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A bad prayer is like whining. It doesn't do any of the respectful groundwork before reaching out to such a deity. People can put more effort explaining their company business plan to a VC than they do for most prayers!

That segues into WHO we pray to. Founders can put great deal of effort into a slide deck. They're doing the equivalent of praying. However, they are praying to a false God. (angels lol)

"Praying" (doing the groundwork of assessing the situation and making a case) to a VC feels like selling out b/c we know the VC isn't God. It is just needs to play one due to time/energy constraints.

Thus people who pray to other humans like Kings or Gurus must connect who they pray to in some way to God to not feel like a slave. E.g. Divine Right or Direct Line to God. There is a "priestly" "divine" feeling at the top of every hierarchy of value.

This is why Innovation has to be Worshipped. Without innovation as a Holy Grail VCs and similar money functions don't have a connection to the divine. Instead of it kindaaa feeling like selling out it starts to *really* feel like selling out.

It is also why performance reviews can feel so distasteful. You literally have to treat the process as praying to God while a middle management bureaucrat measures how well you dance the the complex prostration dance.

This feeling of "bending over" is actually a virtue when it is praying to God. But because effective spiritual rituals are now mostly empty rituals, this sense divine of the divine is lose and there is an aversion to the very thing that can "save" you!

E.g. it's like a badly socialized and abused puppy. If it bites every human hand, it will be put down. Yet the most divine of those human hands offers the very magical intervention the puppy needs to escape its traumatic past and live a happy life.