Double Flee A

I have this recurring dream the alarm clock's going off and I have to get up. Then I realize it isn't a dream, which is even worse.

I got up and read about Nawaubianism, the worst religion I've ever heard of. It basically consists of whatever this one guy feels like saying at the time. He now lives in the toughest jail in the country because the leaders of their own religions are apparently highly susceptible to the corrupting influences of underage girls. I like grown women, which is a good sign I'm not going to have to start my own religion. Oh, and I think religion's completely a waste of time, so there's that too.

That aside, how stupid do you have to be to follow a cult? The guys go down to Guyana and have a mass suicide because Jim Jones tells them to, they give their daughters to David Koresh and this York guy and so on, what the hell is wrong with these people? There's already a problem with you if you think spirituality is real, and that's the painful part that nobody likes hearing about, and that's why we are never going to get this whole muslim vs. christian vs. jew thing under control. Ever.

Underlying problem time. If you think you have spiritual needs people can take advantage of those needs, and since spirits are made up like Santa Claus, culty types get to define what your spiritual needs are, for you. You can't blame them for doing what they're good at. Furthermore, if you think there's something wrong with cults you're wrong. Cults do exactly what they're supposed to in the same way that a wheel on a bent axle is supposed to wobble. Cults are simply very good methods for seriously disturbed people to take advantage of other seriously disturbed people.

It's not illegal to be so emotionally susceptible that a cult can gitcha, and our culture reliably spins out a human by-product tailor-made for exploitation, a slogan-repeating wallet-carrying consumer zombie, so I'm wondering what kinds of cults are next, and glad that neither I, nor anyone I know will be in one.

posted by dale @ 7:47 AM