When I was in High School I started a self-help phase in my reading that lasted a couple of decades. I started off with a lot of the Classics. How To Make Friends, The Power of Positive Thinking, Acres of Diamonds, and so on.
Along the way I ran across a sub branch of self help books that proclaimed they were more than just ideas, they were real. The Teachings of Don Juan, Way of the Peaceful Warrior, The Silva Method of Mind Control, and yes, Dianetics. Books about Rolfing, the Feldenkrais Method, and assorted people who channeled minor gods such as Ramtha and Abraham and Seth soon followed. Reading this nonsense was good enough for me. It was fun and interesting, but there was no way in hell I was going to pay someone to take me to the Next Level that could only be reached by using one of their Certified Gurus.
About the same time I was reading these books, a bunch of True Believers down in Jonestown where drinking the Koolaide. I was never a Believer and such things have always baffled me. I felt the same about people bombing subways, releasing poison gas, and flying planes into buildings. So I have no problem with Scientology claiming to be a church. All religion is a form of madness and all of them make a lot of money off their believers. Scientology’s real problem is that it was invented too recently. All the old religions are just as silly as Scientology, but they have been grandfathered in.
HBO’s Going Clear is a collection of interviews and video clips. We have shots of people telling stories about the horrors of being a Scientologist intercut with videos of Tom Cruise and John Travolta smiling and saluting photos of L Ron Hubbard. The Villains in the piece of are a lot of people I’ve never heard of who run Scientology today. Easily the most baffling aspect of Scientology is their obsession with pretending they are the Navy. There are endless shots of people dressed as Naval Officers. I guess they didn’t want to dress as knock off priests and nuns, as countless other religions do. But the whole Navy thing is completely goofy.
The funny bit was all the people who left the church and said: looking back, we were just brainwashed. Looking back??? The whole basis of Scientology is brainwashing! Which, again, is pretty much the basis of all faiths.
I read a book a couple of years ago by a comedian who made fun of religions. But he started off by saying he would not be making fun of one particular religion, since they had a tendency to issue death warrants on people who made fun of them, and he did not wish to be beheaded, blown up, or shot. While there was no mention of Scientology having death squads, they do seem to have a lot of people with way too much time on their hands who harass those who leave the church, pretty much forever.
How do they get away with it? Not too long ago a bunch of people paid money so they could die in a sweat lodge run by a self help writer. Why would anyone do that? Because they believe, of course.
I’ve read several books on Dianetics and L Ron Hubbard, so the Big Reveals in Going Clear-the earth is a trillion year old prison camp, volcanos have magic powers, we are all possessed by alien demons, etc.-were not news to me. The info shown here is nothing new to anyone who has read anything about Scientology. What is new is how much money the group now has and questions as to what they are doing with it.
Going Clear was interesting.
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