The "cathedral" is blogger Mencius Moldbug's term for the politically correct beliefs and power structures of the elites in government, media and academe. To hold these beliefs is not a matter of truth (for there are a whole range of taboo issues that cannot be researched or questioned). Rather, it's a matter of de facto religious faith. To depart from these beliefs is de facto heresy. The original sin is racism -- even the hint of which will get you ostracized and excommunicated with lightning speed. Moldbug's insight is to see the Cathedral as a direct descendant of the overzealous puritanical Protestantism, that first evolved in England, then moved to New England, and finally found it's core home in New England's Ivy League colleges.
Writes Nick Land in his brilliant essay on the Dark Enlightenment:
"With every year that passes, the international ideal of sound
governance finds itself approximating more closely and rigidly to the
standards set by the Grievance Studies departments of New England
universities. This is the divine providence of the ranters and levelers,
elevated to a planetary teleology, and consolidated as the reign of the Cathedral."
Continues Land,
"All legitimate thought on earth today is descended from the American Puritans, and through them the English Dissenters. ... Whatever one's opinion on the respective scientific merits of human biological diversity or uniformity, it is surely beyond contention that the latter assumption, alone, is tolerated. Even if progressive-universalistic beliefs about human nature are true, they are not held because they are true, or arrived at through any process that passes the laugh test for critical scientific rationality. They are received as religious tenets, with all of the passionate intensity that characterizes essential items of faith, and to question them is not a matter of scientific inaccuracy, but of what we now call political incorrectness, and once knew as heresy."
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