how to tell if one of your co-workers is the member of a stupid cult (in 5 easy steps).

i had a novel experience the other day. while talking to one of my co-workers, it suddenly began to dawn on me that she's most likely a member of a cult. great news! i'd never met a cult-follower before so i saw this as something of an opportunity to try my hand at being an amatuer sociologist.

long story short: i was insanely hung-over and nutrient-starved. as such, my brain was looking for anything to prevent it from lapsing into a coma. when no amount of fortune cookies and mr. pibb could resuscitate my rum-stained cns, i began having a conversation with the girl i was working with about life, the universe and all that. after a while, i began to sense that i was having a conversation with a crazy person. ah, but there was a reason behind the madness--she was a member of some church downtown (the name of which i never managed to get out of her) that apparently takes it as its holy calling to cram as much inane nonsense into the heads of its members as possible.

things that led me conclusively to believe that she was in a cult:

1. doublespeak.

she was intent on replacing the meaning of everyday words with spiritual doppelgangers in order to bog the conversation down in semantics. when asked: "hey, does your family go to the same church as you?," she replied: "the church is my family." when asked: "hey, what is the name of your religion?," she replied: "i don't follow a religion. . .i follow the truth."

2. lack of specifics.

i asked her what her church was called. at first, she claimed it wasn't a "church" at all and that the "church" was an internal experience or something like that. i finally, got her to admit that her and her co-religionists did at some point meet in a "building" (or something to that effect) and that this building probably had a name, but that information wasn't to be shared with non-believers.

3. unqualified leader (whose mug-shot will no doubt be on the front-page of the sun in a few years).

i asked her where the leader of her congregation went to school, and she just laughed and said that he didn't need school, but instead had "the holy spirit."

4. bizarre beliefs about everyday things.

she claimed not to be african-american. rather, her ancestors were taken to africa to be sold, but were originally from some other place (which was left unspecified). apparently, the idea that blacks were originally from africa was a product of "white history" and was not to be trusted. also, she said she didn't believe in statistics. or the big bang.

5. close-mindedness.

she was perplexed as to why i was so curious about what she thought. i told her i'm more or less by nature interested in what other people think (i didn't give her the most honest answer, which would have been something along the lines of: "i'm afraid if i don't do something, my body will spontaneously switch-off"). she said that she didn't care about what other people thought. that she had the right answer and that was that. "i don't care about buddhists" is a semi-direct quote.

. . .the interesting thing about cults is the insight they offer into existing mainstream religious movements. most, if not all, large religious group started out as something more or less like whatever bullshit my co-worker believes. the transnational catholic church, with all of its land and power and money, began as a few people gathered around at some undisclosed location saying things that perplexed their fellow citizens ("quis somnium!").

all of this strikes me as fairly decent counter-apologetics. the only real difference between secretive new religious movements and their more established counterparts is time. we all take for granted that the catholic church isn't going anywhere, but that doesn't make it intrinsically more sensible than the neo-montanist ramblings of some would-be prophet in downtown baltimore.

+mc

black metal

one of the problems with being a 'nihilist' or a 'misanthrope' is encountering what other 'nihilists' and 'misanthropes' have to say. the rantings and ravings of most 'nihilists' often strike me as being terribly pedestrian. a friend of mine posted up a video on facebook of a band called 'anaal nathrakh,' which is apparently a line from excalibur that means something along the lines of 'darker than your deepest pits of despair metal.'

the tune my friend put up is pretty wicked. it makes you want to curb-stomp a priest or do something else that is equally violent and un-christian. after listening to it a few times, i decided to look into the band a little bit. i read their wikipedia article and an interview they gave a little while back.

and things went downhill from there.

i'm probably better off not knowing what musicians think. nevertheless, one of the fine gentleman from 'anaal nathrakh' decided to describe the philosophy underlying his music:

"mankind is the source of some of the most ridiculous stupidity, the most unadulterated deceit and barbarism imaginable. surely there is plenty to be less than happy with there. civilisation has, despite its achievements, produced types of people that make me feel physically sick with their pettiness, their arrogance, their blindness, their lack of scope. if the human condition is one of being eternally confronted with the philosophical 'other,' and being made to continually feel disgust, if existence is synonymous with an ever present repulsion and hatred for the 'life' that seethes everywhere before us like some tumour, does it really come as a surprise that some people should feel less than happy about this world? no master/slave dialectics, no self affirmation implied by the act of killing, just repulsion and a desire to be rid of presentations of 'life.' even further, despite already to a greater or lesser extent wallowing in its own repugnance, mankind amounts to a disaster waiting to happen. a race of idiots, fucking idiots, that invents moralities and religions to defend inbred prejudices that it doesn't even perceive, let alone understand, and to divert attention from the fact that it feels incapable of existing on its own justification. and further than this, that were it to be capable of existing on its own as some members of the species seem to be, it would still be totally incapable of a single truly, radically original thought."

jesus fucking christ. go to church already, or go on a spree-killing, or revive the nazi party if it pleases you. honestly, what are these people so upset about? yes, the world is callous and uncaring. yes, morality does not exist except for as a set of social-constructs substantiated by force. yes, people, when left to their own devices, are absolute pricks. yes, life is meaningless.

i don't understand what all the fanfare is about. even if all the aforementioned propositions are demonstrably true (which i believe they are), there is no reason to get up in arms about this sort of thing. one thing that i will forever fault nietzsche for is the frequency with which his writing is misappropriated and turned into something horribly dramatic. i like to think of nietzsche as a humorist/ironist (albeit, a pitch-black one). his writings meander through the various permutations of western thought, and even though he finds all of them to be completely bankrupt by their own standards, there is some hope, some comedy to be found therein.

which is what these people miss.

+mc

capitalist dogs

so i'm standing around (as usual) at my dead-end restaurant job today, and i notice that there are fruit flies everywhere. this is sub-optimal. we've had a problem with fruit flies for a while given that these creatures ignore every standard of human decency and propriety. nevertheless, it hadn't been that big of a deal. the flies were content to congregate in and around certain parts of the restaurant and, for the most part, left the guests well enough alone. occasionally, someone would complain about it, and i'd assure them that some sort of final solution was in the works.

today, one table had fruit flies in two of their dishes and a casual stroll through the dining room revealed many more. like the good worker i am, i pointed this out to my manager. she told me that when a few of the guys from corporate came around last week they didn't like the bug-light we'd installed in kitchen and told us to get rid of it. apparently, they were worried that a guest might see it and complain. up until then, the bug-light had been keeping the fruit fly population at a mangeable level.

for as long as i've been there, no guest had ever gone into the kitchen. there is a huge sign on the door that reads "KITCHEN," and if a guest was to wander back there the bug-light probably wouldn't be the first thing they'd notice. apparently, guests are more likely to be bothered by out-of-sight, inconspicuous bug-lights than they are by actual bugs. . .i don't have much more to say. i wish i could be making this up.

+mc

religion and the public life

what should the role of religion be in determining public policy?

short/flippant answer: none.

medium-length answer: well, that depends on what we're going for. i think public policy should be founded on something resembling the process of rational discourse, and a large number of the 'premises' that underly religious belief are simply not open to that sort of discussion. this is very old-hat, largely because it's true: as soon as you say something is a matter of 'faith' the discussion is for all intents and purposes over. moving right along.

personal answer: i dislike people telling me what to do. this is just a quirk/defect of mine, stemming from when i was very young (apparently i asked my mother why she got to make the rules when i was around 3'ish). the very least that i ask when being told that i should curtail the machinations of my will in favor of that of the group is that the directive make some sense, and that to me is the essence of my encounter with religious 'morality.' just tonight, i was reading over the moral guidelines of some eastern orthodox group, and about 3-lines in i got the sneaking suspicion that me and the writers of the screed were just not from the same planet. for example: "a church funeral is denied a person who has been or will be cremated. requiem services afterwards are also forbidden because the person in question has already abandoned all hope in the lord and prayers are therefore useless for such a soul" (ARCOD, "moral issues"). honestly, who cares about that sort of stuff?

my real problem is not that people believe stupid bullshit because at the end of the day we all do. if there is one thing that unites all of mankind, it is our insistence on believing the most egregious hokus-pokus even in light of damning evidence to the contrary. rather, i am perturbed because these people can vote, and by doing so, they can change my life for the worse. i'm sorry. the bible just doesn't cut it. if god wanted things done a certain way, he would do it himself and OT all of us who didn't agree. in lieu of that, we might need to settle for something more concrete. like: 'reason' or some other enlightenment-era tom-foolery.

+mc

destination: morgue

"this world is hell, and men are both the demons and the damned"
--schopenhauer

i read about neurocysticercosis the other night, and it troubled me greatly. i was probably better off not seeing images of the brain being overtaken by a host of parasitic cysts, but i am generally appreciative of these sorts of experiences as they shock me out of any complacency i may have been lulled into. see: the world hates us and wants us to suffer. i often forget this because i'm too busy living a relatively easy and pain-free life, shielded from much of life's tribulations by the blessings of circumstance and privilege.

various religionists have opined that creation is "good"--i'm not sure what creation they're referring to, but it certainly can't be the one we happen to inhabit. our bodies are a host to dysfunction, parasites, bacteria, viruses, fungi, congenital defects. in addition to all this, we poison ourselves regularly with bad food, carcinogens and unhealthy lifestyle choices. we are time-bombs. at any moment, any one of us could drop dead or be severely incapacitated with no warning. so much for our plans and ambitions and strivings. everything can be reduced to nothing and we have very little say in any of it.

pascal once observed that this world is like prison. every now and again, one of the prisoners is executed and the rest are expected to go on like nothing is wrong. of course, he was living in a different age--where people knew little about the ways of the body and the ways of the world. we have, as a whole, better safety nets than pascal did, but ultimately nothing can protect us from ourselves.

which brings me back to parasitic cysts. parasites act as a perfect metaphor for existence: a mindless, ravaging horde driven only by the desire to consume and replicate, "other"-izing the host (sometimes completely) from within until the host is hollow and dead. not only are we here to devour each other with reckless abandon, but our "calling" transcends any finite sense of purpose we might have. the process that created us is blind and it propels us in a similar fashion to no great end. along the way, there is destruction and attrition, and only by virtue of consciousness can we come to comprehend the fundamental horror that underlies everything.

in light of this lovecraftian cheeriness, the religious mindset, one of hope, even in light of overwhelming evidence that a contrary state of mind would be more rational, is perhaps the reason why humans are still around. it might be the case that we could not survive this burden that is consciousness without some bounded irrationality--some genuine indefatigable optimism in the face of the terrifying prospects that continually assail us. that, and a few G & T's.

+mc

boeing 747

ok: a long time ago, when we didn't know the world's age, the size of the universe, where we came from, or practically anything about nature, belief in god made some sense. intuitively, it might seem like the world was made with humans in mind, that there is some intelligible force controlling it, and that the voices in our head are some way of communicating with this force. with such limited information, any number of "hypotheses" explain the facts equally.

over time, scientific study has revealed two general facts about nature that were unknown to us in times past: (1) the universe is insanely old (2) the universe is insanely large. people try to act like these facts are not "game-changers," but they plainly are. the idea that the world was made with us in mind might have made sense when we thought the world was young and small, but now, it is genuinely pernicious.

the earth is a relative anomaly. if a "creator" had made the universe for the purposes of life in general and human life in particular one might expect to find a whole lot more of it. instead, one finds what one would expect had the emergence of life been an unplanned and un-sought after occurence. yes, it might seem miraculous, but at this point i would like to remind you of an old standy-by of the religious apologist: that of the boeing 747 (the earlier version of this argument was that of a watch in a field, but i think planes are more interesting than watches). if i told you that i found a fully functional boeing 747 in a scrap-heap, you would most likely conclude that someone put it there, rather than it being an accidental composition of scrap-metal, chance and time. unfortunately, this argument is considerably less impressive if i told you that the scrap-heap has a diameter of 93 billion light years (8.8 x 10^26 meters). theoretically, we could make a day-trip around the rest of the heap, and we might find a few other 747's, but mostly we'd just find junk and constructions that look like 747's but have some salient property or another that keeps them from being a place where we'd want to spend much time (e.g. the seats deliver fatal electroshocks every couple seconds or so). matters are complicated, of course, by the fact that we happen to have been born inside the 747 and there are all sorts of amenities therein, such as an open bar, movies, and food--almost as if someone had arranged the whole thing so that we might have a nice place to live (if living in a plane sounds enticing, that is).

this would all be made easier if the 747 could actually fly (i guess "fully functional" was an inappropriate turn of phrase). at that point, we could all take a few turns around the heap, sink a few G & T's, and decide that maybe god is not in the business of planes (or their stalwart passengers) after all.

+mc

why nietzsche gives christian philosophers a raging hard-on (a semi-philosophical essay)

[spoiler alert: i was in a very strange mood when i wrote this]

if there ever was a "cool" philosopher, it would be nietzsche. everyone wants to be his friend (now, at least--back in the day, no one could stand the guy). if you want to be an "edgy" philosopher (if such a thing is possible), you reference nietzsche. even the christians are doing it. the "edgiest" christian philosophers, those radical orthodoxy types (and others i'm sure), have made it their central mission in theology to take nietzsche and other apostles of the "ontology of violence" head-on. no one's pointed out to these people that it's impossible to make orthodox western christianity cool almost by definition, regardless of whether or not you employ hyperbolic terminology or just plain make shit up. even, "not-so-edgy" christian philosophers cite nietzsche. i mean: it's always the same fucking phrase from thus spoke zarathustra ("god is dead"), but nevertheless they always make it a point to throw him in there somewhere whenever they were talking about the perils of modernity.

for a while, i thought the christians were doing this for the same reason everyone else was: to be cool. but after a while i realized something much more pernicious existed beneath the surface of all this "edginess." see: nietzsche "predicted" that without christianity, the west would need new systems of value, and that (post)christian humanism just wasn't going to cut it. he was wrong. . .if he was actually being serious, which he probably wasn't, but christian philosophers probably don't catch that part because they are incapable of understanding a self-referential/self-defeating ironist like nietzsche (the same could be said for kierkegaard, another self-seferential/self-defeating ironist who has been thoroughly misappropriated by practically everyone to the benefit of no one--but i think i'm getting off-track). what they do instead is take the first part of nietzsche's "prediction," the death of god leading to the death of the west, while conveniently skipping over everything else he ever wrote, in order to advance an "edgier" version of the same old, same old "decadence"-talk that we all find so boring. in other words, they are falling back into bad habits, namely: fear-mongering.

they can't convince any of us that their beliefs are worthwhile through all that "old hat" modernist/enlightenment-era trickery like rational argument and examination of the evidence--so instead the rely on some far-fetched doomsday scenario: without christianity keeping the enemies of western civilization (read: muslims, fags, intellectuals and the chinese) at bay, western civilization will collapse and drown in a flood of sodomy, drug use, abortion, and the f-word.

i do have to give christians some credit, tho: religion is much better at producing mindless shock-troops than almost anything atheists can come up with (with the possible exception of various "political religions" like bolshevism and fascism, but those never really worked out so well last time i checked)--which is to say that this whole line of argument is getting excessively pre-modern (by "pre-modern," i am referring to something of an intellectual "throwback" to a pre-individualistic, pre-ratio-centric time that all of us are better off forgetting). the sacred authority of tradition is one of the last vestiges of pre-modern consciousness that still exists today, in which rationality and the autonomous human subject are seen as subordinate to the intuitive transmission of knowledge and obedience. the problem, tho, is that christians do not want to be fully pre-modern--in that they seem to be incapable of having a "good time" in the pre-modern sense of word (i.e. sodomy, drug use, abortion, and the f-word). instead, they want a castrated pre-modernity, wherein they are in charge and none of us get to have any fun ostensibly for the benefit of all.

i know i'm probably simplifying the issue here, but i've had this conversation so many times that i think i'm getting close to truth. it goes something like this:

some christian: christianity is not anti-fun or anti-pleasure. for example, god wants us to take pleasure in sex. . .(begins mumbling) within the confines of marriage and only for the purposes of procreation.

graham the interlocutor: what? i couldn't hear that last part.

some christian: (ahem) . . .like i said, god wants us to take pleasure in sex, but only within the confines of marriage and only for the purposes of procreation.

graham the interlocutor: so you mean god wants us to have fun only within a situation that many people don't find very fun?

some christian: um. . .well, there was a fall or something.

graham the interlocutor: that sounds like bullshit! what if i told you that the only way to enjoy ice cream was when it was mixed with hot-sauce.

some christian: but i don't like hot-sauce.

graham the interlocutor: exactly.

at the end of the day, i'm not sure what's worse: being told you are not wanted or being told you are not needed. that's a trick question. being told either sucks, and any atheist with any credibility has been telling religious people both for quite some time. to have no god and be genuinely pleased with this fact is something religious institutions don't know how to handle. as such, they rely on scare-tactics and the misappropriation of their philosophical superiors as they always have.

+mc