Humans need religion, it is part of who we are.  When we give it up, we don’t really, we find something else to fill that role.

Progressive politics is an atheistic religion.  It’s not a good one, it’s an unforgiving and medieval one.

There are many notable parallels.  What is Privilege other than a political Original Sin.  Were you born white or male or straight or cis or all of the above?  Then you have unearned Privilege that you must atone for by being an ally and sacrificing for the less fortunate.

This article was published in the Guardian:

Why liberal white women pay a lot of money to learn over dinner how they’re racist

This is Race to Dinner. A white woman volunteers to host a dinner in her home for seven other white women – often strangers, perhaps acquaintances. (Each dinner costs $2,500, which can be covered by a generous host or divided among guests.) A frank discussion is led by co-founders Regina Jackson, who is black, and Saira Rao, who identifies as Indian American. They started Race to Dinner to challenge liberal white women to accept their racism, however subconscious. “If you did this in a conference room, they’d leave,” Rao says. “But wealthy white women have been taught never to leave the dinner table.”

Rao and Jackson believe white, liberal women are the most receptive audience because they are open to changing their behavior. They don’t bother with the 53% of white women who voted for Trump. White men, they feel, are similarly a lost cause. “White men are never going to change anything. If they were, they would have done it by now,” Jackson says.

That actually sounds pretty racist.

It seems unlikely anyone would voluntarily go to a dinner party in which they’d be asked, one by one, “What was a racist thing you did recently?” by two women of color, before appetizers are served. But Jackson and Rao have hardly been able to take a break since they started these dinners in the spring of 2019. So far, 15 dinners have been held in big cities across the US.

The women who sign up for these dinners are not who most would see as racist. They are well-read and well-meaning. They are mostly Democrats. Some have adopted black children, many have partners who are people of color, some have been doing work towards inclusivity and diversity for decades. But they acknowledge they also have unchecked biases. They are there because they “know [they] are part of the problem, and want to be part of the solution,” as host Jess Campbell-Swanson says before dinner starts.

Let me stop here and answer the question from the headline, because this article doesn’t.

During the Middle Ages, some Christians would wear something called a Cilice, also known as a hairshirt.  It was an article of clothing or an accessory that was intended to cause pain and discomfort.  It was worn by penitent parishioners who wanted to atone for sin through suffering.

There was an actual practice in the old Catholic church called asceticism.  Practitioners would fast until they nearly died.  They denied themselves any physical pleasure, going so far as to sleep without blankets on the bare ground.  Some would even engage in self-flagellation with whips, called scourge.

Most notable examples of this occurred during the Black Death where penitents marched through the streets whipping themselves to try to atone for the sins of the town that was being ravaged by the plague.

The Church really has mellowed in the last 700 years.

This isn’t unique to the Catholic church.  Read about what the Naga Sadhus in modern-day India do to show devotion to Shiva.  It’s a horror show.

And don’t forget those Heaven’s Gate cultists who wanted to hitch a ride on the alien ship that followed the Hale-Bopp Comet.  Before they killed themselves, they castrated themselves.

Religious extremism can make people do terrible things to themselves.

So you want to know why white women will pay $2,500 to have two women of color make them feel like shit for a few hours?

Because it would mess up their hair and makeup to make them sleep on dirt and whip themselves to atone for the original sin of being born with the wrong skin color.

This is religious extremism for adherents of religious Leftism.  Nothing more.