Been waiting a while for these to hit YouTube. I offer no commentary, save that the salient points can be gathered from the first two and a half minutes of the following:

Edit: Check out the kids in part 2:

One more, that’s it, I promise.

I remember exactly where I was sitting, when I saw the following:

For any interested passersby, if there are any, these are films that were shown behind locked doors, to anywhere between three and five thousand church members per site, at the Feast of Tabernacles. None of this footage was made public, and you can see the sharp contrast between these films, and the “publicly” aired telecast of The World Tomorrow. Too, we accepted everything in these films as the absolute way the church was, and was always going to be, since we self-policed from getting involved with “the world”.

I think the last couple of posts have touched on what just might be the root cause of the problems generated by our being children of the church: Apathy. We touched on it during our discussion about the future, and in the comments on the sex-and-pie post.

We have hit on a key here, if I may be so bold. Think about it. Why do we hang around the ex-member forums on the Internet? Why do we still have social problems/phobias/aversions to “the world”? Why do we feel like planning our own future is pointless, because we are so used to having our future planned out for us?

In a word? Apathy. It explains everything that’s wrong in my life, and has been wrong in my life, since the changes.

apathy
One entry found.

Main Entry:
Pronunciation:
\ˈa-pə-thē\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Greek apatheia, from apathēs without feeling, from a- + pathos emotion — more at pathos
Date:
1594

1 : lack of feeling or emotion : impassiveness 2 : lack of interest or concern : indifference

impassiveness
One entry found.

Main Entry:
im·pas·sive
Pronunciation:
\(ˌ)im-ˈpa-siv\
Function:
adjective
Date:
1605

1 aarchaic : unsusceptible to pain b: unsusceptible to physical feeling : insensible c: unsusceptible to or destitute of emotion : apathetic2: giving no sign of feeling or emotion : expressionless

indifference
One entry found.

Main Entry:
Pronunciation:
\in-ˈdi-fərn(t)s, -f(ə-)rən(t)s\
Function:
noun
Date:
15th century

1: the quality, state, or fact of being indifferent2 aarchaic : lack of difference or distinction between two or more things b: absence of compulsion to or toward one thing or another

The church conditioned us towards impassiveness and indifference (if not outright revulsion) towards “the world”. The world is under Satan’s dominion, let the dead bury their own, time is short brethren, God’s Master Plan, our Incredible Human Potential! Who gave a shit what two-bit politician was mouthing off this week? Unless said politician was on one of the short-lists as a contender for being the Beast, of course.

Contrast our attitude towards the world, with our attitude towards the church, when we were still in. Hell, you can still see it demonstrated by the apologists on AW. We were not by any means psychopaths, devoid of human emotions! (Some of the ministry were, certainly, but let’s not go there.)

Our emotions were channeled entirely into the church.

The Feast of Tabernacles was the biggest buzz to be had, in the church, and I don’t mean just from all the booze that was ingested for eight days. Singing along with the satellite transmission, knowing that a hundred thousand others (give or take) were singing the same words, in praise of the same god, at exactly the same time you were, that felt important, worthy, useful, dare I say we truly would “make a joyful noise”?? We did. (That god isn’t what we thought it was. Again, not going to go there.)

What have you done, since you fell away, that has given you the same kind of feelings?

(Christians don’t need to answer that. We know, you pray to Jebus and your Sky Buddy gives you all the “joy” you will ever need. Bully for you. I’m talking about actions taken in the real world, not inside your own heads.)

We can’t go “home” again. Not least because the parallel universe we were born and raised in is closed off to us forever now, and even the pocket universes of the splinters aren’t the same; they have their own deviations, and are nothing like what we remember. For good or for ill. The joy and good feelings we had were a sham, a carrot to keep us in, and keep them beating us with the big stick of tithing and food laws and the Sabbath. But still.

All of the holy days hold the same kind of association for me. I never got dunked (the changes hit right around the time I would have been eligible for baptismal counseling, and we exited shortly thereafter), so I never kept Passover, but the rest of it, I bought hook, line, and sinker. God’s Master Plan. Pentecost was FirstFruits, Trumpets was a foreshadowing of the Kingdom come (three-quarters of a century, and that kingdom ain’t come yet), Unleavened Bread at least taught us how to spring-clean thoroughly, Atonement, well, Atonement did build character, even though building character by physically harming yourself is NOT a good thing.

The Feast, ah the Feast. That was what it was going to be like in the Kingdom. (Three-quarters of a century, and that kingdom ain’t come yet.) We took ourselves completely out of “the world”, we didn’t have to worry about neighbours or teachers or employers or even picketers. Opening night, there was a charge in the air, you could feel it, almost taste it. This, this was what it was like to be “called out of the world”!!

Every year, I used to pray that the Kingdom would come on the Last Great Day, just so I wouldn’t have to go back to “the world”.

Even the Sabbath was special, to us, after all that was what it was all about wasn’t it? We were the only true Christians, keeping god’s law the way we were supposed to. Sabbaths were holy, revered, etcetera. Sure, you had to sit and listen to a pastor scream fire and brimstone for two hours plus, but I remember getting to run around the rented hall, exploring all the nooks and crannies, hiding away with a copy of The Bible Story or going to YES lessons after services, or fellowshipping with friends and grown-ups alike.

Eating out after the Sabbath, breaking bread with YOU or singles or a couple families together, or even a couple of singles invited out to eat with our family. Sure, we drove the wait-staff to distraction, but for the most part, we just used discretion when reading the menus, and didn’t (for the most part) give them a hard time.

Visiting friends or other church members’ houses, and having them visit ours. Sure, the conversation was almost always apocalyptic, and had nothing whatsoever to do with current events (unless we were comparing current events to prophecy of course), and half the time was spent gossipping about and bashing other members anyway, but it still felt good, no matter how evil get-togethers like that actually were.

Bible studies during the week were like an informal mini-Sabbath. You still had to get dressed up, of course, but it wasn’t quite the same. No hymns, for one thing. Shorter fellowship, before and after. One verse expounded upon, instead of the usual string of Bible jigsaw pieces, fitted together to “explain” the theology the church told was the only truth available.

Laughing nervously with the rest of the YOU when the chaperone hadn’t fast-forwarded the movie quite far enough ahead, and wondering if we had accidentally been “defiled” because we heard a curse word we weren’t supposed to?

We have no pre-cult personalities. Everything we were, everything we are, is wrapped up in what we had, as wrong as it was, as repressive and oppressive and evil, that was it. That was all we ever had.

What we had is gone. It’s not coming back. Everything replaced with nothing. The church didn’t just tell us how to date, the church told us how to be. That’s what we have to discard, as children of the church. But how can you give up everything that you are?

Time isn’t short, but life sure as hell is, and mine ain’t getting any longer. And I don’t really want to know which particular death experience my brain is going to cough up for me, when I finally go. (I have my suspicions. They are not pleasant.)

Our emotions were channeled entirely into the church, but the church isn’t there anymore. I don’t know if I even have any of those emotions left. Certainly not the kind I remember having, when I was in. The world is all sunshine and springtime and coming out of the winter blahs, but I feel like I’m stuck out of phase. Everything’s kind of dull. Not that I want to try and relive the “interesting” times from when I was in. The points I make above should make that quite clear.

That kind of happiness, that joy, etcetera, was false anyway. Which was why it got destroyed when the parallel universe did. So maybe those emotions got left behind, in that other dimension, maybe we’ll never get them back. Or if we do, we’ll just be fooling ourselves with imaginary beings. (Yeah, not going there.)

Welcome to Holland.

We’re always going to be strangers in a strange land. Until the day we die.

What can I say, I like pie.

So there’s an 800 pound elephant in the room that even today I find it difficult to talk about, and frankly I really don’t want to bring it up here. But I do so for two reasons. Number one being that I have to talk about it somewhere, somehow – and the other being that there’s no fucking way in hell I’m the only second generation ex-member of WCG who’s trying to deal with this. I have discussed this before on a slightly more intellectual level, but I feel the need to discuss this again from a different angle.

Frankly, this post is against my better judgement and I hope I don’t regret posting it. But I have to. Because if I don’t, things are never going to get any better.

I have had five girlfriends in my life and five partners (the set overlaps but is not a one-to-one mapping – there was one girlfriend I did not fuck and one partner whom I spent one night with (this was, I think, close to seven years ago)). If I’m to be honest to myself, of the combined set of six women, I was only truly attracted to two of them. And none of them were accessible in a drive of less than a day.

I do not hate any of them – while in many cases the parting was somewhat acrimonious, in all cases but one it was indeed completely my fault and I take responsibility for them, at least in my own heart.

Because when it comes to matters of romance I am the biggest fuck-up that I could possibly imagine being, bar none.

And I am angry.

I am angry because even though I am a fuck-up when it comes to matters of romance, this does not mean that I don’t desire it. Even though I don’t have the slightest clue how to approach a woman I’m attracted to, that doesn’t mean I’m not attracted. Even though there’s a large part of me that wants to find a woman and fuck her senseless, guess what. I don’t.

And why don’t I. Well, that’s the question, isn’t it.

I could go into lots of reasons, I guess. I’m not going to. I could go into how my parents basically told me for reasons I’m not going into that no woman would ever want me. I could go into how I was taught that it was a sin to date someone outside the church, and guess what? No church now! I could go into how I was snubbed and hurt by some of the girls in the neighborhood when I was a teenager. I could go into all of these things, but what fucking good does it do, really? It’s the past. And even though I’ve been dropped off on the side of a desert road that stretches for miles with nothing in sight… I’m not going to get anywhere if I don’t start walking.

The simple fact of the matter is, I don’t have any idea what to do about it, and it frustrates the fucking hell out of me.

There’s more to this, but I suppose there’s only so much I can put even here. There are things, believe it or not, that I don’t want to put in public.

It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

Go and read Gavin’s insightful, incisive, clear-headed article on AW about Living’s latest self-inflicted “trial from god”.

Also, don’t forget that it’s Earth Hour tonight @ 8:30pm wherever you are. Turn off the lights, turn off the TV, keep a candle burning, and put your computer on battery.

It may not actually do anything for global warming, but at least it makes us aware of how much we take for granted, technologically. And connects us with an Earth and a life some of us still might not feel too connected to…..

I have a 30 mile commute to and from work, and I usually listen to KNX 1070 on the way home (I can’t stand Mike Malloy). There’s this guy named “Michael Josephson” of the “Josephson institute of ethics”, whatever that is. Usually I just consider him a prattling blowhard who finds some glurge story or something and just kind of chuckle, and move on.

But today he said something interesting. He was going on about how sometimes people get on him for not being neutral, and somehow he got on the topic of saying what you think vs. thinking what you think. And he said something interesting that gave me pause. It was something to the effect of “when you say something judgemental, why are you saying it? What do you hope to accomplish?”

There is a woman at work whom I do not like. Not at all, not even a little tiny bit. I used to dislike her a lot more, but now I can look at her without scowling and even exchange a pleasant greeting. But generally I want absolutely nothing to do with her. This comes back to a series of two or three incidents that I will not describe, but it’s ultimately because of something she did that I do not find worthy of respect.

But I have not been very closed off about this dislike. She knows I don’t like her, half of my team knows I don’t like her, and I have to ask myself – why did I feel the need to make it so clear, when ultimately it’s between me and her? Why do I feel the need to not only dislike her so intensely, but to broadcast that dislike?

I don’t really know. But I do know this. The WCG encouraged this kind of judgementalism. We were encouraged to stay “apart from the world”, and while we were to mostly keep to ourselves, many people instead chose to be in-your-face about it, taking advantage of any opportunity whatsoever to “witness”, which generally involved telling everyone else how much they sucked compared to us.

Maybe the WCG is gone, but the behaviors still live on, don’t they?

It serves no purpose to broadcast my dislike of this person. But it serves even less of a purpose to actually dislike this person, and perhaps the root of this dislike is something that I should examine within myself.

(I’m sticking this one to the front page as well, because the protest mentioned below is happening on April 22nd. Scroll down for new posts.)

I was recently contacted by John Knapp, because I have linked to his excellent 2nd generation page, on our sidebar, and he gave me a heads-up on a particularly disturbing threat to vulnerable youth:

I’m working on a protest of David Lynch Foundation & Paul McCartney’s benefit concert to raise funds to push teaching TM in public schools.

“I wonder if you would consider posting something on your blog? This may not be up your alley, but I thought possibly it would be of interest.

Here’s the blurb I’ve been using on blogs:

“The upcoming McCartney/Lynch Concert to benefit the David Lynch Foundation’s will raise funds to teach Transcendental Meditation in the public schools.

“Many critics feel this is a clear Church/State violation because of the religious trappings of Transcendental Meditation.

“A group of critics, including myself, have organized a free web event to discuss this controversy. You may be interested in attending.

“You can find the details at http://knappfamilycounseling.com/tmconcert.html.”

John also informs me that he has taken back the hijacked TranceNet, a recommended site to visit as well. I never really could understand how it is that people fall for the TM insanity (Yogic flying anyone? LOL.), but then again, I still have a visceral “demon-possession” phobia when it comes to stuff like the woo-woo “blank-your-mind” meditation stuff. Which is probably why I have had some small success with the structure of gnostic prayer instead. But that’s neither here nor there, and enough rambling from me.

You will note that I am no longer under the delusion that TM is literally demon-possession (as I believed once before). But it certainly is not productive, useful, or beneficial, as the excellent TranceNet demonstrates.

Certainly it is a system of thought-reform that can destroy otherwise psychologically healthy adults; and these rich fucking moron celebriities with way too much time, and certainly TOO MUCH FUCKING MONEY on their hands (And yet, they’re shilling for more. That’s the part that actually makes sense, oddly enough.), these unmitigated ASSHOLES want to encourage vulnerable children to willfully destroy their minds and their emotional and psychological well-being? They want to teach otherwise normal kids how to turn themselves into absolute space-cases? And they want the taxpayers to foot the bill?!

Burn it with fucking fire.

(Thanks also to John for his kind words about the blog.)

Update April 18, 2009: More information can be found at the Cult News blog run by Rick Ross.

Don’t forget open chat Fridays are still on here at I Survived Armstrongism.

Our topic for this Friday will be, I think, “The Future” — given our recent discussion of same.

DM’s response on my last post deserves a post of its own.

The lack of freedom that you feel might be somehow due to your view of your own future.”

I have good days and bad days. On a good day, I can usually plan to the end of the year, or at least I’ll try. Most days, I go day by day.

Where do you envision yourself in 2 years?”

Employed.

5 years?”

Employed and debt-free.

10?”

In my 40s. That’s about all I can be certain of.

15?”

No clue. That’s too far afield to consider.

And what kinds of feelings do you get when you contemplate this?”

Uncertainty. Confusion. Indecision. Fatigue. Apathy. Depression. A black hole, that absorbs all thought, when I get too close.

Something tells me that is going to offer a clue why you aren’t yet feeling the sense of escape, freedom……”

That goes back to everything being replaced with nothing. I certainly don’t believe in an imminent, in-my-lifetime eschaton in five to ten to fifteen years, but neither do I have the mental forewithal to plan definitively that far ahead in my life. Seventy-five years and that Kingdom ain’t come yet, but there’s nothing to replace it, either.

Sure, I may have passing thoughts of “maybe, in twenty-five years”, but by and large, I barely even think to the end of the week. Some people would love to achieve that kind of mindset (Buddhists and other meditative types for instance), but it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. You end up a passer-by in your own life, going wherever the winds of time and fate and change indicate.

On the one hand, I’m not worried about an impending apocalypse, nor am I constantly examining myself and my thoughts to ensure I’ll qualify for a kingdom that isn’t coming, but on the other hand, I’m not nearly worried enough. I drift through my life with no long-term plans, and absolutely no inclination nor desire to make any.

DM makes a very good point. I’m just not sure how to apply it, nor how I can make it relevant to myself and my situation right now.

Any thoughts?

A post is in the works about celebrities recruiting vulnerable youth for their cult (It’s not what you think; I thought Paul McCartney was dead……), but I’m popping in here with a realization that struck me when reading a testimonial from an ex-member of a different cult. (Doesn’t matter what it is.) The key thing that struck me was the same thing that xHWA said in his inaugural post (and throughout his blog) was the feeling of freedom at being out.

This ex-member of this other cult expressed, if not in the same words (and definitely not the same theology), exactly the same sentiment. The feeling of absolute freedom and joy at being out, at having escaped, etcetera. The grass is greener, the lights are brighter, etcetera, etcetera. And you know what?

I’ve never had that.

True, my family exited and went from Armstrongism to normal in 60 seconds (quite literally). That had to have had an impact on things. I took (by my recollection which may be faulty) at least a couple years to stop keeping the Sabbath, although I had already sworn off church literature back in ‘93 (something about the trinitarian bullshit they were trying to force-feed us just shut that down completely), and was reading and watching whatever I wanted, anyway. But actually falling away, that went unnoticed, probably because I didn’t want to notice it.

I’ve covered the details of the family exit here, but through it all, I never really had a sense of “escaping” anything. There was never any epiphany, there was never any kind of mental switch-flipping (although I am inclined to think switch-flipping is pure wish-fulfillment, subconscious or otherwise), there just wasn’t….anything.

Twenty years, my entire life, was basically excised, from my life, from my conscious thought processes, over the space of a couple of really (really) rough years. But my personality, fundamentally (Ha!) did not change. How could it?? I am a child of the church. I will always be a child of the church. That is neither a negative modifier, nor a positive one; it is a statement of bald fact. I was raised with pure Armstrongism, and no comparative religious theology, or the concept of there being any other worldview besides the impending eschaton.

“The world will not end with a bang, but a whimper.” I realize that my world never ended at all. I mean, yeah, the changes were a pretty big shift, but in the end, they were a shift from everything to nothing, because everything was proven false. I swung towards agnosticism to fill the lack of everything.

But never, at any point, did I feel intrinsically different in and of myself. Sure, I changed my views, I discarded the cherry-picked legalism, and I managed to (fortunately) dispense with the anti-Semitic British-Israelism wiithout so much as a hitch. Picking up the traditions and customs of the world I suddenly found myself in, that took a bit more doing, but it’s an ongoing process, year by year.

Still, through it all, I am the same me. And if there are blind spots I still have (which I admit is more than likely), I will likely never be able to see them, or to see through or past them. But that’s OK, since it’s the acknowledgement of those blind spots that makes me ruthlessly question everything that crosses my path. That’s a positive effect IMO.

That sense of being released, though, that sense of being happy at being free. I’ve never had that, and I don’t think I ever will have that, simply because when I was in, I didn’t have a sense of being a captive and I knew nothing else. Intellectually, I know I was captive to an oppressive, repressive, world-destroying (Literally!) money-making regime, but psychologically? I don’t feel like a released prisoner, nor an escaped convict, because I cannot emphatically get it through my head that I was imprisoned in the first place (even though I was).

It all comes back to not having a pre-cult personality. This “me” is all there is. Again, neither good nor bad, simple statement of fact. I couldn’t see the bars on the cage even though “the world held captive” (sorry) was really my own.

Which beggars the question, how can I ever have the concept of being free, when I never had the concept of being trapped? (Something tells me fully grasping the concept of having been trapped wouldn’t be a good thing, either.)

My New Year’s resolution was to integrate fully with this universe, this year. But the year wears on, and the integration seems at a standstill, or at least no different from before. Is that a bad sign, or just the way things are? I can’t say.

Maybe I will always be a stranger in a strange land. Maybe that’s OK. Maybe it’s not OK. I’m not going to stop turning over every rock and examining my place here in this world, however, and hopefully that will make things come right eventually. Or maybe just different.

Yeah, it’s great that I don’t have to be restricted to Sabbath-keeping anymore. Then I ask myself what I do with my Friday nights, and I realize things may go deeper than I realize. I certainly don’t want to go clubbing/drinking/doing drugs on Friday nights just for the sake of doing so, that wouldn’t solve things anyway.

Is there a way out or through or over or under? Or am I looking for an escape hatch I don’t need or that doesn’t exist?

I may never have that sense of joy at being free. I don’t need to be emotionally attached to my freedom, when I can rationally and logically recognize that I am, and always will be, free of religion.

Maybe that’s what I have to have blind faith in. The idea that being free is really a good, uplifting, wonderful thing. Because if I don’t have that, if I don’t have the full emotional realization of just how much of a prison the church really was, what is there to prevent me from going back but pure, hard-headed, rational freethought?

Not a thing in the world, that’s what. Which is why I will remain atheist until my last breath.

I have faith that it is a happy and joyful and good thing that I am no longer a participating member of the church. (Not that I could ever be a participating member again, since the church as we knew it does not exist in the mainstream timeline we are now a part of.) Joy and wonder and peace, those are abstract terms that I probably will never have a fully-realized sense of. Not a negative statement, again just an assessment of fact.

I’m still not sure what to do with that assessment. Or if I need to do anything at all.

A little common sense, please.

In either case, of course, atheism is not a religion. It is not a worldview or system at all. It does not combine a set of beliefs, traditions, rituals, and community structures like religions do. It is, rather, a single belief about one thing: that there aren’t any gods.

Calling atheism a religion is like saying that “not-stamp-collecting” is a hobby, or that “not-aristocracy” is a system of government.”

Makes common sense to me.