Scientology Fascinates Me
Apart from serving as an extremely efficient Idiot Badge, and providing endless hilarity in the form of Tom Cruise’s infantile Messiah Complex, I think the bit I find most fascinating about Scientology is just how easy it shows it to be to get people to believe patently ridiculous things.
I assume many of them are quite sincere in their beliefs that we are inhabited by exiled alien souls and all that stuff, and although there’s no qualitative difference between that any any other religious mythology, the big difference for me is the lack of mystery. Believing in the myths of Scientology is on the face of it no different from believing crazy stories about evil being caused by a magical being who took the form of a snake and persuaded some lass with her knockers out to eat bad fruit – they’re both just slightly bizarre fairytales and would be treated as equally daft, had they not the stamp of religious belief on one and cultish lunacy on the other.
With most religions, however, they at least have the Argument from Antiquity on their side, and the advantages of massive numbers, popular acceptance and the opportunity to brainwash from an early age, no matter how silly the magic that they are preaching. The Abrahamic religions have been telling their weird and wonderful tales for a couple of thousand years now, which gives them a slightly false sheen of respectability, and given how many people believe in them it seems less silly to do so, no matter how nonsensical a great many of the teachings would seem if evaluated on their own merits. And when you’re rasied with something from childhood it can be near-impossible to shake it off. How many sports fans just can’t allow themselves to say that they think that their team will win, even if they do? It’s just bad luck, and even sensible folk often will not do it, even if they tell themselves that they know better.
With Scientology, grown adults are persuaded to accept as true a series of stories that are not only obvious nonsense but are well know to have been invented by a second-rate science fiction writer about fifty or sixty years ago. How can we, as a species, be so desperate to believe in woo that we are capable of convincing our supposedly rational brains that this kind of slightly childish fantasy is even close to reality? What do you have to do to your brain to persaude it that the concept of Xenu is anything other than a little bit silly?
I suppose general angst, insecurity, tribalism, herding instincts and fear of the unknown all play a part, and maybe an actual psychologist would just laugh off the question as trivial, but I find it quite fascinating. Volcanoes and aliens? Really, seriously? I suppose it ties into the secular West’s increasing fanaticism about idiotic forms of alternative medicine and anti-vaccination lunacy and things like that – we just seem to have an inner need to believe in some sort of magical agency and are collectively prepared to project it onto almost any variety of foolishness you can imagine.
Robbie Robertson – Somewhere Down the Crazy River
jeez, matthew, thats a mighty big supersized ciabatta-esque chunk-o-hate!!! how’s about some love? this stuff makes my mouth kinda dry.
dan
It’s not hate exactly, more a kind of perplexed fascination. How, honestly, can you be solemnly told that your body is being surrounded by the souls of dead alien creatures and not burst out laughing? Presumably because you’ve invested so much time and money to get there that it is important enough to you to create the disconnect, because the only other conclusion is that you have been completely and utterly had, which most people wouldn’t want to contemplate, I guess.
It’s very interesting how $cientologists come to believe the Xenu story. You must understand that this little tidbit of information is only presented to them after they’ve been walking the path for some time and have given 10s of 1,000s of $$ to the organization. By that time, they are quite amenable to whatever they are told is the truth. I don’t know of any $cientologist who said “Are you f*^king kidding me!??! I’m out of here.” They typically just go along with it, even if there is some disbelief in the back of their brain. That’s how it was for me — thinking “this is really weird and dumb, but hey, it’s the next step, so what the hell?” and just going ahead. (Remember, for $cientologists this stuff is highly confidential and they do NOT know about it until they’re “ready.” Even though it’s on the internets, they will NOT read it because they believe that they will get very sick and may even die if they do. Hubbard said so.)
Your post doesn’t sound like hate to me. It seems like a reasonable question to ask.
But the real problem with $cientology is not the body thetans, it’s the crimes, abuses, fraud and lies. Now there’s some shit.
Someone recently tried to persuade me that the fact that pre-operative patients who pray exhibit better healing outcomes somehow grants a scientific justification for the benefits of religion (a rigorously polished turd type argument in my view). Said oerson was rather upset when I pointed out that voodoo curses too, work because the cursed person believes that they will.
A devout christian fervently praying for a successful operation might be rather less sanguine if he was wheeled past a surgery prep room on the way in only to see his surgeon poking at chicken entrails and hping for a similarly successful outcome – but its all equally valid belief right?
We all have our own superstitions but the shit kicked up when two opposing sets get together really does justify challenging any and all sets a bit more than it is polite or socially (indeed legally) acceptable to do so these days.
btw – TC is picoman – the guy on the right must be a total mini me.
Yo – people at Church of Scientologists reading this on your CIA type evil internet scanning devices. I piss in your chunky alien soup you crazy cats! Your leader is a miniloon in elevator shoes and a bad syrup.
It’s not the alien bit that bemuses me. I’m as much down with that as with the mythological beings that inhabit every other religion.
It’s the fact that this “religion” was invented, born fully-formed, within living memory! I mean – seriously – who’s kidding who here?!
Love this song, by the way..
That’s really the bit that I don’t understand, I think. Mormonism is almost exactly the same, of course: only invented a couple of hundred years ago or less, and based on the ludicrous idea that some bloke who sailed across to America in the early years was actually the second coming or some such rubbish. All it takes is a generation or so for people to kind of forget the craziness and suddenly it doesn’t seem so mental. But Mormonism is no less nuts that Scientology for the exact same reason: we watched it being invented by some loon with a Messiah Complex.
Everyone knows when Scientology was invented. How can we possibly embrace that kind of stuff as genuine religion?
Actually, fuck that, maybe I am on the wrong tack with all this music nonsense. Song, by Toad is a religion from this day forth. The Revelations of Mr. Toad will be published shortly and I bet our sacrament is more fun that those other fuckers too.
All the religions started like this, though didn’t they? Certainly the Abrahamic ones did, anyway.
A small cult develops around one individual and his opinions, the members of that cult are originally ridiculed or persecuted, but eventually have enough strength in numbers to gather momentum and achieve some sort of legitimacy.
What’s interesting to consider is how vastly different the worlds of say Christianity, Islam, Hebrewism etc. are today from their origins, and how much the original teachings have been corrupted over the centuries.
If the message of peace and goodwill that the Abrahmic faiths were built upon has been eroded to the degree that we see on the news every day nowadays, imagine what the message of Scientology with all its UFOs and aliens and people living in volcanoes will be in a thousand years!
They might actually be able to make a decent movie one day.
You’re right, they could actually change completely and become quite normal.
I mean, Christianity once had a ritual which involved smearing the freshly-drawn blood of a goat above the door of a church before you entered, and that’s something you don’t see so much of nowadays.
I can’t believe you would speak ill of Xenu on a Thursday. A Thursday, Matthew! Honestly. Now you’ve done it. Sigh. Now I’ll have to perform the counterjinx while clipping my toenails using only the thumb and index finger of the left hand. Whatever you do, don’t leave the house.
Not without a shuttlecock and a cheese sandwich anyway.
Mmmm… Cheese and shuttlecock sandwich….
‘tidbit’? It’s fucking titbit, fer chrissakes. Only Americans would change a word in order to walk a million miles out of the way in case of offence rather than cut across the grass verge to be at the desired location in no time at all o’clock.
Actually, Toad, without getting too deeply into a conversation about a subject that people with higher involvement knowledge than I possesses, I must interject & point out the Mormon thing is a very complex issue. From conception to current, fractured sects & interpretations, it can’t be simply waved off as another loony Christ complex cult. The Mormon movement has deep-seated historical involvement in the cultural & law-making development of the USA &, either as a goofy phenom or a genuine attempt at unifying a dispersed populace, can’t be dismissed as merely a flakey institution of the right.
A friend who attended my now defunct writing class has, for the last 4 years, been researching the origins of the Mormon church & its interweaving place in American history. I am not Mormon, nor religious (though have a fascination for ‘tradition’, however one may interpret tradition), but I have to say the history is astoundingly fascinating.
My friend, born UK, moved to the US for college/university, fell in love with a mormon girl but something didn’t sit right, came out as gay, became Mormon (hiding his sexuality), became a missionary, lost faith entirely when confronting fundemental issues on sexuality, moved back to Cardiff, entirely lost faith but respected the principles of the church, & picked up writing/researching the history again. Over the years he flirted with the church, but always backed off because of its unilateral stance on homosexuality (& drinking, & smoking & various other vices), until about a year & a half ago he hooked up with ‘the girl’ via the interweb. Within a year they’d rekindled, met up, & married. He was in his mid 40s then & (despite many serious gay relationships & playing as one does in that field) back in the Mormon fold – but on his terms. The book was at first draft stage & it is a brilliant read. Full of treachery, guns, massacres, romance, politics (HUGE part of the American & Mormon parallel trajectory), prayers, back-stabbing, fractions, etc etc etc.
True, the Mormon history began with one man representing a ‘lost text’ spoken to him by God over the period of time (cynics, sharpen thy claws). He was revered in some quarters as an incarnation of God, a representation of Christ on earth, etc. But, the Mormon church we have today is an entirely different prospect to the one that set out. &, despite the idolisation, the Mormon faith was only always about values & morals. OK, some of them values are a little draconian (no coffee, booze, smokes, same sex loving, etc) but essentially (albeit over a period of famine, drought, war, etc) it also developed an economical communal stability which continues to this day. It taught self sufficiency AND collective responsibility/liability that pre-dated Marxism & Communism (which to our cynical eyes today either looks & smells of a cult sucking money from the low waged or a capatalist’s dream come true); it was a great influence on how the common law structure in the US works today, especially the court procedure & the right to bear witness & trial by jury, AND helped properly mould & establish the democratic voting procedure in favour of the citizen rather than the politician. There are countless other examples of how the Mormon church became fundemental to the political structure of the USA, & by proxy the American public.
Sure, there were monumental fuck ups, there was corruption, but look at any movement ‘for the people’ & you’ll find just the same.
There’s a huge myth structure built around Mormonism (of course, justified some would say, based on the fact the ‘religion’ is itself built on a myth developed & hawked by a con man) & a lot of people don’t ever see past the multi-wife/child abuse cult nonsense that dogs them at every turn (truth is, that whole thing revolves around one family head – who was excommunicated from the official faith years ago on the basis of his shenanigans – & what he did under his break off brand of Mormonism).
I’m not in any way defending the church here or advertising it, just pointing out that it has more basis in reality & living than Scientology – that is an organisation determined to remain aloof & secular, elitist & dangerously threatening to investigation. These guys are protecting their practices, not their people’s ‘faith’; whereas Mormonism, like the Catholic* church for example, has dodgy elements & issues with origin etc so protects its people’s faith rather than its day to day activities.
My writer friend is Mormon still smokes & drinks & has written a detailed, unsympathetic historical account of the influence of The Book of Mormon on the very workings of the USA today. He knows there are inaccuracies in the origins, in the overall structure, but he (like millions of Christians, Muslims, Catholics, etc) ignores them in favor of the path he wishes to take. I respect that & don’t question his reasons, even the contradictory ones that are glaring & crippling.
It’s not a church I would be interested in being a part of (nor any, for that matter), but I understand the draw of a faith that actively communicates community harmony (e.g. the church in Cardiff provides every Mormon family with a ‘disaster’ kit – consisting of everything they would need in a flood or a power shortage or anything that would leave them cut off for a prolonged period of time; this is not to say this is an apocalypse kit, far from it – it’s community responsibility where they make sure their members are able to operate & assist others in the wider populace when a disaster strikes. How do I know this? I designed the kits about 3 years ago.). It’s not elitist or pretentious or portentous (at least I don’t see any example or evidence of) & welcomes all comers – another friend of mine told me she joined the church years ago & had some of the happiest times of her life with it. She only left because she had an affair with one of the priests & that was seriously frowned upon (as it is, I would say, in any modern Church). A work colleague is married into a Mormon family (he is agnostic, she is lapse Mormon) but his family side are Baptist – they all get on like a house on fire. I’m sure that there are incidents, like in any church, or prejudice, ignorance, bigotry, etc. but I’m old enough these days to understand that informs most of everything with a social bent.
S’anyway, his book (Guns, Prophets & Prayers) is being hawked to academic publishers at the moment &, with any luck, should see the light of day in about a year. Seriously, seriously, well worth the read – it’s not a preachy book, it doesn’t justify the religion, it reports & analyses & questions. Get it if you ever see it, if only because it reads like a bodice ripper of a thing, what with all the ‘action’ that took place in the formative 100years from the church’s inception.
*of course, the Catholic church ar a little in denial about the extent of the child abuse in its ranks – this is a tad different to the Mormon church where they have taken active steps to hound out the nasties in their ranks. Unfortunately, those nasties go off & create a new brand of Mormonism & then the original church gets tarred with their heavy brush.