#I made Zero a Hare Krishna

[aksthetwosainthijimiko-blog]

I’m Not Zero

So... what happens when I turn Zero as a Vaishnava (someone’s whose Navigator is God, Krishna)?

Not what you’d expect.

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Phantom struggled, he had lost the fight, he was as close to shut down as he could... and would bring Zero with him to the void.

Or... this had been the plan.

But it seemed the Red Plague had other plans.

“G... Get of me!” Phantom scream as he tried to dislodge the maverick currently plugged in his system, hacking his programs and turning of the self-destruction module that had been about to activate...robbing the Shinobi of his glorious sacrifice in the most shameful and disgusting of manner.

“Nope... Not after what you tried to do, coward.” Zero spat as he reduced Phantom’s mobility to that of a newborn kitten. Still pressing onto him, preventing the already damaged reploid from even attempting to fight him off...

He had a mission to finish, and if he had to take his own miserable life to get the wily old model scrapped.

Said wily old model was now currently crushing him against the far wall. And despite Phantom’s superior processing speed, Zero’s movement speed had been beyond what he could record.

And for this... he was now disarmed and experiencing the horrifying reality that Zero was in his OS.

Unable to lift his weight, the Shinobi was lowered to the ground by the bane of Neo-Arcadia. Said bane unplugged from Phantom and turned him around so that he was sitting more or less comfortably with the wall at his back.

“Hey... you alright there?” He dared to asked as if he really cared for an enemy.

“You hacked me!” Phantom accused as he tried to burn the sicko with his eyes.

It was inefficient, but it would have to do.

“You were about to suicide.” Zero stated as he peered right into Phantom’s soul. His dark eyes holding a power beyond anything the Shinobi had experienced before.

Not even from a fully grown elf.

“... and why do you care?” He challenged as he tried to unlock his detonation protocols, only to discover that it was completely gone. “Curse you...curse you to the deepest pits of hell!” He tried to scream, but he only managed to hissed it.

Then... Zero did something that took Phantom completely off guard.

Zero smiled.

“Oh... Thank you.” He spoke with not a shred of sarcasm. “May you reach Goloka then.” the bid to the downed guardian.

“Gee, thanks... may you go to Goloka too then.” Phantom slathered as much hatred and sarcasm he could...like a human would do with this brown stuff.

But instead of anger born of a bruised ego, Zero’s gave an even brighter smile! “Great! So don't you dare suicide again, and I’ll personally let you pass Chandranana stick.” he declared as he finally moved out from Phantom’s face... only to sit beside him on the most infuriating and casual manner as possible. Even daring to appeared tired as he let out a huff.

Phantom did his best to ignore him... and attempted to contact reinforcement. Only to be met with a disabled transceiver. Zero had cut whatever access to help he had.

The black and white reploid managed to slid his eyes toward the maverick... he was all alone with the beast, the killer of all mutos and... there was nothing he could do.

Phantom closed his eyes...and began to empty his mind of all thoughts and fear. If he was about to face death...or worst, then he would rather prepare himself and enter the void even before Zero had any chance to corrupt and kill him...or worst.

Time became meaningless, his body but a suggestion...and his mind silent...

“Hare Hare...Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare...Hare Krishna Hare Krishna..”

Phantom’s eyes flew open, his meditation broken. And openly gapped at the maverick.

Zero was sitting in a lotus position, he still had his erect back to the wall, his head held high and gently swinging to the Mantra.

Oh, Phantom knew what a mantra sounded like...and he knew what Mantra meditation was. He was just taken aback as to how the bane of Neo-arcadia’s well-being knew mantra meditation... Not that it was such a great thing.

Those mantras were just crushes, aids for calming the mind. Eventually, the practitioner would keep them inside his purified mind...and finally, they would need nothing.

“So... you still at level one.” Phantom sneered, more than willing to rib the beast until he would either go mad and or leave. “ Pathetic, you can’t even remain in silence.”

“...not really.” Zero admitted. “The Maha-Mantra is meant to be shared with other’s. The more you share, the more potent it gets.” He revealed with a (beatific) smile. Then he turned to Phantom. “How about you? What do you meditate on?” He asked... “Actually, can you wait for... I think thirty minutes? I just have four rounds left to chant and... I would like to finish them today.”

Phantom stared.

Zero sighed. “Listen... the reason why I’m hiding here is that I didn’t have any peace for the last five days since my resurrection. And I barely had anytime to chant any rounds... and my Gayatris.” He admitted with a grumble.

Phantom gapped... this... His intel had told him nothing about that.

“I just want thirty minutes... more if possible.” Zero sighed. “I really don't want to cause any trouble.”

“Not cause us trouble?!” Phantom scoffed. “Well, didn’t you destroy our most important supply train? Took over a factory... And now you’re here to kill master X!” The Shinobi accused the mad man.

“Yeah... Sorry about the train... I still have no idea why Ciel wanted the thing gone. And the computer’s too.” He admitted as he rubbed the back of his helmet.

“Wait... What computer?” Phantom asked.

“You know, the one Leviathan used for Hacking the resistance... I was supposed to destroy them but... I just turned them off, I hope it didn’t cause any inconveniences.” Zero admitted as he let his head heavily rest on the wall, his helmet noisily hitting it. “I swear... I had no idea what I was doing half the time... Thank God for.... God.”

Once again, Phantom hidden brows reached the top of his unseen hair. “God?”

“Yeah... you know, Krishna. He helped me realized that what I was doing was dangerous. Still had to stop this damn train tough, it would have derailed by junction 2-b, by the park... That’s what He said anyway.”

A shudder intruded in Phantom’s frame. Yes, he knew this infamous junction in Neo-arcadia’s most popular park.

Why was there a park in such a dangerous area, and why was a centennial overpass above it that kept dropping pieces of concrete... it could only be a device by the urban sector to do some population control...

‘Alright... Have to look into this mater...’ Phantom tried not to be to happy and admit that Zero’s presence and destructive behaviour had work out for the best in the end but...

“What are your intention?” He asked, not expecting much from the maverick.

“Serve Krishna... Stop the fake from spiting on my X’s legacy and memory and find his tomb.” He revealed like one listed a grocery list.

Phantom stared at him owlishly. “I beg your pardon?”

“My ultimate mission is to constantly serve the lotus feet of God, Sri-Krishna. And He just so happens to like X enough to help me get him out of trouble again.” Zero elaborated to a still confused guardian. “He told me he was between Area X and the throne room at the top. I may have to face Ciel’s copy... But He told me killing him will only make things worst.” He huffed.

“Wait, wait wait! What do you mean by... Ah...”

“Confused?”

“Yes...” Phantom peevishly admitted. “Let’s start with the...copy.”

“Four years ago, Ciel made a copy of X, he went crazy...like all copies do, and now she wants me to kill him.” The ever infuriating Zero explain. “Even X want’s him dead... By the way, do you have any idea why X is now a Cyber-elf?” He asked the Shinobi, who was still trying to compute what Zero had just said.

“What?”

“ X got turned into a cyber-elf... so I guess he’s a... like  Ghost, but Krishna told me he’s more like an astral-projection.” He explained.

 “So God told you.” He pointed at Zero. “That our master X... is a copy.... and that the real one is... still alive and astral-projecting as a cyber-elf... and he never spoke to us?” Phantom scoffed. “Alright, what Type of third-party program you downloaded to get this High?”

“None... That was Ciel, the one who made the copy... who told me about the Copy.”

“And you are aware she’s a traitor to Neo-Arcadia?”

“And you are aware that her information was confirmed by a disembodied X?”

“And how do you know it was X? For all you know, this crazy-cyber elf is just pretending to be X and Ciel, being the junior terrorist she is, tricked you all to assassinate our glorious master.” Phantom shot back. “And aren’t you supposed to suffer from amnesia?”

“ Oh, Krishna cured me of that... I just didn't tell people.” Zero gave a shrugged. “Listen, I’ve known X before the first maverick war, and we’ve been partner for fifty years before I did my dumb pro-move.” Zero informed the practically immobile phantom. “ I Know my Partner...and I know that his biggest pet peeve is to have a fraud use his face to propagate racism and wholesale slaughter. Oh, and speaking with which, were you aware as to how they retire reploid at the centre?” The now incense reploid asked the still very confused Phantom. “They crush them to death under a spiked platform... the operator stand on top.” Zero glowered.

Phantom stared at the fuming mad-bot... “Ah! And you want me to believe that?!”

Zero’s gaze did not move from Phantom’s... but his featured now held the eyes of a man who saw too much. 

And suddenly... Phantom received a tiny video package... it was the fight with Aztec Falcon... on top of a very oily platform... some retired units crushed limbs and a very small reploid’s head was still stuck on the spikes. Their empty gaze boring a hole in Phantoms artificial soul.

Now... Phantom was used to the horrors of wars... and he knew what torture was, but those he would question would always have a swift death by his blade and their bodies respectfully disposed not... not...

“Harpuia... Harpuia must not... this is...” He felt sick... quite a feat for one who lacked a gagging reflex. Something that was useless in his thankless job.

“If he’s aware of it... Krishna gave me permission to cut off his head...” Zero’s tone held a dark promise of retribution. And Phantom was certain he would and could see it through. “This is what the resistance is fighting against... and this is why X told me to destroy his Copy with extreme prejudice.”

Phantom’s head snapped back toward the red nemesis.

“And... Gods... what did God have to do with all this again?” Phantom weekly asked, feeling his whole world to be reduced in rubble.

“Ah... Krishna’s just navigating me toward and auspicious result. Something that won't leave a bloody crater at my exact location.” Zero informed the Shinobi as if this was a complete normal thing to go through. “And he told me where I could find X... He’s in a coma and... Basically, he sealed a very confused elf with his frame, this caused him to... get pushed out of his current body and now... I have to get him out of this tower and try to convince the goof to return.”

“And then?”

“And then... if I succeed, I give a new name to the copy, teach him how to be the best ruler he can, then I bring X to Mayapur where we will live our last decades away from politics, wars and whatever else made this place famous.” Zero enumerated as he once again took to the lotus position. “Now... If you’ll excuse me, I have a few rounds I have to chant...”

“Why did you tell me all this?” Phantom asked, still shaken by the numerous revelation he had just received from the second oldest reploid in the world.

“Krishna told me I couldn’t to it alone... and from everyone in Neo-Arcadia, you're the sanest.” And with that, he began to chant again, leaving a very stunned Phantom to compute all the information he had just received.

Thirty minutes later, Zero’s pleasant drone stopped, and he got up. “Alright... I’ll just... give you back your limbs, I couldn’t risk having you have another go again.” He mumbled as he turned Phantom around and, after repluging it to his system in the most respectful way possible, switched his cerveaus back on. even going as far as to help the ninja up and dusting him off.

Then he took a step back, inspecting Phantom under a critical eye...

Then he reached in his meta-pocket.

Phantom... quite stupidly froze. Only to be proven wrong when Zero pulled out an Energen tank. it was already open... And half-drained.

“I know... It’s all I have.” Zero apologized.

Phantom stared at... maybe a peace offering.

Reviewing all that he had learned, and the revelation the mad man had given him....

He pushed the can away. “As much as I appreciate the offer, I’d rather you have it Zero.”

The Red Legend stared at Phantom, his features unreadable.

“You need it more than I...” Not really, but the Guardian of darkness knew where to find the emergency rations. “ I will humour you and let you look in every nook and Cranny of this tower for X. If you find it and prove that the one I’ve been serving is a Plagia, then I will personally kill him. If not... Your life will be forfeited.” He intoned darkly. “You have twenty-four hours...”

“Oh ah... Thank you. I...” A small and infinitely grateful smile light his features. “This... this is more than I deserve.”

“Indeed.” Phantom inclined his head, sending a message to his fellow guardian. “You may stay here and prepare... Mediate as long as you desire, the day is not over yet.”

“No... I’d rather not waste anyone's time. And Krishna’s telling me the earlier I start the better. Thank you for the offer tough.” Zero paused... it was clear he was listening to someone. “Krishna just told me that you have to come with me since I will need a trustworthy witness. You fit the bill.”

“You know I’m a ninja, right?” Phantom asked.

“So am I... and as He said, your trustworthy.” And with that, Zero closed the subject and turned his heels. “Come on, we need to get to area-X, He said that’s were the service door to Yig... Yadra... To where X is.”

“Alright... lead the way.” At this point Phantom had nothing to lose... and he had the feeling this would prove to be most entertaining.

“Oh, by the way. You may call me Dhira-Lalita Das... Or just Lalita, for short.” Zero informed the shinobi... who had that point just nodded, humouring the clearly insane obsolete model.

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And this monstrosity was born after that failed R.P...to be continued.

[violetsystems]

#personal

I'm sitting on a stool at my desktop instead of my laptop this morning. You can spin around on it and point to the person on the left or right of you. There's nobody here as usual. Something that has been the same since I don't know how long. It's a good reminder sometimes that I get through a lot of things alone in this city. Yesterday I went to get coffee at Blue Bottle with my gear. I set up on the other side of the river in a chair. It's about the closest you could get to a New York vibe if this were as diverse and exciting as New York. I spent enough time there to take some notes about the wattage from the panel and the direction of the sun. These days I gauge how happy I am by how long I can sit in public and go unbothered. It's hard to go unnoticed now when you are me. Some people would claim that's a great thing. Celebrity opens so many doors. All of them are closed for me. Nobody speaks directly to me in public. Indirectly is another story. People still remember me as the guy who wears all the funny text on his clothes. I've been a lot less font oriented this season in terms of fashion. I've been dressing down considerably in comfortably fitting urban camping gear. Setting up a solar panel by the river is a vibe that fits that. I've read companies like Chanel were investing heavily in solar. It's not a bad idea. I get the same charge from the sun for my portable generator as I do from my outlet. I've never tried plugging it into anything else but it's 35 watts steady with no clouds or people standing in front of it. People definitely like to be seen out here. Mostly around me. It's like when people think you are a big deal here they'll test themselves against you. And that's about ninety nine percent of the traffic that tries to invade my personal space. I used to yell and scream about it. Mostly because I was overwhelmed by it. Yesterday was no different. The pinnacle was the Hare Krishna Yacht that made it a point to patrol the inlet chanting at the shore while drifting by. The secret about Illinois is that people love to shove their freedom in your face. Most of the time it's religious freedom. That goes hand in hand with tax evasion and racketeering for the most part. But Chicago is like that. When you talk about corruption, it's on parade every day here. Give yourself long enough in public and a group of them will track you down to use you as a soapbox. This is an every day thing with me. So much so that you have to read into every act of aggression as a terrorist act. This includes cutting the internet with no explanation. If you try to explain it, you'll end up on loop in your kitchen stomping the floor. Gaslighting that is running out of gas. There's more in heaven where that came from I guess.

It's gotten so out of control that it's hard to leave your doorstep without wondering if some revolutionary action is about to take place. I honestly have spent more than every waking moment trying to assess the threat. It would make sense if you had a cybersecurity skillset this would be the norm. My apartment these days is accountable as nearly seventy five percent of my office. I guess that's why they call it a studio. What I do behind closed doors when my internet connection isn't being stolen lies in the realm of "zero trust." It's a way to say anything that isn't safeguarded behind a layer of network security or three is not trusted. I trust these days when I go to the grocery that there are about two or three spotters on every trip. The same people wander by me two or three times every ten random blocks. It gets to be something of a nightmare. When I come home I shut the door and bask in the cabin fever. Which is why the river is a nice getaway for late summer. But with all this celebrity you wonder why anybody wants to be seen. It doesn't pay my bills exactly. There is a thing called investor confidence. But really my financial recovery is something I've held very close to my chest. Sure I make jokes about it. I invest in things I believe in. Clean energy, companies empowering women, and maybe even animal well being. But it always cuts into somebody's bottom line. Whose bottom line would be a question to ask this city. Nobody ever talks to me. And yet I'm supposed to read into their T-shirts they parade around me in a stalking fashion. The last one was literally a print of an article from a tabloid called the Cut. It read simply "I am a prisoner of my own vanity." Just a half hour before, a mediocre white man with a seafoam gildan peacocked in front of my solar panel. The words simply read "unplug." Was it a demand? I don't know. All I know is that right wing Christians have found a way to grief me on near terrorist levels. And it gets old trying to deal with it while everyone else pretends I'm some revolutionary. I'm just Tim. Meanwhile, people never talk. Never communicate. Simply stare off with a self satisfied smile that they know more about me than I do. It's all scary fucking shit when you have to process it daily. I don't bother processing it. It's sort of jumped the shark completely at this point. I know what I know and I don't actually know anything. I'm not part of some secret cadre of people. I don't literally have any information about where I'm going. Who cares about me is a very understood kind of thing. Nothing definite. Nothing guaranteed. I'm afraid to seek employment in this atmosphere particularly in this city because of social engineering. I'd rather save my money and wait for a clean exit. And therein it looks like if nothing happens by my birthday, I will need to flee somewhere alone altogether.

I don't actually think this will happen. There's a lot of good things that have happened over the last year. Financially things have been better than they've ever been. More so that I manage it better and no longer have debt. So much so that when I come home from an appointment, there are Christians protesting on my corner yelling at me directly. "Your bank account won't get you into heaven!" Does this sound familiar? Religious sects abusing your privacy to threaten you with religious persecution. This is Illinois. The sooner you get that these people are digging their own grave the better. People act like I'm the problem after abandoning me for over a year. The disgruntled worker's revolution from my old job is avenging my erased memory by forming a union without acknowledging I exist except to stalk me in the grocery aisle. Maybe that's why they've been following me around. Or is it the mob? Or is it the gangs? Or is it the police? I don't care who the fuck it is. You fucking bother me and it's dumb. Everybody expects to be part of a movement that nobody can call by name. I have one you know. It's called Tim. Less timid and more intimidating. I don't apologize for it. If I did I'd be dead by now. I'm grumpy for sure. Who wouldn't be when your civil rights have been pissed on daily like it's some moral play. All the stuff I bitch about is one hundred percent transparent and true. I guess that makes me a writer. A writer who can't generate any income from anything except mining ethereum and updating css on decade old websites for spare change. I have been isolated and alone. I have been better off because of it. And people just wait on the sidelines ready to dig their fingers into your corpse. I hate it here. I fucking literally hate everything about this town. These people. Their fucking silent expectant looks. Pay attention to me. Understand my pain. Listen to my problems. Fix this unfixable thing like you always do. It gets old. It gets dumb. And it doesn't get better. So I spend less money. I participate in less bullshit. I try to work out my anger in private. And nothing I can do fixes or changes anything. I reach out to the proper authorities and get no response. It only gets more invasive and dumb. And I just start getting more cocky and sardonic. I don't like being angry. I'm a very gentle person. I love animals. I love nature. I see things delicately and am constantly appalled at the barbaric and overbearing nature of the public. Everybody has something to say but never listens. Everybody has a comment for their soapbox but you never learn anything from it. Everybody is so hell bent at winner takes all that they'll break everything to squander it. I'm more about win win than anybody knows. And behind the scenes where I trust hardly anything I still think I'm winning through all of this. Regardless of what you see when you stalk me in the streets. You don't know shit, Chicago. <3 Tim

[automatismoateo]

I deconverted 2 Mormons on accident via /r/atheism

Submitted February 16, 2019 at 04:47PM by Itsbadmmmmkay (Via reddit http://bit.ly/2SYTHQE) I deconverted 2 Mormons on accident

FTP... This happened a few years ago, thought I'd share.

A while back I was living in the American South, I'd moved there for a job (I'm an engineer, fwiw), and noticed a Mormon church on my new commute to work. , I've been interested in religion as a sort of hobby for quite a while because I've always thought, "If I'm going to dismiss this god, i better know a bit about it first."

Due to my hobby, I have quite a few religious texts in my home. I have a kjv and an niv bible, I have a copy of the Qur'an and a book of hadiths, I have the holy piby, a copy of dianetics, the satanic bible, the Vedas, some writings from a hare Krishna guru, as well as some books on Shinto and Buddhism. They are separated on my bookshelf from all of my other books by my copy of God is Not Great. Not really relevant to the story, but just a fun fact i thought I'd share.

​

Missing from my collection at the time was a Book of Mormon. So naturally, I decided to get one. I looked online and found that you can get one for free pretty easily from their main website, so I signed up to have one sent and I went on with my day.

​

A couple days later I got a call from someone at the church asking when i would be available at home for them to hand deliver my book to me. I told them this wasn't necessary and they could leave it in my mailbox, whenever they got a chance.

​

Fast forward to the next weekend. I'm relaxing at home on a hot southern summer, Saturday afternoon, and the doorbell rings. I answer and there are 3 LDS missionaries at my door with a copy of the book of Mormon. There are 3 young men, late hs or early college age, white shirts and khaki colored pants. They say that the leasing office of my apartment complex wouldn't let them put the book in my mailbox so they decided to deliver it personally. I thanked them and took the book. Before I had a chance to tell them goodbye and shut the door one of them piped up, if you have a minute we would really like to spend some time with you and discuss your new book.

​

At that moment I remember thinking, "do I really want to hear three bright eyed Mormons, drone on about Mormonism and Joseph Smith?" But shortly after I remembered that I had absolutely zero things to do and could use the opportunity to learn a bit. So I agreed. I invited them in and offered them some bottled water due to the heat, and we sat down in my living room to talk. They started by reciting some basic stuff that was obviously rehersed and pre prepared. It was relatively uninteresting and nothing I didn't know already.

​

At some point I asked my first relatively softball question, about how it differs from other Christian denominations. They were also really eager as they seemed to have some experience and/or a pre prepared answer for this. This prompted them to ask me what denomination I was, to which responded none, and I was an atheist. Their reaction at this point was a mixture of amazement, confusion, and repulsion. I still laugh when I think of the face the guy on the left made after dropping the a-bomb, on them.

​

This prompted many more questions and became much more about me and less about Mormonism. Including why I wanted the book. I explained them I'm interested in Mormonism from more of an academic view than a belief system, and showed them my collection. A long conversation ensued. They asked me many questions. I explained how much I have read, how many people I've talked to, how little evidence I've seen for any gods, etc. I think the hardest part might have been convincing them that I don't just "hate" god. I'm not an atheist because of hate, I'm not an atheist, because of some trauma, I'm not an atheist because I'm wanting to rebel. I'm an atheist because of data and facts dictate that I must. The fact that I'm an engineer means that I'm trained to look at data, and facts, and the data and facts don't point to the existence of a god.

​

It's never my intention to turn people away from their religion, but after the end of the three hour long conversation, I guess I explained and defended my position well enough that 2 of the 3 were agreeing with me by the end and were even thanking me. The two maybe had even been having doubts before meeting me. The third was maybe a little less Mormon but definately still didn't let go of his god belief.

​

Tl;dr... 3 Mormon missionaries come to my house to deliver the book of Mormon to me and talk to me about it. When they leave, 2 of them are atheist.

[bluewatsons]

Tara Isabella Burton, What Is a Cult?, Aeon (June 7, 2017)

Cults are exploitative, weird groups with strange beliefs and practices, right? So what about regular religions then?

Cults, generally speaking, are a lot like pornography: you know them when you see them. It would be hard to avoid the label on encountering (as I did, carrying out field work last year) 20 people toiling unpaid on a Christian farming compound in rural Wisconsin – people who venerated their leader as the closest thing to God’s representative on Earth. Of course, they argued vehemently that they were not a cult. Ditto for the 2,000-member church I visited outside Nashville, whose parishioners had been convinced by an ostensibly Christian diet programme to sell their houses and move to the ‘one square mile’ of the New Jerusalem promised by their charismatic church leader. Here they could eat – and live – in accordance with God and their leader’s commands. It’s easy enough, as an outsider, to say, instinctively: yes, this is a cult.

Less easy, though, is identifying why. Knee-jerk reactions make for poor sociology, and delineating what, exactly, makes a cult (as opposed to a ‘proper’ religious movement) often comes down to judgment calls based on perceived legitimacy. Prod that perception of legitimacy, however, and you find value judgments based on age, tradition or ‘respectability’ (that nice middle-class couple down the street, say, as opposed to Tom Cruise jumping up and down on a couch). At the same time, the markers of cultism as applied more theoretically – a single charismatic leader, an insular structure, seeming religious ecstasy, a financial burden on members – can also be applied to any number of new or burgeoning religious movements that we don’t call cults.

Often (just as with pornography), what we choose to see as a cult tells us as much about ourselves as about what we’re looking at.

Historically, our obsession with cults seems to thrive in periods of wider religious uncertainty, with ‘anti-cult’ activism in the United States peaking in the 1960s and ’70s, when the US religious landscape was growing more diverse, and the sway of traditional institutions of religious power was eroding. This period, dubbed by the economic historian Robert Fogel as the ‘Fourth Great Awakening’, saw interest in personal spiritual and religious practice spike alongside a decline in mainline Protestantism, giving rise to numerous new movements. Some of these were Christian in nature, for example the ‘Jesus Movement’; others were heavily influenced by the pop-cultural ubiquity of pseudo-Eastern and New Age thought: the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (aka the Hare Krishna), modern Wicca, Scientology. Plenty of these movements were associated with young people – especially young counter-cultural people with suspicious politics – adding a particular political tenor to the discourse surrounding them.

Against these there sprang a network of ‘anti-cult’ movements uniting former members of sects, their families and other objectors. Institutions such as the Cult Awareness Network (CAN) formed in 1978 after the poison fruit-drink (urban legend says Kool-Aid) suicides of Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple. The anti-cult networks believed that cults brainwashed their members (the idea of mind control, as scholars such as Margaret Singer point out, originated in media coverage of torture techniques supposedly used by North Korea during the Korean War). To counter brainwashing, activists controversially abducted and forcibly ‘deprogrammed’ members who’d fallen under a cult’s sway. CAN itself was co-founded by a professional deprogrammer, Ted Patrick, who later faced scrutiny for accepting $27,000 from the concerned parents of a woman involved in Leftist politics to, essentially, handcuff her to a bed for two weeks.

But that wasn’t all. An equal and no less fervent network of what became known as counter-cult activists emerged among Christians who opposed cults on theological grounds, and who were as worried about the state of adherent’s souls as of their psyches. The Baptist pastor Walter Ralston Martin was sufficiently disturbed by the proliferation of religious pluralism in the US to write The Kingdom of the Cults (1965), which delineated in detail the theologies of those religious movements Martin identified as toxic, and provided Biblical avenues for the enterprising mainstream Christian minister to oppose them. With more than half a million copies sold, it was one of the top-selling spiritual books of the era.

Writing the history of cults in the US, therefore, is also writing the history of a discourse of fear: of the unknown, of the decline in mainstream institutions, of change.

Every cultish upsurge – the Mansons, the Peoples Temple, the Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church (or Moonies) – met with an equal and opposite wave of hysteria. In 1979, the US sociologists Anson D Shupe, J C Ventimiglia and David G Bromley coined the term ‘atrocity tale’ to describe lurid media narratives about the Moonies. Particularly gruesome anecdotes (often told by emotionally compromised former members) worked to place the entire religious movement beyond the bounds of cultural legitimacy and to justify extreme measures – from deprogramming to robust conservatorship laws – to prevent vulnerable people falling victim to the cultic peril. True or not, the ‘atrocity tale’ allowed anti-cult activists and families worried about their children’s wellbeing (or their suspicious politics) to replace sociological or legal arguments with emotional ones.

This terror peaked when atrocity tales began outnumbering genuine horrors. The ‘Satanic panic’ of the 1980s brought with it a wave of mass hysteria over cult Satanists ritually abusing children in daycare centres, something that seems entirely to have been the product of false memories. In the now-discredited bestselling book Michelle Remembers (1980) by the psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his patient Michelle Smith (later, Mrs Lawrence Pazder), the lead author relates how he unlocked Smith’s memories of Satanic childhood. This influential atrocity tale influenced the three-year case in the 1980s against an administrator of the McMartin Preschool in Los Angeles and her son, a teacher, that racked up 65 crimes. The prosecution spun a fear-stoking narrative around outlandish claims, including bloody animal mutilations. The number of convictions? Zero. But mass-media hysteria made Satanic panic a national crisis, and a pastime.

And yet it is impossible to dismiss anti-cult work as pure hysteria. There might not be Satanists lurking round every corner, lying in wait to kidnap children or sacrifice bunny rabbits to Satan, but the dangers of spiritual, emotional and sexual abuse in small-scale, unsupervised religious communities, particularly those isolated from the mainstream or dominant culture, is real enough.

It is also keenly contemporary. The de-centred quality of the US religious landscape, the proliferation of storefront churches and ‘home churches’, not to mention the potential of the internet, makes it easier than ever for groups to splinter and fragment without the oversight of a particular religious or spiritual tradition. And some groups are, without a doubt, toxic. I’ve been to compounds, home churches and private churches where children are taught to obey community leaders so unquestioningly that they have no contact with the outside world; where the death of some children as a result of corporal punishment has gone unacknowledged by church hierarchy; or where members have died because group leaders discouraged them from seeking medical treatment. I’ve spoken to people who have left some of these movements utterly broken – having lost jobs, savings, their sense of self, and even their children (powerful religious groups frequently use child custody battles to maintain a hold over members).

In one Reddit post, James Chatham, formerly a member of the Remnant Fellowship, a controversial church founded by the Christian diet guru Gwen Shamblin, listed every reason he’d been punished as a child:

Allow me to give you a short list of the super-crazy [discipline] I recieved [sic] ‘Gods loving discipline’ for. Opening my eyes during a prayer Joking with adults (That joked back with me) … Saying that i don’t trust ‘Leaders’ (Their name for those that run the church) Asking almost any question about the bible. Trying to stop another kid from beating my skull in … Sneezing … Not being able to stand for 30 minutes straight with no break. Asking if my mother loved me more than god.

Does such extreme disciplinarianism make the Remnant Fellowship a cult? Or does the question of labelling distract us from wider issues at hand?

The historian J Gordon Melton of Baylor University in Texas says that the word ‘cult’ is meaningless: it merely assumes a normative framework that legitimises some exertions of religious power – those associated with mainstream organisations – while condemning others. Groups that have approved, ‘orthodox’ beliefs are considered legitimate, while groups whose interpretation of a sacred text differs from established norms are delegitimised on that basis alone. Such definitions also depend on who is doing the defining. Plenty of ‘cults’ identified by anti-cult and counter-cult groups, particularly Christian counter-cult groups such as the EMNR (Evangelical Ministries to New Religions), are recognised elsewhere as ‘legitimate’ religions: Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, even the Catholic Church have all come under fire, alongside the Moonies or the Peoples Temple.

To deny a so-called ‘cult’ legitimacy based on its size, or beliefs, or on atrocity tales alone is, for Melton, to play straight into normative definitions of power. We label cults ‘cults’ because they’re easy pickings, in a sense; even if their beliefs are no more outlandish, in theory, than reincarnation or the transubstantiation of the wafer in the Catholic Eucharist.

In a paper delivered at the Center for Study of New Religions in Pennsylvania in 1999, Melton said: ‘we have reached a general consensus that New Religions are genuine and valid religions. A few may be bad religion and some may be led by evil people, but they are religions.’ To call a group – be it Scientology or the Moonies, or the Peoples Church – a cult is to obscure the fact that to study it and understand it properly, both sociologically and theologically, we must treat it like any other religion (Melton prefers the term ‘New Religious Movements’). His point underscores the fact that questions of legitimacy, authority and hierarchy, and of delineation between inner and outer circles, are as much the provenance of ‘classical’ religious studies as of any analysis of cults.

Whatever our knee-jerk reaction to Scientology, say, and however much we know that compounds where members voluntarily hand over their savings to charismatic leaders are creepy and/or wrong, we cannot forget that the history of Christianity (and other faiths) is no less pockmarked by accusations of cultism. Each wave of so-called ‘heresy’ in the chaotic and contradictory history of the Christian churches was accompanied by a host of atrocity tales that served to legitimise one or another form of practice. This was hardly one-sided. Charges were levied against groups we might now see as ‘orthodox’ as well as at groups that history consigns to the dustbin of heresy: issues of ecclesiastical management (as in the Donatist controversy) or semantics (the heresies of Arianism, for example) could – and did – result in mutual anathema: we are the true church; you are a cult.

Of course, the uncomfortable truth here is that even true church (large, established, tradition-claiming church) and cult aren’t so far apart – at least when it comes to counting up red flags. The presence of a charismatic leader? What was John Calvin? (Heck, what was Jesus Christ?) A tradition of secrecy around specialised texts or practices divulged only to select initiates? Just look at the practitioners of the Eleusinian mysteries in Ancient Greece, or contemporary mystics in a variety of spiritual traditions, from the Jewish Kabbalah to the Vajrayāna Buddhist tradition. Isolated living on a compound? Consider contemporary convents or monasteries. A financial obligation? Christianity, Judaism and Islam all promote regular tithing back into the religious community. A toxic relationship of abuse between spiritual leaders and their flock? The instances are too numerous and obvious to list.

If we refuse any neat separation between cult and religion, aren’t we therefore obligated to condemn both? Only ontological metaphysical truth can possibly justify the demands that any religion makes upon its adherents. And if we take as writ the proposition that God isn’t real (or that we can never know what God wants), it’s easy to collapse the distinction with a wave of a hand: all religions are cults, and all are probably pretty bad for you. The problem with this argument is that it, too, falls down when it comes to creating labels. If we take Melton’s argument further, the debate over what makes a cult, writ large, might just as easily be relabelled: what makes a religion?

Besides, accusations of cultism have been levelled at secular or semi-secular organisations as well as metaphysically inclined ones. Any organisation offering identity-building rituals and a coherent narrative of the world and how to live in it is a target, from Alcoholics Anonymous to the vegan restaurant chain the Loving Hut, founded by the Vietnamese entrepreneur-cum-spiritual leader Ching Hai, to the practice of yoga (itself rife with structural issues of spiritual and sexual abuse), to the modern phenomenon of the popular, paleo-associated sport-exercise programme CrossFit, which a Harvard Divinity School study used as an example of contemporary ‘religious’ identity. If the boundaries between cult and religion are already slippery, those between religion and culture are more porous still.

In his seminal book on religion, The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), the anthropologist Clifford Geertz denies that human beings can live outside culture (what he calls the capital-M ‘Man’). Everything about how we see the world and ascribe meanings to symbols, at a linguistic as well as a spiritual level, is mediated by the semiotic network in which we operate. Religion, too, functions within culture as a series of ascriptions of meaning that define how we see ourselves, others, and the world. Geertz writes:

Without further ado, then, a religion is: (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing those conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.

Such a definition of religion isn’t limited to groups with formal doctrines about ‘God’, but encompasses any wider cultural narrative of the self in the world.

Geertz’s definition – somewhat dated now – has been updated: most notably by postcolonial thinkers such as Talal Asad, who argue that Geertz overlooks one of the most significant mechanisms for meaning-making: power. How we conceive of God, our world, our spiritual values (a hunger for ‘cleansing’ in yoga, or for proof of strength, as in CrossFit, or for salvific grace) is inextricable both from our own identities and our position within a group in which questions of power are never, can never be, absent.

Even the narratives that many religions, cults and religious-type groups promulgate – that they are in some sense separate from ‘the others’ (the Hebrew word for ‘holiness’, qadosh, derives from the word for separation) – are themselves tragically flawed: they are both apart from and firmly within the problems of a wider culture. 

Take, for example, the cultural pervasiveness of ideals of female thinness. It is precisely the aspirational desire to be Kate-Moss skinny that allows a Christian diet programme such as Remnant to attract members in the first place (don’t eat too much; it’s a sin!). So too does it allow cults of ‘wellness’ to take hold: a woman who is already obsessed with cleansing toxins, making her body ‘perfect’ and ‘clean’, and ‘purifying’ herself is more likely to get involved with a cult-like yoga practice and/or be susceptible to sexual abuse by her guru (a not uncommon occurrence).

Likewise, the no less culturally pervasive failure of mainstream institutions – from the healthcare system to mainline Protestant churches – to address the needs of their members gives rise, with equal potency, to individuals susceptible to conspiracy theories, or cultish behaviours: to anything that might provide them with meaningfulness.

The very collapse of wider religious narratives – an established cultural collectivism – seems inevitably to leave space for smaller, more intense, and often more toxic groups to reconfigure those Geertzian symbols as they see fit. Cults don’t come out of nowhere; they fill a vacuum, for individuals and, as we’ve seen, for society at large. Even Christianity itself proliferated most widely as a result of a similar vacuum: the relative decline of state religious observance, and political hegemony, in the Roman Empire.

After all, the converse of the argument ‘If God isn’t real then all religions are probably cults’ is this: if a given religion or cult is right, metaphysically speaking, then that rightness is the most important thing in the universe. If a deity really, truly wants you to, say, flagellate yourself with a whip (as Catholic penitents once did), or burn yourself on your husband’s funeral pyre, then no amount of commonsense reasoning can amount to a legitimate deterrent: the ultimate cosmic meaningfulness of one’s actions transcends any other potential need. And to be in a community of people who can help reinforce that truth, whose rituals and discourse and symbols help not only to strengthen a sense of meaningfulness but also to ground it in a sense of collective purpose, then that meaningfulness becomes more vital still: it sits at the core of what it is to be human.

To talk about religion as a de facto abuse-vector of hierarchical power (in other words, a cult writ large) is a meaningless oversimplification. It’s less an arrow than a circle: a cycle of power, meaning, identity, and ritual. We define ourselves by participating in something, just as we define ourselves against those who don’t participate in something. Our understanding of ourselves – whether we’re cradle Catholics, newly joined-up members of the Hare Krishna, or members of a particularly rabid internet fandom – as people whose actions have cosmic if not metaphysical significance gives us a symbolic framework in which to live our lives, even as it proscribes our options. Every time we repeat a ritual, from the Catholic Mass to a prayer circle on a farm compound to a CrossFit workout, it defines us – and we define the people around us.

Today’s cults might be secular, or they might be theistic. But they arise from the same place of need, and from the failure of other, more ‘mainstream’ cultural institutions to fill it. If God did not exist, as Voltaire said, we would have to invent him. The same is true for cults.

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Bikes, buses, and automobiles

IOWA CITY, Iowa (KCRG-TV9) — It turned into photograph end with a message behind it. Iowa City’s annual vehicle, bicycle, and metropolis bus race came about today from the Coralville public library to the Iowa City public library. Mayor Jim Throgmorton and city council members from Coralville and University Heights took part in the race.

The mayor took the bicycle course and completed simply seconds in the back of the bus proving it does not take longer to experience the bus all through the town. It turned into the primary yr the bus gained the race. Mayor Throgmorton says having distinctive types of transportation which can be dependable transportation is essential for the town.

“I think all three modes are beneficial and fruitful of their personal methods. I was the motorbike rider so I didn’t have any problem using the route. Made it pretty fast, just narrowly misplaced” stated Jim Throgmorton, mayor of Iowa City.

The mayor says he is looking forward to the town’s Master Bike plan in a couple months.

Street Bikes, Speed, and the Visual Rush

Nothing plenty compares to the adrenaline rush of a street bike ‘crotch rocket’ bike. It’s such as you personal the world at your wrist and sense the whole strength of your will – you believe you studied, it is going, it will become an extension of your ‘want for speed’ and in case you’ve never attempted it, this could sound a chunk corny, however once you have you will agree. The different day I turned into discussing my love for bikes with a member of our suppose tank. Turned out he had enjoyed with raced out road motorcycles himself.

The fellow supposes tanker stated; “I actually have a keen hobby in bikes. Currently, I have a Yamaha R6. My previous motorcycles have all been Honda’s with my first coming on the age of 5 years vintage. I even have had one knee surgery because of a dust motorcycle racing accident. At the moment I am desperately trying to talk my spouse into a brand new Ducati Diavel or Monster… Best time will inform.”

His Yamaha R6 appears like a lot amusing.

A six hundred is the best size for me, and we have some fun little canyon roads around here, as I live out via Malibu, CA. I’ve usually had Honda bikes too, CBR 600s normally, although loved my GSXR slingshot (750) aluminum body, holy crap became that a laugh motorbike to trip. But a 600 is wherein I’d as a substitute be, clean to throw around and simply the proper quantity of acceleration no longer to kill me. I do not forget my dad flew A-4 Skyhawk’s in the US Navy and me continually idea the Honda Hurricane 600 become that form of the maneuverable system. A Ducati Diavel – oh hell yes!

I agree there’s nothing like a raced-out road motorbike! Just look ahead to 4-wheelers making left-hand turns in front of you, visitors can kill you in case you do not pay attention. I do not know if everybody who races or has raced motorcycles has the same opinion, however, racing motorcycles around absolutely make your mind sharper, you need to live in advance of it, think, and react without wondering.

It helps the mind in ways a Video Game, simulator or something else ever should. That has been me enjoy, and I actually have participated in sports, flying, enterprise, politics, and so forth. There is something about it, you have the world at your wrist and each choice is real, severe, and you can’t take it lower back – simply the manner I adore it too. I marvel if it is like that for others. Maybe some people get extra out of it than others? Hard to mention, I just recognize what I get out of it. I like the visible stimulation rush.

What’s an aggressive highbrow with high testosterone degrees to do? It’s a male component.

Online Booking For Buses From Bangalore To Goa

Bangalore is one of the quickest growing towns in Asia and is often called the ‘Silicon Valley of India”. It has earned the moniker “Garden City” attributable to the lovely parks, gardens and luxurious green avenues that cover the cityscape. The pinnacle sightseeing spots in Bangalore are Vidhana Soudha, Bull Temple, Bangalore Palace, Ragi Gudda, Holy Trinity Church and ISKCON Hare Krishna Temple. Being a first-rate commercial and vacationer hub, the metropolis is nicely connected to the relaxation of us of a by using the road, rail, and air.

About Goa

Often hailed because of the ‘Party Capital of the World’, Goa is a tiny country located on the west coast of India, along with the Konkan coast. The beautiful seashores, fascinating countryside and outstanding churches and forts have made Goa one of the maxima visited visitor locations in India. The top sightseeing spots in Goa are Arambol seaside, Calangute seashore, Colva seaside, Bondla Wildlife Sanctuary, Dr. Salim Ali Bird Sanctuary, Bom Jesus Basilica and Fort Aguada. Being a chief vacationer destination, Goa is nicely linked to the relaxation of u. S . A . By means of an excellent road, rail and air network.

Top Operators

The Bangalore to Goa bus route sees high passenger quantity at some stage in the yr, as an end result, there are more than 10 operators serving this course. With the arrival of several online tour portals, it’s miles less complicated than ever before to e-book bus tickets on-line. Apart from the benefit of booking bus tickets from your house, those tour websites provide several benefits like zero booking fees, 24/7 customer service and on the spot affirmation. Most bus operators in this path accept mTicket, which allows passengers to verify their reserving through showing the eTicket on their cell phone.

The pinnacle rated bus operators for Bangalore – Goa route is VRL Travels, Kadamba Transports, SRS Travels, Sugama Transport and Manish Travels. Passengers traveling from Bangalore to Goa with the aid of bus can pick out from Mercedes Multi axle, Volvo Multi-axle Sleeper, Volvo Semisleeper, Deluxe Non AC Sleeper, Deluxe AC Sleeper and Non AC Deluxe Semisleeper coaches.

Distance from Bangalore and Goa

Bangalore is around 550 km from Goa and the full adventure time ranges from 10 to 15 hours, depending on the bus kind and site visitors conditions. The first bus from Bangalore to Goa departs at 3.30 pm even as the ultimate bus departs at 10.Forty five pm.

The maximum famous route for buses is via AH forty-seven & NH 4 and passes thru places like Tumkur, Chitradurga, Devangere, Haveri, & Hubli.

Boarding & Drop Points

Travelers booking Bangalore to Goa bus tickets can select from more than 10 boarding and drop points. The popular boarding factor in Bangalore for buses heading to Goa are Rajajinagar, Yeshwantpur, Madiwala, Jayanagar, and Jalahalli. Once the bus reaches Goa, passengers can alight at Ponda, Panjim, Porvorim and Mapusa. All the boarding and drop points in both the towns are well linked by means of bus, taxis, and automobile-rickshaws.

Krish is a Digital Marketing Manager with a Passion for Photography and Travelling. He gives the free session on Cheap Flight Booking, Holiday Packages, Hotels in Goa and Bus Booking.

The Growth and Development of the Automobile Industry – A Deeper Insight

The word “Automobile” has its origins in Greek and Latin and it has grown to be a quintessential a part of every man’s lifestyles. It has ended up so critical that on a median, a person spends at the least 3 hours in his car every day. The automobile was as soon as the thought of as a luxurious and only a pick few could take pleasure in. Now, the instances have changed and cars have come to be a means of transportation catering to the full-size majority.

The transformation from luxury to inevitability

Automobiles, in widespread, check with the common-or-garden car and the estimates suggest that there’s an automobile for each 11 persons on earth amounting as much as 590 million passenger automobiles. There are numerous editions of vehicles that cater to each cross segment of the populace. There are variations that might set you returned through a couple of million bucks and other models that price you a few thousand bucks.

The technological advances inside the vehicle zone had been amazing in the final a hundred years. The century’s finest invention or development need to honestly belong to the automobile enterprise. One of the earliest pioneers of the automobile Industry become Ransom Olds from the Oldsmobile factory. In the early 1900’s, he added the Production Line idea, for this reason churning out cars each few minutes. This concept turned into significantly revolutionized and carried out by means of Henry Ford, who improved car industry to the next level. Ford quickly grew in the first half of 20th century and slowly but regularly unfold globally.

Growing in conjunction with time

With the development of age, the automobile industry step by step grew in continental Europe and England. Japan introduced best initiatives that in addition enhanced the enterprise. Toyota from Japan were the pioneers of Total Quality Management and Six Sigma, which have been the guiding standards of the automobile enterprise for the final 50 years. Today, Toyota are the sector’s largest vehicle enterprise in step with recent marketplace estimates.