[owovmdnv] Worshipping stability, status quo

Consider a society in which the masses of people believe that the ways people acquire, maintain, and exercise power in their society are pretty terrible, but they nevertheless do not do much to undermine or correct those issues in their society.

Inspired by criticism of theocracy.  In a theocracy, power is acquired by claiming to be ordained by God, then maintained by punishing as blasphemy those who would dispute that.  Suppose that, despite officially being a theocracy, the masses of people believe that the claim of divine ordination is bullshit -- no one is actually being fooled -- but nevertheless, no one disputes it either, but -- surprisingly -- not because of the threat of punishment.

At first, this seems incredibly irrational, as power obtained (especially power obtained through terrible means) is often terribly abused, so it would seem the victims of such abuse would have reason to complain about the power structures of their society.

What the masses of people really believe in is the benefits of stability.  They tolerate lies, bullshit, and abuse in return for stability.  Economically, it's not that unreasonable:  War (e.g., civil war) is costly.  Uncertainty is costly.  If there are established initial property lines, the Coase Theorem can efficiently move them to wherever is optimal.  History has some prominent examples of culture flourishing during long periods of stability, despite the government being abusive or inducing quite a bit of abuse to maintain the status quo, typically through class structure.

It's a strange world:  The rulers emit lies that those ruled don't believe; the rulers know that their subjects don't believe them, yet they keep emitting the lies, perhaps expending considerable effort to do so, for example, in ceremony.  It's a world where things are not what they seem to be, everyone knows it, and no one wants to change it.  (Try explaining this to a child.)

Are there, or have there been, real societies which function like this?  On one hand, people lying and conversely understanding that people are lying to you seems innately human nature.  On the other hand, people getting brainwashed into believing a lie also seems human nature.

Should such a society change?  We would need to calculate the net present values of status quo versus an alternative, including things like the cost of uncertainty (change once may make more change afterward more likely).  Are people and societies acting rationally in changing or not changing?

We can easily imagine path dependence: a society is at Pareto-dominated local maximum, but it's hard to leave it for the Pareto superior state because you have to go down first, maybe a civil war.

If change is warranted, can some societies transition more smoothly than others?  Democracy is supposedly good for peaceful transitions of power.

Power corrupts.  All autocracies abuse power.  Even democracies seem biased toward maintaining the status quo, probably through the masses of people directly preferring stability, instead of indirectly achieving it through worshipping a false god.  (Though democracies seem to also create their own false gods.)

It could be a tradeoff: A highly autocratic, highly abusive society might offer very long periods of stability, but the cost of transitioning to a different societal organization when change becomes needed is very high.  In contrast, some society in which change is easier (maybe a democracy, but that might not be true given its above-mentioned preference for status quo) has to pay for that ease of change with the cost of uncertainty.