Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-24821739-20140604204305/@comment-6078851-20140618144236

the inquisition, as well as the administratum and the ecclesiarchy, are most definitely infected with an irredeemable level of hubris. while they all pay lip-service to the idea of 'preserving the imperium', i think there's probably very few (relatively) amongst each faction who genuinely have the imperium's (humanity's) interests at heart. rather the majority of each faction are all invested in the old 'politic-power-struggle'.

each faction has a massive amount of power over the citizens of the imperium and none want to lose a single iota of that power. so the more they feel their power is threatened the more they become self-rightous, and the more they start to become convinced that they are right in how they operate and anyone who disagree's become 'traitors to humanity'. once a certain level of hubris, or self-rightousness, or conviction etc, has been reached then any disagreement isn't seen as an opinion, it's seen as a personal attack on one's beliefs, morals, or ideologies. the inquisition, administratum, and ecclesiarchy have all believed that what they do is right for so long that it's inconcievable for them to think that they might be wrong, and so anyone who speaks against them are labeled as the 'worst kind of traitors'. this mind-set could easily be summed up as 'juvenile'.

i totally agree that if a (any) primarch returned and attempted to reform any of the governmental institutions they would be labeled as heretics. even if such a reform were to come from emps himself via an intermediary, the intermediary and all associates would be 'heretics'. if emps were able to give the message personally a few might believe, but i still think the majority would think they can't have been wrong in their beliefs because that would mean they were not right, and so they could even construe a belief amongst themselves that the emperor is actually dead and some daemon has possessed his corpse to sow destruction amongst humans from the core, and so they decide that because they 'know' they've always been right that in order to save humanity (or simply save their own power-base) they need to destroy the 'daemon-possessed corpse of the emperor' :P (this scenario may be a little far-fetched but i see it as very possible)