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Reading about the history and practices of Scientology was illuminating because it’s the only religion explicitly designed for the modern post-WWII era. It dist
by pavlov 3y ago
Reading about the history and practices of Scientology was illuminating because it’s the only religion explicitly designed for the modern post-WWII era. It distills many essential ideas of religion to their operational core and attaches them to a front that presents a palatable vector of initiation (which, for modern Western societies, Hubbard correctly identified as psychotherapy, so he made his church look like a mental health program).
Seeing the process of starting a religion laid so bare is helpful in understanding successful operators of the past like Paul the Apostle, Muhammad, Smith, etc.
- pinewurst 3y agoAlso est
- RGamma 3y agoThere's so many schizos running around at all times, one of them has to get it "right" eventually (find them on TikTok these days). It's such an obvious legacy behavior of homo sapiens. But then, we wouldn't have survived without it, would we?
- jhanschoo 3y agoReligion and ideology help organize societies, and Christianity used to be a central focus of community life for the everyday peasant in the Middle Ages. Nations, companies, and the markets obviously aren't a definite existence in our times, and in other places and times they have a very different existence than today. But today they are a central pillar in organizing our societies. Religion seems absurd because they don't mesh well in our societies anymore, but countries and enterprises, for example, may seem an absurd and harmful notion to people of another time and place.
- kaycebasques 3y agoYes, Scientology is on my radar, but which books exactly??