*tear*

[serai]

.

This makes me so sad.

But what makes me even sadder is the incredibly snide and nasty comments I've been reading about it. Brainwashing isn't funny, people, and nobody deserves it. Do you know anybody who deserves to be sucked into some soul-destroying cult that'll drain away all his energy and sanity and life? That'll turn him into a nonsense-spouting loon? That'll have the whole world laughing at him?

You know, if this had happened to some high-handed asshole like Jerk Nicholson, I might be in there with the snark, too. But by all accounts, this guy has never been an asshole. I've yet to read or hear any stories about him being nasty to fans, or underhanded in business dealings, or violent or alcoholic or any flavor of psycho. He's handsome, charming, damn hard-working, and seemed to have a chamed life. But apparently he had enough insecurities and self-doubts that this FUCKING HIDEOUS CULT managed to get their hooks into him, and that's all she wrote.

And make no mistakes, that's exactly what they do. You can roll your eyes and sneer all you want, but anybody can be vulnerable to people like this. Once they sniff out your weaknesses, you're prime meat to them. Believe it, baby.

The whole thing just makes me so sad. *sigh*

Comments

[trilliah.livejournal.com]

0_o

That...scares me. I've never been a Cruise fan, but even I can't imagine him saying something like that on his own. You just...don't. You don't. Not in your right mind. I don't care HOW egotistical you are, if you're in your right mind and have a shred of common sense, you don't say that in public.

That's scary, that people can mess with minds that way.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

It's just so awful. And I'm really freaked out by so many people laughing and saying he deserves it, or he's fucking whacko, or whatever. Jesus, the guy is being leeched on by vampires, for gods' sakes!

[trilliah.livejournal.com]

What IS Scientology? I mean...what do they believe? Or preach? Or...whatever?

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Ay. Well, this much I can tell you. Back in the 50's, a handful of SF writers (Norman Spinrad, Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, L. Ron Hubbard, a couple of others whom I don't remember) were hanging out blue-skying about being rich ('cause they were making two cents a word back then), and they started joking around about starting a religion. They had great fun messing with it, but at the end of the night, L. Ron was the only one to take the idea seriously. He went off, wrote Dianetics, and over the next ten to fifteen years it took off. (I got that story from Spinrad himself some years ago.)

Scientology is basically a mish-mash of bits and pieces of other religions and mental disciplines, mixed up with all the rejected ideas from Hubbard's godawful pulp novels. They believe a large number of bizarre theories, and the "religion" (I still have a hard time thinking of it as a real religion) gets more intricate and bizarre the higher up you go in the cabal. It's freaky. I mean, really freaky. If you'd like to get a look at some of this stuff, go here:

http://www.xenu.net/

That's Xenu, a site that publishes to expose on Scientology. You'll find all the crazy crap there, and it's both entertaining and very frightening. I thank the gods that this thing isn't attractive to most people, because who knows the harm they might do were they to really hook into the public psyche? (Although they have found a gold mine the last decade or so in their whole no-drugs thing - witness Tom's harping on the Evils Of Drugs.)

It's informative reading, but it'll give you the willies, I'd think. :)

[rakshi.livejournal.com]

You know what?? I agree with you.

It IS sad. and it IS a cult.

[goldberry-b.livejournal.com]

good gods dear, I clicked the link and I thought that the interview was the snide joke!!

You mean to say he really said those things????

lights candle for Tom :(

I haven't really followed Tom's career but he does seem a nice guy, I was pretty surprised about his remarks on depression and medication (being that I take them myself its hurtful for someone to say depression is an imaginary problem)
but above all he isn't an icon but a real person and I'm sad to see he's been sucked in so deep

[serai1.livejournal.com]

I've followed Tom's career since before he was famous, and I've never seen anything about him that merited the kind of vitriol I'm seeing about all of this. I can't understand why so many people are being so cruel about it. What the hell did this guy ever do to hurt any of them?

And yeah, when he started making those remarks about depression, I immediately thought something was fishy. After all, he's just not an asshole like that. Something had to be up. Sure enough, it's all the crazy Scientologist crap. ALL the loony bullshit he's been spouting over the last year is straight out of Scientology. Word for word, practically. He's acting like a textbook case of cult-induced delusion and paranoia. Why so many people don't seem to SEE that is beyond me.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

From a FACTnet report on Scientology:

Tom Cruise became psychotic during a secret Scientology initiation in which one is told that rather than being one person, one is composed of thousands of aliens from all over the universe fighting for control of your body. After completing this initiation, known as OT III, Tom appeared sickly with black circles under his eyes and pasty skin. He said he wanted to be away from Scientology for good. He just wanted to go back to Hollywood and his home and be left alone by Scientology. This would not happen; David Miscavige ordered Cruise could not be let go. Scientology worked on Cruise day and night until he finally returned to Scientology.


That just made me sick and weepy at the same time. Shit, I feel sorry for anyone cauht in this kind of mess. It's just so fucking ugly. *sniff*

[trilliah.livejournal.com]

It's more dangerous than nuclear weapons.

Hell, why do you think there ARE nuclear weapons?

All religion boils down to is the desperate, all-consuming need to be right. To be Truth, capital-T. Unlike ideas, which allow for modification and change with times, religions are fixed--which means ultimately they will do the opposite of what they were originally intended to do: serve humanity.

I personally believe that if society is to move forward, it must learn to let go of religion. I don't mean let go of faith, or of spirituality: both can be wonderful, uplifting, and downright necessary at times. But religion as a doctrined, do-or-die, I'm-right-you're-wrong heaven v. hell sort of tyranny? We don't need that anymore. Promise of reward and threat of punishment will only motivate the purely selfish to good moral reasoning anyway.

But is society ready for a move like that? I doubt it. A few free thinkers might be, and there are more of them every day, but try actually *outlawing* it and you'll end up with more bloodshed than we've already got. It's something we'll have to outgrow naturally.

As John Lennon said: you may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.