“The Master” is a dangerous movie. I can’t remember a time in recent memory when I worried about what characters might do when they entered a scene. But when Joaquin Phoenix comes into a frame or scene at any time in “The Master,” you’re really concerned he’s going to hit or kill somebody, or do something utterly wild and unpredictable. His character, Freddie, is an alcoholic and a sociopath. Freddie has just been discharged from the Navy at the end of World War II. He’s a sexual deviant, who we learn later was abused by an aunt. Freddie is also a loner, a drifter whose temper is so bad he can’t hold a job. And then he meets Lancaster Dodd, and his life changes completely.
Dodd is played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. He comes with a family–wife Amy Adams, a daughter and son in law, and a son. What is Dodd? He says he’s a writer and a nuclear scientist, among other things. But he’s also already come up with his own religion, a cult called The Cause. His own son says later that Dodd is just making it up as he goes along. But his wife is sold and is his collaborator. The son in law sees opportunity in it as well. And soon The Cause picks up a couple of wealthy female patrons, played by Patty McCormack (star of “The Bad Seed” in the 1960s) and the much missed Laura Dern. (I wish she were in more movies. She’s spot on.)
There’s so much going on in “The Master,” you almost need two hours and 17 minutes to dissect it. It’s a gritty, edgy, uncomfortable film marked by Freddie’s deviancy and Dodd’s avuncular unease. Phoenix and Hoffman are completely riveting, never once hit a false note, and keep the action moving. Amy Adams peels back a new side of her very interesting, onion like sensibility. She seems to always have new tricks to show us. Knowing that Hoffman and Phoenix are show stoppers, Amy works along the edges until she sees her moment. She’s absolutely terrific.
The Cause is not Scientology per se. But it mimics it. The courses are called “Applications.” There are kind of EEG machines. There’s a violence to the Cause, mostly instigated by Freddie, that has been associated with Scientology. I was reminded of a lot of things– including Oprah tearing up every time a new New Age guru stops by with a book of aphoristic gobbledygook. Dodd knows he’s making it up as he goes along. Wait for the scene when Dern meekly questions something in his book. He’s contradicted an earlier stand. Dodd–Hoffman–loses it, and we get a glimpse into his Machiavellian mind.
But the sham that is The Cause is unveiled–at least for the audience. When Hoffman/Dodd finally reveals his big discovery–what will change everyone’s lives–you just shake your head. It’s as mundane as the stuff that comprises other cults’ revelations. The emperor has no clothes.
"Other cults"? What "other cults"? There are NO "other cults".
There's only prophets, churches, religions, and beliefs, providing us presidential material,…
Nit pickers might argue that it’s only legal for people with certain medical conditions who have a note from their doctor, but that was sham legal mumbo jumbo used to dupe Arizonans into voting for legalizing marijuana.
The proof that this has nothing to do with medicine is written into the law – you don’t need a prescription from a doctor to get it, you just need a “recommendation” and you don’t even need a doctor, you can go to a naturopath or a homeopath to get one.
Homeopathy and naturopathy are simply government-regulated quackery. Not even uber liberal California allows these so-called physicians to prescribe marijuana.
Hey - homeopaths have to do something in this country - and cultural/political subversion is about all NewAgers are good for! Leave 'em alone! That's our job!
"To hear one manipulative [James Arthur Ray] speech is to hear them all. Each one is a mish-mash of falsely defined problems and equally sham solutions, with a few phony promises peppered into the mix."
-- George Neumayr, who was not attempting to provide a quote for calling Obama's ruling strategy cultishly NewAge - or for some damn fool to show replacing the president's name with James Arthur Ray's changes nothing - Neumayr just wanted to let it be known he's finding the whole Obama thing wanting, whatever it is, and was doing so in the pages of The American Spectator.
"Now that White House 'Green Jobs Czar' Van Jones has resigned, what's next?
Inevitably, the American mainstream media - ABC, NBC, CBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, et al - must be held to account for sitting on the sidelines as this major story kept building without them, went viral on YouTube, and then became so large that a key appointee of President Obama was forced to step down.
For most people in this country, the resignation was the first they had heard of Van Jones. For this sin of journalistic omission, there’s institutional media blame. Bias is too tame a word for the utter shamelessness on display: Only Republican scandals – real and imagined – matter.
And it's not just those the Democratic-Media Complex dub as 'mobs' or 'tea baggers' that are taking notice. Diminishing audience and evaporating subscribership reflect widespread consumer dissatisfaction. Eventually, the money will run out.
But until then, the growing alternative media of Internet and talk radio and a burgeoning mass of justifiably angry Americans will make every effort to expose the sham that is mainstream journalism."
-- Andrew Breitbart, stating exactly what I've seen out there - I called a liberal friend to crow about Van Jones' resignation and he had no idea who he was, just as he also knew nothing of Barack Obama's vice-presidential candidate John Edwards' sexual affair with Rielle Hunter during the election season - which is just the way the mainstream media wants it, in what's referred to as The Washington Times.
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The New York Times' Judith Warner (author of the book, "Perfect Madness") wrote a column on Buddhism, meditation, and "mindfulness" where she confesses to many things we at TMR have been saying:
Being a tool of the SHAM (Self-Help and Actualization Movement).
Knowing David Foster Wallace killed himself by thinking like this.
Getting angry at her husband for pointing out she's become a silly "NewAge" person - with terrible taste in music (and being shallow enough to side with the silliness and bad taste against her devoted spouse - potential divorce material.)
Of "not being there at all" but foolishly claiming to actually "Be Here Now" - and thinking such self-imposed obliviousness has "charm".
Discovering she's actually been disconnecting from people - the exact opposite of what all this NewAge dribble claims.
Taking advice from people suffering from "depression and self-depletion" who "send,...silent good wishes to people all over the world who have problems exactly like my own." (I guess the rest of us don't matter or couldn't be of any help to anyone so troubled in the first place.)
We love this bullshit line: "I have no doubt that this meta-connectedness feels real, and indeed is real, in the abstract at least." Yea: in the abstract. Idiot talk of the highest order.
Another goody: "I’ve come lately to wonder whether meaningful bonds are well forged by the extreme solipsism that mindfulness practice often turns out to be." Right: solipsism will bring us together. Sure, dummy. Being wrong is a community organizing tool.
She acknowledges such people become evangelical in defense of their wrongness. The very thing they hypocritically hate Christians for.
Of course, selfishness, being self-absorbed - and boring - and inhuman.
Other than making her as ugly as all that, Judith Warner being a Buddhist is just the bee's knees.
And, now, multiply all that terrible nonsense by the millions - no billions - of selfish, pretentious, idiots believing in it, in our neighborhoods, college campuses, government, etc., and you start to get some scale of our problems.
Why does it seem, as the Boomers (who brought us this crap in it's modern guise) continue to assume the reigns of power, that we've "fallen and can't get up"?
I was a card carrying member of the New Age for more than half my life. I have a masters degree in Oriental medicine and a doctorate in homeopathy. I spent 20 years studying the stuff. And stuff is a kind word. It's more like shit. That's right, after drinking the kool-aid for two decades, I finally drank the antidote and it wasn't a homeopathic one. It was a full potency cure called rational thought. I now believe that 99.9% of 'New Age' hogwash (and that includes CAM) is nothing more than a poison arrow of quackery and sham aimed at the gullible and the weak. Like a cult member deprogramming themselves, I am slowly trying to make sense of myself and re-train my brain muscles. Your blog is like a deliciously strong cup of coffee after awakening from a very, very bad dream. Keep up the good work, the world needs people like you to cut through the bullshit like a samurai of sanity.
Did I also mention that I used to be a Democrat?
:o)
-- Donavan Freberg (above) delivering the message many claim is impossible because, you know, TMR is so damn "mean" - and NewAge beliefs are just too fucking awesome to ever be abandoned - but delivering it none-the-less, on TMR's post about Tim Minchin's Anti-NewAge Beat Poem "Storm".
"Produced by the justly respected team of Robert Halmi Sr. and Robert Halmi Jr., and starring Mira Sorvino as a brilliant archaeologist and martial arts expert, NBC’s miniseries The Last Templar is a likable though fanciful and indeed frequently silly four-hour miniseries about the hunt for an ancient document that could shake the foundations of Christianity if it should come to light.
If that sounds familiar, that’s because of the obvious similarities to The Da Vinci Code, the bestselling novel by Dan Brown and film by Ron Howard. In both Brown’s novel and Howard’s movie, the protagonist’s quest leads to the revelation that Christianity as we know it is a sham invented by the Catholic Church to allow a small group of people to have undue power over the world."
-- S.T. Karnick, writing about another effort by Hollywood to suck people into - while turning attention away from - the obvious sham of NewAge and Pagan beliefs, reporting on Big Hollywood.
First, a confession: Some 25 years ago a friend talked me into spending a load of money and considerable time to attend an Erhard Sensitivity Training seminar; est, as it was called — with lower case letters — was like a rip-off of Scientology, Zen Buddhism, and numerous feel-good philosophies, cobbled together into an upwardly mobile way of thinking and talking that was part of the "human potential movement."
You probably don't remember that, either. It went the way of disco and mood rings, but for a few years it was hailed as the breakthrough of the ages, allowing human beings to transcend themselves, attain happiness, fulfillment, prosperity, and peace with all people: est ultimately disappeared in a welter of litigation, acrimony, and IRS claims.
I guess I was too thick or slow or stupid, but I never got on board,...
-- The very-smart Will Mordock, of the Charleston City Paper, on Self-Improvement schemes.
"I'd kind of written him off in a snobbish way, like, 'Oh, he's the guy who made Eastern philosophy accessible to Westerners' and I was like, wait, I know nothing about Eastern philosophy. He's written 50 books, he's a medical doctor, he's an amazing thinker."
See, this is why I wish sheeple (Except for Oprah, almost always white women) and, especially, my friends would leave New Age con artists alone: These cult followers (and that's all they are or seem to secretly aspire to be) don't have a clue what they're looking for, or talking about, and, whatever it is, they always return to the real world without their clothes and/or money.
O.K., let's break this bullshit down, taking the "spiritual healer" claim first:
Chopra has said,"I don't consider myself a religious or spiritual leader, I consider myself a writer."
Smart man. He stays out of a lot of trouble that way. (The kind of trouble people, like Beth, want to put him in,...with people like me:) Got that, Beth? "He's written 50 books" because - just like your sorry ass - he's just a "writer",...and nothing more.
Is he, like, a prophet? He tells Stephen Colbert (in the clip above) he is: But only if it's spelled p-r-o-f-i-t. Nice, huh? No claims on God, or to 'the other side" - or *anything* - but merely a spinner of so-called spiritual-sounding tales. (And a pretty tired-looking one, for somebody who writes anti-aging books,...) In other words, Deepak Chopra is just another dickhead with a laptop, talking about woo, trying to take up *somebody's* time and money - and succeeding at it - because idiots, like Beth, have too much of both to notice.
Really, the only thing that's "amazing" is that, by 2007, supposedly-educated, jaded, post-punk Americans, like our Beth, are still allowing him/helping him to get away with it. Beth's helping him,...because she's, apparently, figured out an angle for getting a little scratch out of it too. (Fuck everybody else. Hell, from the sound of that Lisick pull-quote, I bet she'd even fuck Chopra. Word to "Mr. Lisick": Think, Man,...this stuff is "magic" for marriages. Just check the divorce rates to see: They correspond perfectly with Self-Help's popularity.)
And how do I know this? Because Chopra made himself, and Eastern philosophy, "accessible" to most Westerners-In-The-Know by originally being involved in The Maharishi Caper, the medical scandal that came about after his perverted leader, the so-called Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, was already roundly dissed, by The Beatles, for trying to molest Prudence, Mia Farrow's sister.
(Question: Why doesn't anybody pay attention to that? The fact that John, Paul, George, and Ringo - especially Ringo - dismissed all this nonsense? Doesn't Beth Lisick - or the press - know how to use Wikipedia when it comes to New Age bullshit?)
Here, try this line if you want to consider Deepak's ethics - or his "Ayervedic" credentials:
"[Chopra] misrepresented Maharishi Ayur-Veda as India's ancient system of healing, rather than what it is, a trademark line of "alternative health" products and services marketed since 1985 by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Hindu swami who founded the Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement."
Whoo-hoo! Sign me up! That fact alone screams "Trust me!" doesn't it? It's no wonder DC's had such a brilliant career with a background like that to lean on! It's also no wonder he spends so much time telling people not to believe in this reality,...he's too busy trying to steal it from them!
If your auto mechanic had a background that started with ripping people off, you wouldn't go to him, but that doesn't stop these poor delusional bastards, with more money than sense, from lining up in front of those who are more-than-willing to take advantage of them. And, when it all fails, then the followers get cute with their answers to how that could've happened.
Or, like in the case of Beth Lisick, they might write a book and hope to get their credibility back through money.
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, huh? Ruthless.
Fine. But that also makes Beth Lisick, officially, one of The Enemies of Reason:
As a new mother, I'd think Beth would care about the world she's leaving her child, rather than merely considering the short-term profit she, herself, can make by cynically exploiting other people's gullibility. And, if she thinks her kid won't later find out about what she's doing, then she's more delusional than I'd ever given her credit for when I used to listen to her tales of wandering through K-Mart, making fun of Americans in the middle, and the like. New Age waxes and wanes. The truth will still be here when this season peaks.
And it just occurs to me that, regarding what Beth Lisick actually does, I'm now thinking the same thing, today, that I thought when I first heard her read, with a jazz band, on our stage so long ago:
Just another stuck-up poseur with a little talent - but too-little appreciation for what's around her - and, come to think of it, that's one thing that's always been truly sick about the New Age.
I, for one, don't have that problem.
I'm totally happy to know the residue of the Boomer and post-Boomer generations are becoming experts on life after death, through the smarmy likes of Deepak Chopra, because, now, I can thoroughly enjoy the immense amount of satisfaction I get whenever I hear news of their sorry sage-burning asses, finally, leaving this part of the earth forever:
THINK FOR YOURSELF
I've got a word or two To say about the things that you do You're telling all those lies About the good things that we can have If we close our eyes (Meditation)
Do what you want to do And go where you're going to Think for yourself 'Cause I won't be there with you
I left you far behind The ruins of the life that you have in mind And though you still can't see I know your mind's made up You're gonna cause more misery
Do what you want to do And go where you're going to Think for yourself 'Cause I won't be there with you
Although your mind's opaque Try thinking more if just for your own sake The future still looks good And you've got time to rectify All the things that you should
Do what you want to do And go where you're going to Think for yourself 'Cause I won't be there with you
Do what you want to do And go where you're going to Think for yourself 'Cause I won't be there with you Think for yourself 'Cause I won't be there with you
People think I spend a lot of time blogging, which is silly. I blog when I have the time. What I spend a lot of time doing online is reading. And not about cults and stuff. I write about what I find on that when maybe I come across something interesting, or when it references a thought I've had about it. But, usually, when I find a cult article, I'll just quickly bookmark it, hopefully, to put it somewhere appropriate later when I have the time. And then I go back to reading about bruxism or something.
But, if I want to, there is a lot of good writing on what I think of as cultish-thinking; just focusing on specific aspects of it, rarely completing the puzzle, or just admitting it, like, say, Panda Bear, M.D. (I'm not sure, but I think being from Greece might give him some insight that doctors and scientists, here, haven't grappled with yet. I think my trips to Europe did for me.) Still, having others parse the subject of cults - even if they don't call it that - has been of immense help to me; improving my knowledge on the "second-hand self-help" thing, and, especially, just for fullfilling my love for the written word.
For instance, just to show you how it goes, I'd been thinking about when I read Salon's very un-cultish description of this new TV show, "Aliens In America" (above) that features a Pakistani kid "perplexed by the immorality and shallowness" of the Americans around him while "truly, deeply confused at the sorts of ethical lapses that most American kids take for granted as the dog-eat-dog flavor of high school life", asking "How can he navigate this strange and confusing world that he's landed in?"
Now, funny as the show may be, I'm not really concerned about how Raja will "navigate this strange and confusing world that he's landed in" but how I - me, an American - live with the "ethical lapses" I've had to navigate - like what I'll call The Oprah Spirit - that I later found was perfectly captured by Steve Salerno (Author of SHAM) in "The Sociopath's Guide to the Universe. Part 2.:
The true genius of the new spirituality was that it gave each person license to be his own Pope, free to redefine right and wrong as expedient, free to blow off the very idea of conscience. And let’s face it, if you already know that your beliefs and behaviors are inconsistent with the demanding edicts of most formal religions...isn't it so much neater to just declare yourself "spiritual" and not have anyone to answer to?
Yea, isn't it?
In a related vein, there's an interesting discussion on Orac's blog about the history of Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) surviving alongside real medicine, since (as Panda Bear noted) it can't survive on it's own. Orac titled it Selective Pressures and the Evolution of Alternative Medicine:
There actually is no "fossil record" of discontinued CAM methods and therapies. The reason is simple: CAM does not abandon its methods, regardless of evidence and, to a large degree, regardless of harm. Yes, individual treatment modalities may wax and wane in popularity, but they never go away completely. They never go extinct. Think about it a bit. Can you think of a single "alternative medicine" treatment modality that's ever been abandoned because it either doesn't work, is too harmful, or has been co-opted by conventional medicine. I can't. CAM is, in the words of James Randi, an "unsinkable rubber duck." It just won't disappear,...homeopathy, for example, has persisted 200 years despite no evidence for its efficacy. Aryuvedic medicine has persisted at least a couple of millennia, despite a similar lack of evidence. Ditto traditional Chinese medicine. Never mind that these systems were developed in a time when very little was known about how the body actually works and are infused with spiritual and religious beliefs. They are still used my many millions, if not billions, of people worldwide. They have left no "fossils." Of course, as in evolution in biology, this selection, applied over long periods of time, may ultimately eliminate such modalities, but if I were somehow able to call the Doctor to give me a ride in his TARDIS a couple of hundred years in the future, I bet that virtually all of these CAM modalities would still be in use.
Interesting stuff. The second half - where Orac discovers that CAM is a medical parasite (which sounds about right) - is even more so. But I've got to get out of here. Go read 'em yourself,...I'll get back to this when I've "got some time". I'm too busy not-checking-out jaw-dropping parasites like the one below. As someone once said, "The stupid - it burns!":
It's always nice to see, in this nation of liars, we're not all the suckers they take us as:
"Now that White House 'Green Jobs Czar' Van Jones has resigned, what's next?
"The more I thought about it, the more I realized … this is a racket."
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The New York Times' Judith Warner (author of the book, "Perfect Madness") wrote a column on Buddhism, meditation, and "mindfulness" where she confesses to many things we at TMR have been saying:
I love your blog.
Donavan,
"Produced by the justly respected team of Robert Halmi Sr. and Robert Halmi Jr., and starring Mira Sorvino as a brilliant archaeologist and martial arts expert, NBC’s miniseries The Last Templar is a likable though fanciful and indeed frequently silly four-hour miniseries about the hunt for an ancient document that could shake the foundations of Christianity if it should come to light..jpg)
"I'd kind of written him off in a snobbish way, like, 'Oh, he's the guy who made Eastern philosophy accessible to Westerners' and I was like, wait, I know nothing about Eastern philosophy. He's written 50 books, he's a medical doctor, he's an amazing thinker."
See, this is why I wish sheeple (Except for Oprah, almost always white women) and, especially, my friends would leave New Age con artists alone: These cult followers (and that's all they are or seem to secretly aspire to be) don't have a clue what they're looking for, or talking about, and, whatever it is, they always return to the real world without their clothes and/or money. 
Beth also claims Tupak Okra is "a medical doctor" but that's not *exactly* true either since, as former president of the American Association of Ayervedic Medicine, he'd qualify to most real medical doctors as an Indian witch doctor. One who (because of the gullibility of the Baby Boomers and their offspring) has gotten away with practicing his particular brand of bullshit on Western citizens for far, far, too long. 
And how do I know this? Because Chopra made himself, and Eastern philosophy, "accessible" to most Westerners-In-The-Know by originally being involved in The Maharishi Caper, the medical scandal that came about after his perverted leader, the so-called Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, was already roundly dissed, by The Beatles, for trying to molest Prudence, Mia Farrow's sister.
Here, try this line if you want to consider Deepak's ethics - or his "Ayervedic" credentials:
What an "amazing thinker"!?! NO - What a NEW AGE ASSHOLE!!! 
And it just occurs to me that, regarding what Beth Lisick actually does, I'm now thinking the same thing, today, that I thought when I first heard her read, with a jazz band, on our stage so long ago:
People think I spend a lot of time blogging, which is silly. I blog when I have the time. What I spend a lot of time doing online is reading. And not about cults and stuff. I write about what I find on that when maybe I come across something interesting, or when it references a thought I've had about it. But, usually, when I find a cult article, I'll just quickly bookmark it, hopefully, to put it somewhere appropriate later when I have the time. And then I go back to reading about bruxism or something. 
For instance, just to show you how it goes, I'd been thinking about when I read Salon's very un-cultish description of this new TV show, "Aliens In America" (above) that features a Pakistani kid "perplexed by the immorality and shallowness" of the Americans around him while "truly, deeply confused at the sorts of ethical lapses that most American kids take for granted as the dog-eat-dog flavor of high school life", asking "How can he navigate this strange and confusing world that he's landed in?" 
The true genius of the new spirituality was that it gave each person license to be his own Pope, free to redefine right and wrong as expedient, free to blow off the very idea of conscience. And let’s face it, if you already know that your beliefs and behaviors are inconsistent with the demanding edicts of most formal religions...isn't it so much neater to just declare yourself "spiritual" and not have anyone to answer to?
