Church of Scientology convicted in France
It’s not exactly the kind of “conviction” you might normally think of when talking about religion. Conviction is a word that religious and spiritual-minded people more often use to ambiguously rate the steadfastness or sincerity of someone’s beliefs. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your view regarding it, the Church of Scientology was convicted of fraud in France, with the organization’s finances at the center of the investigation.
You can easily find the details of this case elsewhere so I won’t echo them here. However, while I have long had the suspicion Scientology is just a big money-laundering scam hiding behind a veil of religion (which this conviction in France tends to support), I see a deeper and even more serious scenario developing. It has to do with the cognitive way in which we human beings associate ourselves with religion and spiritual practices.
If a group wants to form an investment club and call it a religion, let them. I don’t care. Why should I? It doesn’t affect me, because I’m not buying in. If some group wants to gather together and worship the spirits of trees… again, who cares? More power to them. In “illuminated” societies, that same freedom is granted to people who want to take a serious endeavor into an understanding of this “Order amid Chaos” we call life, and God, and Love — so you take the good with the bad, and I’ll leave making the public distinction between “good” and “bad” to someone else.
From an even wider perspective, the very notion that religious and spiritual beliefs can be summarily canned into different forms and flavors, like products on a store shelf from which we get to choose, leaves people in a psychological landscape human beings historically haven’t seen very often. In this landscape, nothing is sacred — at least not in the ways we’ve traditionally viewed the “sacred.” Compound this diminished sense of “ultimate value” with the immediacy of information in this digital age, and individuals start to take on new personas, void of a platform from which to place personal convictions, but are eager and willing to “lead.” Instead of leaning on sacred beliefs, people start basing their convictions on a “just because” or “it feels good” style of philosophy, and misery loves company.
Whole societies start to devolve from the ground up, from being passionate exemplars of their beliefs regarding things like morality, nobility, and purpose, into malleable, formative, complacent bodies ready to be directed toward and/or by the “next big thing.”
Some might argue that this is a good thing, liberating the mind from the oppression of tradition for tradition’s sake. However, if this is happening, and it is a good thing, I would ask… how does such a liberation of the mind truly make individuals more “free,” when it’s human nature to file into organized tribes? There’s an old saying, “Too many chiefs: not enough Indians.”
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2009/10/31 03:00 -0700Z
I like the way you have observed these phenomena and described them so coherently.
I think I would like to post on some similar subject, on my blog. Was thinking about it in the bath. But the focus would not be on religion especially: more the changing landscape of life-support mechanisms, in the broadest possible sense.
I think I would compare what’s happening today, and is mistaken for “freedom”, with the turbulence in Europe in the first millennium AD, and continuing until some arbitrary cut-off, perhaps the emergence of Martin Luther and his 95 theses. In those times, religion was almost simultaneously an instrument of individual liberation and mass oppression. I think it must be difficult for historians to know, and then to depict, what it was really like to live in those ages.
It’s the same today, in the sense that it’s impossible to generalise what’s going on.
2009/11/01 09:02 -0700Z
I can see the similarities in that trend. Perhaps this time, science, rather than religion, will be the oppressor’s tool of choice.
2009/11/01 09:12 -0700Z
Well, I think we oppress ourselves, partly with consumerism. We need jobs to earn a living, we need to consume all the manufactured stuff in order that wealth be distributed. Most people would not find advertising and propaganda oppressive, perhaps. I do. Together with government propaganda, opposition propaganda, religious propaganda. I would prefer silence and peasant simplicity: birdsong whilst we work the fields and so on. I look forward to the downfall of technological civilization, but of course won’t do anything to encourage or hasten any revolution. We have to find a way to live in the environment we find ourselves in. This is the animal’s quest. We are animals.
2009/11/01 09:19 -0700Z
Over here there is an amusing attempt by “science” (as if it were a movement, rather than a profession) to tell government what’s right. government appointed a committee of volunteer scientists to report on drugs - cannabis, ecstasy and so on. Scientist, head of one of these committees, said they are probably less dangerous than cigarettes and alcohol, so government should downgrade classification. government refused. Scientist said that is stupid. Scientist (Professor Nutt) sacked from committee from meddling in politics - publicly speaking against government policy. Now scientists ganging together to demand government listens to their “evidence-based truth” (as opposed to politicians’ politics). I feel like saying “Shut up scientists. We are content to complain about government. We need it but we dislike it. Interfere like this and we’ll complain about you scientists too. And then you won’t have jobs. Because we don’t really need you.”
2009/11/11 12:04 -0700Z
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