The Penitential State Defined

Within society there are two possible kinds of state:

1. The Agentic State - the state we live in now, where we all act as an obedient agent of authority—obeying orders with diffused responsibility(“I was only following orders”), reducing personal moral accountability and rejecting our own autonomy - hierarchical obedience, division, incoherence, blame. Illusory and conditional freedom is the outcome, terrible acts become acceptable and normalised, energy focused on the material world rather than our spiritual home. 
2. The Penitential State - a state we could live in but has never been tried - rejection of authority, choice-less awareness, turning from incoherence toward wholeness, absolute freedom, radical personal responsibility, energy focused on our spiritual home rather than the material world. A material world where the most encouragements are made toward finding our true source.

Of course, the objection will be to say, "you fool, are you looking for heaven?" My response is to say "do you prefer looking for hell?"

This is not to say that the world's incoherence is good or bad. It is to say that it is happening and to confess to it without judgement. So that we can then face it it as a reality and not try to escape from it.

There is system wide incoherence in the world. Nothing adds up - periodic economic great recession not even the experts can see coming, huge excess death tolls, repeating policy known to fail, political dualities where both sides make the same complaints about each other unconsciously, inability of billions of people to find a government which can administer safely.

Can we observe this and confess that it is happening before we proceed on what to do about it? So far we have not been able to.

To sin, is not to do bad things, per se. It is to be looking at the world in the wrong way, in a purely material way. To be looking at everything in the wrong direction. To be acting incoherently toward the world. And to fail to confess to this incoherence.

Penitence, is not to be sorry about your sins, per se. It is to recognise that your incoherence, **is**, sin. And instead of being sorry about it all, penitence is a more positive act of 'turning around' and looking at the world in the right way - to ask who am I, where do I come from and where am I going? 

To stop sinning by becoming coherent. 

When this activity occurs in any collective way, such as by a king, or democratic leadership, the people can do their penitence collectively and become whole once again through renewed coherence. History shows it happening repeatedly.

Now this is a rare thing. An election or succession does not automatically redeem the people with coherence. It's a bottom up activity - the people have to demand it as a principle policy in some way. And really mean it. And that policy has never been adopted. Policy typically forms around obedience to authority through Power. 

The common approach we make when acting in a hierarchical society and managing this sin with incoherence is to render the sin into the unconscious - we try to get rid of it rather than to redeem it. This task is also often taken up by the collective action of a king, democratic leadership or even authoritarian tyranny and this is how:

1. The first step is to conceal the sin is happening of course
2. The big trick though is the next step - to conceal the concealment

This activity can be made to work equally by the individual or a collective of individuals working obediently together, known as a tribe. I have developed a hypothesis showing how this works in more detail I call Obedience Theory. Which is the idea that human behaviours—such as social compliance, political alignment, and even jealousy of wealth—are driven by an unconscious, ingrained urge for tribal obedience and survival rather than true free will.

A persons autonomy or obedience can be tested using a depth psychology tool called the Orwell Test. I designed this conceptual framework as a self-reflection tool to help individuals evaluate whether they prioritise autonomous critical thinking or unconscious tribal compliance.

The concealment dissonance described above renders ones obedience to the tribe deep down into the collective unconscious, where it remains buried in concrete. And is then very hard to bring back into the light. 

It can be rediscovered though. It does happen. 

Core message: Society's root sin is hierarchical obedience (the "agentic state"), which creates incoherence and conceals truth. True penitence is a collective "turning around" toward coherence and absolute, unconditional freedom—rejecting all authority including state and even rejecting religious obedience.