transgression

Shared law-breaking that creates trust because all participants become punishable together.

The practice of committing crimes with others so shared guilt and blackmail bind the group together.

Shared wrongdoing that creates mutual blackmail and binds secret-society members together.

Disobeying authority or making mistakes as a path toward knowledge, virtue, and redemption.

Secret societies solve secrecy through hierarchy, trust through shared transgression, and coordination through eschatological myth.

The pear-garden story rewrites Eden and Augustine by saying God wants rule-breaking creativity that increases wealth.

Secrecy is maintained by incentives, blackmail, and transgression: the higher a person climbs, the more power and compromise bind them to the system.

He links secret societies to bureaucracy by saying secrecy, coordinated action, shared transgression, and blackmail let small groups control lazy mass bureaucracies.

He argues that secret societies embedded in bureaucracy invert religion by worshiping Satan so that transgression becomes empowerment rather than guilt before God.

He defines elite-admissions dissociative potential as desperation plus insecurity plus willingness to break rules in order to succeed.

The ultimate secret Jiang attributes to secret societies is that redemption, growth, and imagination are in us through connection to the Monad, and believing in oneself often means defying authority and social rules.

Transgression is defined as breaking taboos, social norms, and social laws; Jiang proposes that greater transgression creates greater cohesion and synchronicity because secrecy becomes necessary for survival.