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Comment by corty | Hacker News Reader

Funnily enough, Das Schloss is often interpreted to be a criticism of the church and organized religion in general. The castle and its workings are seen to be like the clerical teachings, arbitrary, incomprehensible and illogical, but nonetheless highly respected by the plebs.

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Eh, I think Kafka was infinitely more subtle than that. Framing the story as a mundane criticism of the Church seems to be missing much of the depth of his writing.

On that note, Kafka was also quite interested in Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, which is almost inversely related to sociopolitical structures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka_and_Judaism

Here's a great aphorism of his that's related to religion:

“Leopards break into the temple and drink all the sacrificial vessels dry; it keeps happening; in the end, it can be calculated in advance and is incorporated into the ritual.”

How does the specific institution being ridiculed matter at all?

Whether it's the Catholic church, Youtube or the DMV the point is it's a black box of procedural spaghetti that too often produces insane results and is seemingly unaccountable.

It doesn't really matter, but it is a funny coincidence that a cleric, as a representative of one kafkaesque institution is being censored by Twitter, another kafkaesque institution.

There was a time when the clergy was Catholic, but might various "scientific experts" be filling that role today?

Great point. This can be applied to any type of "revealed wisdom" which is not obvious to the layperson. We are expected to accept their conclusions not question them.

Reminds me of the greatest scene to ever appear on TV

https://youtu.be/Zgk8UdV7GQ0?t=60

The role of the church 400 years ago is now similar to that played by the technocracy today.

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