Ex-Scientologist: "Your Spiritual Freedom Is On The Line" (Your Country's, Too, If You're Not Really Careful)

"Your Spiritual Freedom Is On The Line" is such a great quote, because it shows how religious/spiritual/cult believers can be held as slaves, without a need for chains. It's mental slavery, and the only way to avoid it is to abandon the religious/spiritual/cult framework.

It's also fun for me to hear the jargon this woman still speaks - "SPs" (Suppressive Personalities) "tech," and so on - which hit me the same way when I hear NewAgers speak of "soul mates" and the like. The difference, obviously, is this woman understands what she's saying, and where it comes from, while the average person is just unimaginative and spewing nonsense they've picked up as a cultural meme, without having a clue why they do so. That should change.

Also, there's a great story coming out of Japan about the latest arrest in the Aum Shinrikyo cult mess, which should give all these American shruggies pause, when they consider what cultism can do to a healthy culture:

Ms Kikuchi's arrest has forced many here to relive an episode so bizarre and unsettling that it altered the way Japan sees itself, shattering the nation's postwar myth of a perfectly functioning, harmonious society. It also seemed to herald the beginning of nearly two decades in which this one-time economic superpower has suffered countless trials, including last year's tsunami and nuclear disaster.

Their disillusionment is our trajectory, too, after decades of NewAge influence - and it's not over. We can all tell we're on the brink of a cataclysm, but we're not there yet. It should be needless to say, but repeatedly electing leaders who are subject to cultish thinking - or actually in a cult - is no way to avoid the worst that could happen. What is that? Hell if I know:

I study how cultists think, not what screwy conclusions they'll reach by doing so,...