I Love Anonymous vs. Scientology

The girl they had to voice this Anonymous video on the human rights in the Rehabilitation Project Force (another branch of Scientology), really hit the mark. And by hitting the mark, I mean hitting the mark of being ridiculously creepy. If you don’t agree with the content, I sure hope you can agree on that!

Speaking of Scientology, I found this amazing website through the Anonymous cause:

Its long, but read Kendra’s account at least. Her wit, combined with the Orwellian nature of the environment in which she grew, worked, and eventually escaped is really quite engaging. Also, sorry if this sounds rushed, by the by. I’m trying to get dressed and write at the same time. I need to get some gardening supplies. :)

Jesus Camp

I finally sat down and watched Jesus Camp. I’d been meaning to do so for quite some time but I only just got around to it now as it was on Bio and seemed as good a time as any.

 
Would it be dramatic of me to say that this was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen? Not for content, because the content is really quite amazing, but sitting through the movie is so exceedingly difficult for me. It makes me completely and utterly enraged. I hate evangelicals who do this to their children. I hate people in general who do this to their children, be they christian, jew, muslim, or any other faith. They are children. They should be allowed to be children. Instead, these poor souls are locked away in a homeschooling environment where their beliefs don’t get a proper challenging and worst of all, they don’t get interaction from other children their age. Let alone children their age who have, oh the horror of it, different opinions.

What this inevitably creates are a population of children who are completely and utterly inept at being able to cope with the real world. It sets them up for long-term stress and perhaps even mental illness due to poor coping. Crippling depression when they hit their teen years, for example. Explicitly said in the documentary by a family, was the belief that science “knows nothing.” Science knows nothing? These are the same families, who, when a member is sick, flock to the doctor for medicine to make themselves better. That’s certainly science. And it certainly knows how to make you well again.

This is another huge qualm with this sort of belief that drives me mad. They call people who aren’t completely devoted to the cause “hypocrites and liars.” Okay, so you can pick and chose which parts of science you like and are to your benefit, but you sure don’t see the hypocrisy in that? If you tell your children to go all the way, then come on, you guys, why don’t you go the whole way, too? Oh wait, that might make you more backwards than the Amish. Which, actually, is a group I give a lot of credit. Now that’s devotion to your religion, and boy, the Amish don’t bother anyone in the process! Take a page from them, you guys!

Here it comes again, but its worth mentioning again and again. While religion was in my life from a young age, I am so very, very thankful that it was not pushed on me. Eventually I came to my own decision, and while many people don’t like the decision that came to me, I’m grateful to be allowed to have had to opportunity to have it happen that way. Though I suppose in some instances religion was commonplace and overbearing. Overall however, religion does get a bit of distaste when way you hear about it is largely through the mouth of an illiterate misogynic racist, but that’s another tale for another day.

I suppose that this is a bit all over the place as I’m horrifically tired, but still. Jesus Camp certainly made me upset for the youth of certain parts of our nation. I wept for them, though they’d probably be unhappy to hear that. I just wish that I had known indoctrination like this was going on so close to home sooner than I did.

Jonestown Massacre

Originally written around six this morning.

Sorry if this seems disjointed. Its six in the morning and watching Most Evil specials on this sort of thing makes me a bit cantankerous in the morning.

One thing that never ceases to bother me whenever I hear about it, is the massacre at Jonestown. What bothers me more, is that a good portion of my generation has no idea what it is. I simply cannot fathom how anyone my age can simply not know about the systematic murder of over nine-hundred people that Jim Jones essentially caused due to his paranoid delusions. That just seems beyond ignorant of history itself. Also, I’ve been told before that calling it outright murder is too judgemental, as it supposedly a mass suicide.

Why? What’s the point of dumbing it down? Yes, there were suicides, or as Jones himself put it, revolutionary acts, committed there. Still, these people wouldn’t have killed themselves on their own. It was Jones who pushed them to do it, and if they didn’t, according to most survivors’ accounts, they were injected against their will. Its sick. All of it is sick.

Although Jonestown contained no prison and no form of capital punishment, various forms of punishment were used against members considered to be serious disciplinary problems. Methods included imprisonment in a 6x4x3-foot (1.8 x 1.2 x 0.9 m) plywood box and forcing children to spend a night at the bottom of a well, sometimes upside-down. For some members who attempted to escape, drugs such as Thorazine, sodium pentathol, chloral hydrate, Demerol and Valium were administered until they “came to their senses,” with detailed records being kept of each person’s drug regimen; . Armed guards patrolled the area day and night to enforce Jonestown’s rules. Some local Guyanese, including a police official, related stories about harsh beatings and a “torture hole,” the well into which the children were placed when they were perceived to have misbehaved.

I have so, so much stuff about Jonestown on my iPod. I tend watch it when I feel apathetic about the world. It reminds me that I can’t stop caring, as when we do, stuff like this can and will happen again. That is unacceptable. Mass cult murder-suicides are some of the most tragic things I can think of.