, and anti-imperialist thinkers are frequently labeled as radicals or destabilizers in public discourse, framing their resistance as irrational or dangerous (Chomsky 1999). Instead of addressing the systemic injustices they highlight, the system redirects public perception to fear their disruption, protecting the interests of those who profit from the status quo (Bourdieu 1998).

Education and media systems participate in this branding, often excluding the intellectual contributions of dissident thinkers from mainstream curricula, reducing complex histories of resistance to footnotes, and presenting sanitized versions of protest as non-threatening while condemning radical critiques as extremism (Freire 1970). The psychological impact of this branding is profound, as communities internalize fear of questioning, associating dissent with isolation, spiritual guilt, or social condemnation (Ngugi 1986).

The tactic of branding rebels as devils also functions as a moral distraction, focusing attention on the perceived danger of resistance rather than the violence of the system being resisted. It creates a climate where conformity is equated with virtue, and critical engagement becomes a spiritual or social risk (Mbembe 2001). This fear ensures the preservation of myths that justify economic extraction, social hierarchies, and religious compliance while silencing those who challenge the legitimacy of these structures.

Dismantling this branding requires reinterpreting rebellion as a moral imperative against injustice, reframing dissent not as a threat to communal salvation but as a pathway to collective liberation and justice.

Faith as a Tool of Silence

Faith is often presented as a personal refuge and a moral compass, yet in many contexts it becomes a strategic tool for silencing critical inquiry and suppressing collective action against structural injustice. Religion, when aligned with power, can transform the spiritual longing for meaning into compliance with systems that extract, exploit, and dominate (Freire 1970). This alignment is not incidental but historically cultivated, ensuring that faith functions as a buffer between oppressed populations and the structures responsible for their conditions (Marx 1844).

One of the most pervasive mechanisms through which faith becomes silence is the doctrine of redemptive suffering. Communities taught that their hardships are tests from the divine or purifying trials are less likely to question the systems that produce those hardships (Bowler 2013). This framing of suffering as spiritually meaningful often serves to mask economic exploitation and political violence, transforming systemic inequality into a site of personal spiritual growth while absolving the system of accountability (Fanon 1963).

The prosperity gospel and other theological frameworks that equate obedience with blessings further deepen this silence, promoting the idea that personal faithfulness leads to material success while ignoring the structural factors that shape economic realities (Bowler 2013). When poverty is interpreted as evidence of spiritual failure, the poor are rendered complicit in their oppression, encouraged to focus on personal piety rather than collective struggle for justice (Gutiérrez 1973).

Faith also silences through its institutional structures. Religious leaders aligned with political or economic elites often function as gatekeepers of acceptable discourse, defining what can be questioned and what must be accepted as divine order (Mbembe 2001). By framing resistance as rebellion against God rather than unjust structures, faith communities can transform justified anger into guilt and isolate those who demand accountability from the system (Ngugi 1986). This is not simply a spiritual matter but a political technology of control, where the pulpit becomes an extension of the state’s ideological apparatus (Althusser 1971).

Educational systems frequently reinforce this silence by including religious instruction that promotes obedience and conformity while excluding or discouraging liberation theology and critical religious studies that connect faith to social justice (Carnoy 1974). This ensures that faith is disconnected from structural critique, maintaining myths of divine sanction for the existing order while discouraging radical imaginations of change (Freire 1970).

The silencing power of faith is also tied to fear, as questioning religious myths often comes with the threat of social ostracism or eternal damnation, ensuring compliance even when the injustices are visible (Mbembe 2001). This fear ensures that faith functions not as a tool of liberation but as a mechanism of pacification, discouraging critical engagement with power structures while spiritualizing poverty, violence, and exploitation (Gutiérrez 1973).

Reclaiming faith from this role requires reinterpreting spiritual traditions in ways that align with justice, community empowerment, and resistance against oppression. It means recognizing that faith can be a site of critical consciousness and collective action rather than a tool of silence, transforming spiritual communities into catalysts for structural change.

Comfort as Currency

Comfort is often marketed as the apex of human aspiration yet under systems of extraction and oppression it becomes currency for compliance. In societies built on layered inequalities, comfort is distributed as a reward for silence and participation in the myths that sustain the system while the cost of maintaining this comfort is outsourced to the exploited and the earth itself (Mbembe 2001). The promise of security and convenience becomes the incentive to protect the structures that create suffering elsewhere, transforming moral questions into consumer transactions (Bauman 2007).

This comfort currency functions by offering selective privileges to those who align with dominant narratives while punishing those who refuse to participate in the rituals of the system (Bourdieu 1998). Educational and professional opportunities, social acceptance, and economic mobility are conditioned on a tacit agreement to protect the myths that justify extraction and inequality (Freire 1970). The illusion of upward mobility becomes a mechanism for social control, ensuring that the desire for comfort suppresses critical consciousness (Chomsky 1999).

Comfort is often manufactured through denial. Many societies build their comforts on systems of global extraction while refusing to examine the labor and environmental violence required to sustain their lifestyles (Rodney 1972). The cheap clothing, electronics, and food that enable consumer comfort are made possible through the exploitation of workers in the Global South, whose lives and environments are treated as expendable in the pursuit of cheap goods (Klein 2000). This outsourcing of suffering allows comfort to function as a moral anesthetic, numbing communities to the realities of global injustice (Bauman 2007).

Religious narratives can further entrench this dynamic by spiritualizing comfort, presenting material well-being as a sign of divine favor while framing systemic poverty as the result of spiritual or moral failures (Bowler 2013). This linkage discourages critical examination of the structural factors that produce poverty, transforming privilege into a spiritual virtue and suffering into individual inadequacy (Gutiérrez 1973).

The desire to protect comfort leads to the defense of myths that justify oppression. Communities resist acknowledging the violence of the systems that sustain them because doing so would demand discomfort, sacrifice, and a reorientation of priorities (Fanon 1963). Comfort thus becomes a mechanism of self-policing, ensuring conformity to the system while punishing dissent internally through fear of loss (Mbembe 2001).

Media and educational systems often normalize this comfort currency by reinforcing consumerist values and individualistic ideologies that obscure systemic exploitation (Freire 1970). The constant messaging to pursue personal well-being over collective justice transforms comfort into an unquestioned goal while those who challenge this pursuit are framed as radicals, threats to order, or disruptors of peace (Chomsky 1999).

Dismantling comfort as currency requires reframing discomfort as a site of ethical accountability and spiritual maturity, understanding that the price of comfort under unjust systems is too high to remain morally acceptable. It calls for moving beyond the myths that equate comfort with virtue, recognizing that true peace cannot exist alongside the systemic violence required to sustain selective privilege.

The Cost of Ignorance

Ignorance is never neutral under systems of extraction and myth. It is engineered, curated, and enforced because a populace that does not know cannot resist, and a populace that will not know becomes the perfect custodian of its own chains (Freire 1970). The cost of ignorance is not merely intellectual limitation but the active perpetuation of violence and dispossession, paid in the currencies of lives, lands, and futures (Fanon 1963).

Educational systems under neoliberal and postcolonial frameworks often prioritize marketable skills over critical thinking, producing workers who can operate within the system without questioning its moral or structural foundations (Carnoy 1974). This ignorance is structural, not incidental, as it ensures the maintenance of economic hierarchies by obscuring the historical and contemporary forces that sustain them (Rodney 1972). By failing to teach histories of empire, extraction, and resistance, the system ensures that the myths of meritocracy and inevitability remain unchallenged (Ngugi 1986).

Media ecosystems reinforce ignorance by reducing complex systemic issues to spectacles of individual failure or isolated tragedies, transforming collective injustices into fragmented news cycles while diverting attention from root causes (Chomsky 1997). This curated ignorance benefits the structures of power, allowing environmental collapse, labor exploitation, and geopolitical violence to continue under a blanket of selective attention and willful blindness (Klein 2000).

Ignorance also becomes a commodity within religious frameworks that discourage inquiry beyond doctrinal boundaries. Doctrines that spiritualize poverty and suffering while promising posthumous rewards discourage believers from questioning the earthly structures producing those conditions (Bowler 2013). By framing curiosity and doubt as spiritual weakness, religious systems aligned with power ensure that communities internalize ignorance as a virtue, policing themselves into submission (Gutiérrez 1973).

The social cost of ignorance is further compounded by its role in disabling solidarity. Communities uninformed about the mechanisms of their oppression often turn against each other, misidentifying the sources of their suffering and perpetuating divisions that weaken collective resistance (Bourdieu 1998). Ignorance thus becomes a weapon that ensures communities remain fragmented while the structures benefiting from this fragmentation remain intact (Mbembe 2001).

The environmental cost of ignorance is equally severe. A populace unaware of the ecological consequences of consumption and extraction is less likely to demand accountability from corporations and states profiting from environmental degradation (Klein 2014). Ignorance about the interconnectedness of ecological systems allows climate collapse to advance while communities are distracted by myths of technological salvation and market solutions that rarely address the root causes of environmental destruction (Bauman 2007).

To dismantle the myths sustaining systemic violence requires a radical commitment to eradicating ignorance through education that centers critical consciousness, historical accuracy, and ecological literacy. It demands the courage to see clearly how the system functions and to act on that knowledge despite the discomfort it may produce. Ignorance is never passive under oppression. It is complicity disguised as innocence, and the price is paid by those least responsible for the system’s violence.

The Silence of the Pulpit

Religious pulpits often stand at the crossroads of moral responsibility and systemic compliance yet under systems that depend on myth to sustain economic and political dominance the pulpit frequently chooses silence. This silence is not passive. It is an active alignment with power structures that benefit from the continued ignorance and pacification of communities (Freire 1970).

Historically, religious institutions have often aligned themselves with empires and colonial projects, providing spiritual justification for conquest and the extraction of resources while silencing the cries of the oppressed under the rhetoric of divine order (Rodney 1972). Missionary work and colonial expansion were deeply intertwined, with pulpits preaching obedience while lands were seized and labor extracted under the banner of salvation (Ngugi 1986). This complicity is not a relic of history but a template that continues in modern neoliberal societies where pulpits remain quiet about the injustices that shape the lives of their congregants (Mbembe 2001).

Silence from the pulpit is maintained by a theology that prioritizes personal piety and individual moral failings over collective responsibility and structural critique (Gutiérrez 1973). Congregants are encouraged to pray for personal breakthroughs while systemic issues such as poverty, environmental degradation, and racial injustice are reframed as spiritual challenges or divine tests rather than the predictable outcomes of exploitative systems (Bowler 2013). This spiritualization of systemic suffering serves to redirect the anger and frustration of communities inward, transforming justified outrage into guilt and calls for structural change into accusations of faithlessness (Fanon 1963).

Economically, the silence of the pulpit is incentivized by its entanglement with wealth and political influence. Religious institutions often benefit from tax exemptions, state privileges, and financial donations that depend on maintaining the status quo (Carnoy 1974). Speaking against systemic injustice risks alienating wealthy donors and inviting state scrutiny, creating a quiet calculus in which silence becomes a condition for institutional survival (Bourdieu 1998). The prosperity gospel exemplifies this dynamic, teaching that wealth is a sign of divine favor while ignoring the structural violence that shapes who has wealth and who remains in poverty (Bowler 2013).

The pulpit’s silence also extends to environmental collapse. Despite the spiritual imperative of stewardship over the earth, many religious leaders avoid addressing climate change and ecological injustice, fearing the political and economic discomfort such discussions may provoke within congregations accustomed to consumerist lifestyles (Klein 2014). This silence ensures that faith communities continue to consume in ways that destroy ecosystems while maintaining a veneer of spiritual purity (Bauman 2007).

Breaking the silence of the pulpit requires a radical reorientation of spiritual priorities, demanding that religious leaders reclaim their prophetic role as voices for justice rather than instruments of compliance (Freire 1970). It calls for a theology that understands liberation and justice as central to spiritual life, recognizing that silence in the face of systemic violence is not neutrality but complicity (Gutiérrez 1973). The silence of the pulpit is a silence that costs lives, lands, and futures and dismantling it is necessary for any serious pursuit of justice.

 Myth as Control Mechanism

Myths are not harmless stories under regimes of extraction and inequality. They are instruments of social control meticulously designed to align individual aspirations with the interests of the system while masking the violence required to sustain it (Bourdieu 1998). Myths operate by providing moral justification for systemic inequalities transforming privilege into virtue and suffering into a moral failing of the oppressed (Freire 1970).

Religious and national myths often intersect to produce a moral architecture that sanctifies the status quo. Myths of divine election or manifest destiny have historically justified colonization, slavery, and resource extraction while positioning these acts as benevolent or divinely ordained (Rodney 1972). This mythology reframes theft as development and domination as civilization, ensuring that violence against the colonized is interpreted as moral duty rather than exploitation (Ngugi 1986).

In contemporary systems myths serve to protect economic structures that extract labor and resources from the many for the benefit of the few. The myth of meritocracy insists that economic outcomes are solely the result of individual effort while ignoring the historical and structural forces that determine access to resources and opportunities (Chomsky 1999). This ensures that those who suffer under the weight of poverty and exclusion internalize blame for their conditions while those who benefit from systemic advantages attribute their success to personal virtue (Bauman 2007).

Religious myths also function to control the aspirations of communities by spiritualizing systemic injustice. Myths of heavenly reward for earthly suffering encourage the acceptance of oppression with promises of divine compensation after death (Bowler 2013). This narrative neutralizes resistance by transforming the moral outrage of the oppressed into patient endurance while protecting the system that produces the suffering (Gutiérrez 1973). When spiritual leaders promote myths that equate obedience with righteousness and dissent with rebellion against divine order they become active participants in the maintenance of systemic violence (Fanon 1963).

Myths also operate through cultural narratives of security and fear. Systems dependent on militarization and surveillance justify themselves through myths of external threats ensuring public compliance with violence in the name of protection (Mbembe 2001). The myth of perpetual threat sustains extractive industries and military interventions globally, framed as necessary for freedom and safety while functioning primarily to secure the flow of resources and geopolitical dominance (Klein 2007).

The power of myth as a control mechanism lies in its ability to produce consent among the oppressed. Myths shape desire and aspiration ensuring that the goals of individuals align with the needs of the system while discouraging collective imagination beyond the boundaries of the structures that govern their lives (Freire 1970). By transforming systemic violence into divine or natural order myths become tools that secure obedience without the need for visible coercion.

Dismantling myth as a control mechanism requires the cultivation of critical consciousness capable of recognizing the narratives that protect power and transforming them into sites of resistance (Ngugi 1986). It requires the courage to interrogate the stories we have been told about success, suffering, and salvation refusing to allow myths to dictate the limits of justice and liberation.

The Price of Neutrality

Neutrality under systems of violence is not a passive stance but an active alignment with the structures that produce suffering. In conditions where systemic injustice defines the distribution of resources, opportunities, and futures, the choice to remain neutral is the choice to sustain the status quo (Freire 1970). The price of neutrality is paid by those who cannot afford its moral comfort as their lives are shaped by structures they did not create but are forced to endure (Fanon 1963).

Neutrality often disguises itself as intellectual or spiritual maturity, suggesting that to take a side is to be divisive while ignoring that injustice is inherently divisive and requires active resistance for repair (Gutiérrez 1973). Theological frameworks that present neutrality as a form of higher spiritual virtue encourage believers to avoid confrontation with the structures of power that produce poverty and oppression. This transforms the spiritual life into a private pursuit detached from the suffering of the world, ensuring that the faithful remain silent while violence continues (Bowler 2013).

Academia and media frequently valorize neutrality under the rhetoric of objectivity, presenting systemic violence as a matter of competing narratives rather than acknowledging the structural conditions that produce inequality (Chomsky 1997). This form of neutrality frames oppression as debate, transforming the clear demands for justice into issues for academic discourse while delaying or denying the urgency of action (Bourdieu 1998). The result is a culture of detachment where intellectual rigor is measured by the ability to remain unmoved in the face of suffering.

Politically, neutrality becomes a tool of compliance within neoliberal systems that prioritize stability over justice (Bauman 2007). Calls for peace without justice are expressions of this neutrality, demanding that the oppressed remain silent about their suffering to maintain the comfort of those who benefit from their silence (Rodney 1972). Neutrality becomes the language of power disguised as moral high ground, asking the oppressed to compromise while demanding nothing from those who hold power.

Religious institutions often demand neutrality from their congregants to maintain institutional stability and avoid conflicts with state or economic powers (Ngugi 1986). This demand for neutrality discourages critique of structures that produce poverty and violence, reducing spiritual life to rituals disconnected from social transformation. In contexts of oppression, neutrality from the pulpit is not a spiritual discipline but a betrayal of the prophetic role faith traditions are meant to embody (Freire 1970).

The cost of neutrality is the perpetuation of structures that thrive on the silence and inaction of the majority. Neutrality allows environmental destruction to continue while ecosystems collapse, labor exploitation to intensify while profits rise, and racial and gender injustices to persist while the privileged remain unchallenged (Klein 2014). It is the mechanism by which power ensures its survival without the visible use of force, relying instead on the consent of those who believe neutrality is harmless.

To break from neutrality requires a deliberate refusal to accept the terms set by systems of violence. It requires acknowledging that in conditions of injustice there is no neutral ground, only choices that either sustain or challenge the structures that produce harm (Fanon 1963). The price of neutrality is the future and the dignity of those forced to live under conditions the neutral refuse to confront.

Redemption Myths and Economic Control

Redemption myths serve as a quiet but powerful economic tool within systems of extraction. They offer spiritual consolation to the oppressed while preserving the structures that necessitate their oppression, reframing systemic violence as a pathway to individual salvation (Freire 1970). By promising future relief in exchange for present obedience, redemption myths secure the participation of communities in their own economic exploitation while masking the real sources of their suffering (Fanon 1963).

Historically, colonial powers used redemption myths to justify economic domination, promising spiritual salvation to colonized populations while systematically extracting their land, labor, and resources (Rodney 1972). Missionaries often arrived alongside traders and soldiers, preaching a theology that reframed submission to colonial authority as submission to divine will, transforming spiritual conversion into a mechanism for economic control (Ngugi 1986). The promise of salvation in the afterlife was used to justify the material plunder of entire regions, transforming dispossession into divine destiny.

In contemporary neoliberal systems, redemption myths manifest in prosperity theology and motivational ideologies that teach economic hardship is temporary if individuals display the right faith and moral discipline (Bowler 2013). This theology privatizes structural issues such as poverty and unemployment, turning them into personal spiritual tests while ignoring the systemic conditions that produce them (Gutiérrez 1973). As a result, the collective energy that could challenge economic systems of inequality is redirected inward, encouraging the oppressed to pursue individual breakthroughs while systemic injustices remain untouched (Bourdieu 1998).

Redemption myths also enable the normalization of exploitative labor practices under the guise of spiritual growth and moral development. Workers are encouraged to see their suffering as character building or spiritually purifying, framing economic exploitation as a divine refining process rather than a violation of human dignity (Carnoy 1974). This narrative justifies poor wages and harsh conditions while protecting employers from accountability, transforming structural violence into a personal moral narrative.

Additionally, redemption myths function within environmental destruction, framing ecological collapse as a prelude to spiritual renewal or divine intervention (Klein 2014). This narrative paralyzes communities from demanding structural change by reframing environmental crises as divine signs rather than the logical outcomes of unsustainable economic practices (Bauman 2007). The myth of divine rescue discourages urgent systemic action, ensuring that extractive industries can continue their operations with minimal resistance.

Economically, redemption myths sustain the status quo by providing psychological comfort to those exploited by the system, reducing the potential for organized resistance while maintaining consumption patterns that feed capitalist growth (Chomsky 1999). They transform legitimate anger into passive waiting, framing present injustice as a necessary step toward a divine future reward. This narrative discipline ensures that communities remain compliant even in the face of systemic violence, turning spiritual hope into a tool for economic control (Mbembe 2001).

To dismantle the economic power of redemption myths requires exposing the false equivalence between suffering and spiritual worthiness while reclaiming the right of communities to challenge systems that perpetuate injustice (Freire 1970). It means recognizing that true redemption cannot coexist with structures that require exploitation for their survival and that spiritual liberation is inseparable from economic justice (Gutiérrez 1973).

Myth, Empire, and the Manufacturing of Consent

Empire does not sustain itself merely through armies and markets but through myths that manufacture the consent of the governed. Myths of freedom, security, and divine purpose are carefully curated to align the aspirations of populations with the objectives of empire, transforming participation in systems of extraction and domination into perceived moral duty (Chomsky 1997). This manufacturing of consent ensures that empire’s violence is seen as protection and its exploitation as opportunity (Bourdieu 1998).

Historically, empires framed conquest as civilization, presenting violent appropriation of land and resources as moral obligation to uplift “lesser” peoples (Rodney 1972). Myths of manifest destiny and civilizing missions justified genocides and resource extraction while convincing populations at home that their participation in imperial expansion was righteous and necessary (Ngugi 1986). In this structure, empire’s myths transformed global plunder into national pride, aligning collective identity with the interests of elites who benefited from the exploitation (Fanon 1963).

Contemporary empires utilize myths of security and freedom to legitimize military interventions and economic domination, claiming these are necessary to protect the values of civilization while securing resources and geopolitical advantage (Klein 2007). These myths are broadcast through media systems that frame violence as humanitarian intervention and economic sanctions as moral duty, ensuring populations consent to policies that would otherwise be seen as aggression (Chomsky 1997). In this context, myth becomes a mechanism of governance, securing active support for policies of domination.

Religious institutions often collaborate with empire by sacralizing its myths, framing obedience to empire as spiritual duty and resistance as rebellion against divine order (Bowler 2013). Prayers for troops and blessings over leaders reinforce the myth that empire’s interests are aligned with divine will, ensuring the faithful remain compliant as their resources and rights are extracted to sustain systems of war and inequality (Gutiérrez 1973). This spiritualization of empire ensures that even dissent is framed as sin, further tightening the myth’s control.

Myths of opportunity under empire mask the structural violence that sustains its economic dominance. The narrative that anyone can succeed through hard work within imperial markets ignores the history of stolen resources and systemic barriers designed to protect the interests of the powerful (Bauman 2007). This meritocratic myth transforms structural violence into personal failure, ensuring that those oppressed by empire’s systems blame themselves while empire expands without accountability (Bourdieu 1998).

Empire’s myths also neutralize resistance by turning demands for justice into calls for civility and order. The oppressed are taught to seek redress through the systems that oppress them, while protests are reframed as threats to societal stability (Mbembe 2001). This narrative manipulation transforms justified resistance into criminality, allowing empire to suppress dissent while maintaining the appearance of legitimacy (Fanon 1963).

To dismantle empire’s hold requires dismantling its myths. It requires refusing to consent to narratives that frame violence as virtue and theft as development while reclaiming the power to define freedom and justice outside the structures of empire (Freire 1970). The manufacturing of consent can only be undone by reclaiming critical consciousness, refusing to participate in the myths that sustain systems of global domination, and insisting on solidarity with those whose lives are daily sacrificed for empire’s expansion.

While They Sleep: The Myth Engine of Oppression

While they sleep, systems of power refine the myths that keep them docile. Myths are not harmless stories but technologies of control designed to transform the minds and aspirations of the oppressed into tools for their own subjugation. Across history, from colonial conquests to contemporary neoliberal regimes, myths have functioned as the invisible hand that guides the masses into compliance while disguising oppression as moral duty, economic scarcity as divine design, and systemic violence as the path to spiritual redemption (Freire 1970).

Religious myths frame obedience to structural violence as a pathway to divine approval. They condition believers to see injustice as inevitable and suffering as sanctifying, discouraging critical resistance and transforming systemic poverty into a private moral failing (Gutiérrez 1973). The result is a population that accepts hardship while praising the very systems that produce it, internalizing doctrines that teach them to wait for an afterlife reward while the earth and their communities are plundered in real time (Bowler 2013).

Political myths reinforce this submission by presenting empire and state power as protective rather than extractive. The illusion of security offered by militarized structures masks the violence they enact on marginalized communities while directing public fear toward fabricated external threats (Chomsky 1997). These myths secure public consent for wars of resource extraction and surveillance regimes that criminalize dissent, ensuring that the oppressed participate in their own containment (Mbembe 2001).

Economic myths transform structural inequality into a narrative of personal responsibility and merit. The myth of endless opportunity and self-made success functions as a disciplinary tool, ensuring that systemic barriers remain hidden beneath the rhetoric of hard work and discipline (Bourdieu 1998). Those who fail to ascend are taught to blame themselves rather than question systems designed to keep them in place, reducing the potential for collective resistance by isolating economic hardship within the individual psyche (Bauman 2007).

The myth of neutrality compounds this system by framing inaction as moral virtue. In a world structured by injustice, neutrality is not an absence of action but a tacit agreement with oppression (Fanon 1963). Myths of balance, objectivity, and civility paralyze the oppressed while giving moral cover to those who benefit from the status quo, ensuring that calls for justice are deflected under the guise of maintaining social harmony (Ngugi 1986).

These myths work in tandem with redemption narratives that promise spiritual or economic breakthroughs in exchange for submission and patience. By framing suffering as a path to spiritual elevation or economic blessing, the oppressed are kept compliant, waiting for a miraculous deliverance that conveniently aligns with the timelines of systems extracting their labor, land, and futures (Rodney 1972). These redemption myths convert righteous anger into passive hope, transforming the possibility of resistance into an endless cycle of personal striving within rigged systems (Bowler 2013).

Education systems and media channels sustain these myths by selectively framing history and contemporary events to align with the interests of power. Education often avoids a structural analysis of poverty, empire, and ecological destruction, focusing instead on narratives that celebrate individual achievement and nationalist mythologies while ignoring the collective struggle required for liberation (Carnoy 1974). Media channels reproduce empire’s myths, transforming wars of aggression into humanitarian interventions and ecological collapse into isolated crises, shielding power from accountability while feeding the public illusions of stability (Chomsky 1997).

The religious-industrial complex plays a critical role in laundering these myths into spiritual legitimacy. Tithes and offerings, often untaxed, fuel systems that preach submission while consolidating wealth and power within clerical elites aligned with state and corporate interests (Bowler 2013). The church becomes a stabilizing force for empire, providing spiritual justification for inequality while extracting resources from the poor under the promise of divine blessing (Gutiérrez 1973).

Myths also frame migration and displacement as individual choices rather than the outcomes of systemic violence and economic domination. When communities are displaced by war, ecological collapse, or economic extraction, they are blamed for seeking survival, while the structures that produce these crises remain hidden behind narratives of personal failure or national security (Klein 2014). This myth allows empire to displace populations while absolving itself of responsibility, framing the oppressed as threats when they seek refuge within the borders of the systems that destroyed their homes (Rodney 1972).

Environmental collapse is similarly mythologized, often framed as a prelude to divine intervention rather than the logical outcome of extractive capitalism (Klein 2014). This myth paralyzes resistance to ecological destruction, transforming urgent crises into matters of faith while extractive industries continue to ravage ecosystems with minimal resistance from communities trained to spiritualize catastrophe (Bauman 2007).

The manufacturing of consent through myths is the mechanism by which empire and capital ensure their survival. Rather than relying solely on overt violence, systems of power embed themselves within the desires, beliefs, and aspirations of the masses, ensuring that compliance is given willingly under the illusion of moral, spiritual, or economic duty (Bourdieu 1998). Myths are the software that keeps the hardware of oppression running smoothly, ensuring that while the people sleep, the system feeds on their dreams.

Breaking the hold of these myths requires a deliberate refusal to participate in the narratives that sustain oppression. It requires recognizing that spiritual and economic liberation are inseparable, that neutrality is complicity, and that the myths we consume are not harmless but shape the contours of our reality (Freire 1970). It demands reclaiming education as a tool for critical consciousness, faith as a space for justice, and politics as a collective endeavor toward liberation rather than personal advancement (Gutiérrez 1973).

It requires remembering that myths can also serve liberation when they are rooted in truth and collective dignity. Myths of solidarity, justice, and ecological stewardship can replace myths of domination and extraction if communities are willing to challenge the stories that keep them bound (Ngugi 1986). The struggle for liberation is as much a battle of imagination as it is a material confrontation with oppressive systems, demanding the courage to dismantle comforting lies for the sake of truth and collective survival (Fanon 1963).

While they sleep, power refines myths to sustain itself. The task of those committed to liberation is to awaken, to see clearly, and to disrupt the narratives that ensure their silence. Liberation begins with the refusal to believe in myths that demand complicity with injustice, insisting instead on a world where truth, justice, and collective well-being replace the illusions that maintain oppression.

Works Cited

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Bowler, Kate. Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel. Oxford University Press, 2013.

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WorldCat entry

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Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. Heinemann, 1986.

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