Monday, February 07, 2011

Leaving the Cult.

I don't know which is funnier in this story about Paul Haggis' departure from Scientology - that it took him 37 years to figure out that he was a member of a cult or that what motivated him to leave Scientology wasn't because his wife was told by Scientology to "disconnect" from her family, but because Scientology breached Hollywood protocol by coming out in favor of Proposition 8.

The closest historical parallel to Scientology I can think of is Manichianism.  We know from The Confessions of St. Augustine that Manichianism provided its adherents to access to movers and shakers in the Roman Empire  which was useful for job placement and self-promotion, along with a system of gradual indoctrination into bizarre and unbelievable doctrines
Posted by Peter Sean at 6:30 PM
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3 comments:

marian said...

This needs to come out into the general media. I have spent over an hour reading this story and I am still not finished. Fascinating. The descriptions of characters in the article describe so well both people in Hollywood in "the business" and people in cults.
Both believe they are part of an elite group, and everything in their lives supports this belief.
This is part of why he had a hard time leaving...

7:55 PM
Peter Sean said...

Good points!

10:31 PM
Anonymous said...

The article is indeed long and has plenty of information and insight about Scientology in it, as much as I ever wanted to know, at least. Everyone seems to think that the OT III level is crucial, and for obvious reasons: it apparently requires the belief that 75 million years ago, someone named Xenu dealt with an overpopulation problem on Earth by dropping souls into volcanos and finishing them off with nuclear weapons. (Seems like dropping people into volcanos would have been sufficient by itself.)

This brings up the whole epistemological issue of plausibility, or "ring of truth." Some texts just are so implausible, they seem impossible to believe. Some texts/claims are easy to believe because they "ring true." The problem is that "plausibility" is partly or largely subjective: some find the resurrection of Jesus plausible; others find it completely implausible. I find the Book of Mormon to be mostly implausible, but I heard someone read it in person, and she wept at it as she read it. Having said that, my point is that the "Xenu" story in Scientology's "OT Level III" is so silly that it seems that it would be implausible to anyone, and thus that no one should be able to believe in Scientology. So...I think it's gonna go away, sooner or later.

I like the guy, toward the end of the article, asking, "What organization helps as many people as Scientology does?" Geez, buddy, open your eyes. There is at least one that has been around a little longer than Scientology, and that has been engaged in charity, famine relief, building schools and hospitals all over the world for a long time.
-The Gadarene

12:20 PM

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