Would you like to:

. Learn the art of witty, spiteful sarcasm?

. Implicitly adopt pre-prepared outlooks on a
myriad of important social issues, yet somehow
end up thinking that your opinions are
original and well thought-out? . Poke fun at
cult members--completely ignoring the fact
that you are worshipping the tenets of your
adopted philosophy with religious zeal?

. Have fun making sweeping generalities of
almost all people with non-rationalistic
beliefs about identity and reality?

. Advocate misleading, unfair stereotypes, for
the good of all humanity?

. Learn to derive joy and pleasure from
unabashed feelings of malice and contempt?

...Then "Bob" is just what you
never knew you needed!

--------------------------

[To those readers who came directly to this page: here
if the tone or content of this file offends you, don't
forget about the rest of the site.]

Why I DESPISE
the Church of the SubGenius

For those of you who don't know, the Church of the
SubGenius is an organization which sells itself off as a
"spoof religion." The Church's philosophy, which is
overtly a parody of the New Age movement, is
disseminated as books, pamphlets, and various forms of
"religious" paraphernalia.

Reading SubGenius propaganda, one soon realizes that the
'Church' of the SubGenius is, in no way, a religious
organization. If anything, its views on spirituality are
Rationalistic. The subject of the Church's
propaganda-style literature is a group of people called
"SubGeniuses." This culture is portrayed as a bunch of
stereotypical New-Age cultists like the people who were
part of the Heaven's Gate suicide. As you read on,
however, you come to realize that UFO cults are not the
only subjects of the Church of the SubGenius's jeering
humor; the truth is, all people with non-rationalistic
beliefs are under fire.

In the West, where Rationalism and victimhood-based
religions reign over the majority world view, most
people have come to believe that humans are inherently
limited to the realm of material experience (i.e.
five-sensory perception, unilinear awareness of time,
beta-wave dominated consciousness, etc.). The limits
ascribed to human beings by the Rationalist paradigm are
so nearly universal among Westerners that most people
have come to take them for granted. In other words, most
people in the west think of the materialistic sphere of
experience as intrinsic to human nature.

The Church of the SubGenius can be said to be a "final
champion" of the Rationalistic world view; it nobly
battles the growing appeal of Transpersonalist views of
the human potential, by mocking some part of each of
them and bringing them all under the roof of a "unifying
stereotype."

Though members of the movement would not be likely to
admit it, many of the Church's assumptions are actually
subjective. It would be almost useless to point these
out to an audience of dogmatized SubGeniuses, but this
essay is intended for a more diverse group. A few of the
Church's more subjective assumptions are:

~ That people who regard certain aspects of political,
economic, or media structures as deliberately
suppressive of awareness are Alien-mind-controlled
"subversives" who are being used as "enemies" of the
unification of the human race.

~ That transpersonally oriented psychological notions
(among which are those of Carl Jung, Ken Wilber, Carlos
Castaneda, etc.) are "unrealistic" and worthy of
sarcastic contempt.

~ That people who are not totally satisfied with
five-sensory or other conventional Western boundaries of
consciousness are generally elitists who feel superior
to "normal" humans. (It's worth noting that this
category includes a significant portion of the
population of India.)

Although SubGenius propaganda seems to only parody the
most bizarre and dogmatic New-Age philosophies, it is
written in such a way as to subtly include all people
with transpersonally oriented beliefs in a single
category.

Most SubGenius material is written in a "missionary"
style, mimicking the sermons of Christian
fundamentalists and some of the more flowery
"channelings." It is ironic that, amidst mocking such a
dogmatic approach to spreading one's religious faith,
the Church's advocates are doing the exact same thing:
trying to convince others of their absolute
righteousness. The method is more subtle, but there are
many parallels; for example, the Church's propaganda
constantly tries to portray those who don't fully accept
the Rationalist doctrine as inferior to those who have
"seen the light" and realized that humans are meant to
be limited to the boundaries of the material.

It's often implied in SubGenius literature that people
seek to explore transpersonal awareness because of a
need to "escape from reality." This idea is obviously
true in certain people's cases, but that is not grounds
for such a gross generalization of non-Rationalists.

OK, They're Not all Bad . . .

Yes, folks, in order to show those SubGeniuses who have
made it this far into my analysis just how open-minded
and "unpredictable" can be, I've written a very brief
section discussing the good aspects of the Church of the
SubGenius. (Never mind the fact that for every good
thing I bring up here, I point out another bad one.)

Well, one good thing is that the Church offers some
on-the mark commentary about the ridiculous nature of
many cultish belief systems. The downside of this is
that the Church's parody usually encompasses lots of
non-dogmatic beliefs as well. Through a "Trojan horse"
type strategy, SubgGenius propaganda attempts to make
people biased against all transpersonally oriented
philosophies, by filing them all under a category that
includes alien-worshiping Millenialist fanaticism and
escapist transcendentalism.

In fact, the dogmatic beliefs which epitomize the
"SubGenius stereotype" comprise a minority of New Age
paradigms. Most non-materialistic worldviews emphasize
an awareness of the Sacred in life, but this does not
automatically imply god worship; sacredness can be
thought of as intensity of experience, underlying truths
in human existence, or a non-destructive, benevolent way
of acting toward others. The spiritual element in these
views lies in the idea that an aspect of the human
psyche--which is not purely rational--seeks to recognize
and understand the sacred within our existence.

..But they're funny, so it's OK

One of the Church's greatest sources of appeal is its
often brilliant humor and wit. I find myself enjoying a
lot of SubGenius material, even though I despise many of
its central assumptions. Obviously, a lot of creativity
goes into this propaganda; it's a shame that this
creative power is invested in ideas which are so
suppressive, and an approach which is so manipulative.

The Real Beliefs of the "Church..?"

OK, this theory is really pushing the bounds of
credibility, but here goes...

The propaganda of the Church, beneath the "Cult Spoof"
element, promotes the belief that people who pursue
non-material, or transpersonal, forms of understanding
are connected with sinister Aliens. Like all other
SubGenius assertions, this idea is expressed in a
convoluted form, through dogmatic preachings that
supposedly exemplify the attitudes of flaky New Agers.
Since this message is partially hidden by the sea of
clever catch-phrases, people who don't know what to look
for probably won't catch the message that
non-materialists are actually Alien "Contactees."

The Church of the SubGenius preaches that Aliens are
responsible for the growing acclaim of Transpersonalist
paradigms in the West, and have also seeded many
unorthodox or subversive notions that have recently
become popular in the fields of politics, psychology,
and science. The reasopn for all this, according to the
Church, is that Aliens seek to "subvert social unity"
and promote chaos among humans. All of this is
accomplished by introducing seemingly revolutionary
ideas into the social fabric through their
mind-controlled "pawns."

The Cult of the SubGenius

If Scientific Rationalism were said to be a religion,
The Church of the SubGenius would be a cult. A
Rationalist tone is clearly evident in the Church's
models of reality and human nature; it assumes that
"real" human beings are not capable of directly
understanding our existence in anything but a
materialistic framework, and that nothing exists but the
world of physical phenomena.

The Church's philosophy deviates from the standard
Rationalist paradigm by acknowledging the existence of
extraterrestrials and paranormal phenomena ("orthodox"
scientists and journalists scientists won't give these
subjects the benefit of a doubt). The interpretation of
these occurences, however, is filtered through a new
spin on the old Rationalist bias; rather than not
existing, the super-normal is assumed to arise from a
source that is foreign to human nature.

People who espouse the Church's philosophy (the real
one, not the New-Age spoof) rationalize (as it were)
their own dogmatism by assuming that the beliefs of the
Church are totally objective. They think that every one
of their central assumptions is based in
incontrovertible fact, and that this justifies their
adherence to a spiteful, stereotypical portrayal of
Transpersonalists.

This all gets back to the Scientific Rationalist notion
that "once it's been 'proven,' we don't need to doubt it
ever again." Never mind the veracity of "the proof," or
the motives and preconceived opinions of the authorities
who are "proving it." The objectivity of an assessment
of facts often gets lost in the process of
interpretation.

I should clarify here that I have no problem with anyone
pointing out the fallaciousness of cult-like New Age
belief systems. I don't even necessarily disagree with
the idea that aliens exist; a lot of information seems
to suggest that bug-eyed little fiends are flying around
abducting people. My "beef" with the Church of the
SubGenius is that it condones a belief that
transpersonal awareness is alien (as it were) to human
experience.

A lot of people, even some fans of the Church, will read
this and say "what the hell is this guy talking
about?!!" The Church's material is so ridden with
parodies of New-Agers that it seems most logical to
assume they're strictly a spoof religion. However, there
are other companies that forward the ideas I'm talking
about; the best example I can think of is Schwa.

I've come to these conclusion after reading a lot of
SubGenius material, analyzing videos and all other
manner of propaganda, contrasting it with similar
propaganda from other organizations, and knowing a good
number of SubGeniuses (or people who subscribed to a
parallel philosophy).

Those who don't know what I'm talking about (and give a
damn either way) ought to read up before you decide
whether I'm on to something or just a paranoid "kook."
Some of the best references I can give are the Church of
the SubGenius Online Pamphlet (which makes a lot more
sense if you've read Matrix II by Val Valerian) and the
Schwa World Operations Manual. To figure out what most
of these groups are actually saying, you have to become
aware of which beliefs are already assumed.

Natural or Super-natural?

One of the main objectives of SubGenius propaganda is to
convince people that human phenomena which fall outside
of the boundaries of the material do not arise from an
innate capacity. Without exception, the Church depicts
"supernormal" experiences (in terms of Western norms) as
either self-created delusions or the result of
intervention from a non-human source.

The Church seems bent on refuting the idea that humans
can use transpersonal awareness to better understand
themselves, the nature of reality, or human existence as
a whole.

The Church of the SubGenius advocates a belief that
people who seek, through experience, to understand
things like astral projection, the subtle energy fields
of the human body, alternate realities or non-physical
levels of this reality (such as the Spirit World of
Shamanic journeys and the "etheric matrix,"
respectively), or mysterious human abilities like
intuition, are associated in some way with evil Aliens.
The basic premise here is that "normal" people don't
have the capacity to understand these sorts of things.

According to "between the lines" SubGenius doctrine,
Jesus, the Buddha, Joan of Arc, Merlin, don Juan (the
Shaman mentor of author Carlos Castaneda), and many
others who are said to have possessed supernormal
awareness must have been either a) deluded fanatics, b)
mythologized ordinary people, or c) Alien Abductees. By
generalization, acupuncturists, tai ch'i instructors,
Ravers, tribal medicine men, and people who practice
many diverse forms of meditation fall into this category
as well. In fact, anyone who has experiences or
perceptions that contradict the Rationalist view of
human capabilities is either a "kook" or a "Contactee",
or possibly both.

The Church goes out of its way to discourage people from
taking part in a natural expansion of awareness. I say
that this expansion is natural because people have been
doing it for as long as human beings have lived on this
planet.

Western society is steeped in materialistic assumptions
and externally oriented values; since people must
conform to these criteria in order to be considered
normal and sane, it's no surprise that transpersonal
phenomena are much less common in the West than the
East.

Because materialistic experience is the norm in the
West, it is possible for groups like the Church of the
SubGenius to convince many people that exploration of
the transpersonal is not natural, that it's not even
human. Those who have studied other cultural traditions
would find this idea harder to swallow, because most
cultures--a majority, in fact, practice some form of
transpersonal experience which surpasses simple belief
in the non-material. Examples of such traditions are
found in among Tibetans, Indians, the Sioux and many
other Native American tribes, Australian Aborigines,
Haitian, African and American Vudu, the Mayan
civilization, etc.

Western norms seem to be rapidly encompassing Eastern
lines of thought. The success of the book The Celestine
Prophecy is a testament to the number of Westerners who
have become disillusioned with the materialistic model
of human existence and seek to understand what had been
relegated to the status of "unknowable. (I'm not saying
it's well-written.)

The movement toward transpersonal understanding is
different from previous spiritual movements in the West,
because its focus is mostly on experiential views of the
immaterial. Granted, New-Age beliefs abound that are
based strictly in blind faith, and many are bizarre
mixes of dogmatic and experiential beliefs, but the same
can be said of most paradigms, including the Church's.

For those who base their understanding more on personal
experience than on dogmatic, unverifiable explanations,
religious explanations have never held water to the pure
"scientific reason" of Rationalism. Recently, however,
the Rationalist paradigm has gained a competitor: the
paradigm of transpersonal experience. Due to the
personal exploration of many people, as well as a
gradual absorption of Native American and Eastern
Values, it is becoming more acceptable to gain an
explanation of the unknown by disciplining one's
awareness to do so.

The fact that many otherwise "normal" Westerners are
beginning to turn Eastward, to experience a reality that
exceeds the familiar limits of the material, is becoming
increasingly difficult for the Rationalist school of
thought to ignore. Before, they were able to respond to
non-materialistic views by saying "that's irrational, or
"that's just plain silly," but more and more, they find
themselves faced with people who do not worship gods,
who do not completely affiliate themselves with one
belief system, and whose perspectives are not righteous
and dogmatic. It was almost inevitable that those who
uphold the Rationalist paradigm of the human norm would
respond to the invasive influence of Transpersonalist
philosophies by constructing "a bigger, better
counter-paradigm."

This scramble to oppose the growing prevalence of
Transpersonalist notions has led to the conception of
dogmatic movements such as the Church of the SubGenius.
In the Church's case, "enemy paradigms" are subverted by
fostering an assumption that Transpersonalists are part
of a conspiracy against humanity. Transpersonalist
philosophies are still such a minority in the West that
a lot of people are able to accept the idea that
non-Rationalists are of a different nature than "true
humans."

Brainwashing By Consent

Propaganda marketed by the Church is written in an
exclusive secret language; it continually makes vague
references to beliefs that the reader is expected to
know. This technique insures that people who don't
already have certain preconceptions about Aliens and
transpersonal forms of awareness will write off the
Church's material as unintelligible gibberish. In fact,
there is a clear and ordered logic behind the Church's
message; people can eventually decipher the "code" and
come to understand the church's basic philosophy, but in
order to do so they have to go through a psychological
roller-coaster of brainwashing techniques that infuse
their perspective with the stereotypical assumptions of
the Church.

I'll explain what I mean by "brainwashing." The
techniques of indoctrinating individuals used by the
Church aren't based on involuntary programming, meaning
that people aren't unknowingly or unwillingly imprinted
with the target beliefs. Rather, people are manipulated
into accepting beliefs through compelling negative
emotions, such as fear and contempt. (To give the reader
a better point of reference, these programming
techniques are often employed in commercials on TV.)

Negative emotions have an intrinsic effect of causing a
person's perspective to become totally fixed on a
certain assumption. For instance, when we feel that
somebody believes himself to be superior to us, we are
likely to feel defensively proud, and to retaliate with
a judgment of our own. The judgment will probably be a
limited, distorted or exaggerated perception of the
person being judged, but the prevailing emotions of
pride and contempt prevent us from realizing this.

Those who understand how to "push people's buttons," to
induce specific negative emotions, have an effective
means to program a person or society with certain
assumptions. Once programmed, people can be kept from
doubting their beliefs by continually reinforcing those
feelings in the same context. This method is used by
many organizations to enlist and keep the faith of their
followers.

Almost all of the propaganda issued by the Church of the
SubGenius relies on these psychological strategies. The
Church's advocates employ these perspective-twisters to
spread the "holy Word" of Western Rationalism: that
human beings have come to the limits of our capacity to
explore, and that anyone whose experiences contradict
this doctrine are crazy or in league with the devil.
Modern-day witch-hunters..?

The church's methods differ from most cultist or secular
movements in the fact that they encourage creativity on
the part of "members;" the give- away, however, is the
pattern of continually reinforcing certain base
assumptions, so that the person never gets a chance to
examine those precepts from an objective viewpoint.

Negative emotions function on the principle of
restriction; they restrict the scope of one's awareness.
When a person's beliefs are rooted in emotions such as
fear, contempt, and spite, we can safely assume that he
or she isn't going to consider those beliefs from an
objective viewpoint; maintaining these feelings requires
that we continue to assume that our view is the
immutable truth. This kind of mind-set is suppressive of
personal evolution; the more we bolster our beliefs with
"synthetic confidence," the more we close ourselves off
to everything but our preconceptions. By seeking an
internally based confidence--a sense of esteem that
isn't based in comparisons and judgments--we remain
outside the sphere of negative emotions' control. This
state of mind makes us less prone to the type of
indoctrination used by groups such as the Church of the
SubGenius.

Unfortunately, remaining free of emotional conflict is
much easier said than done; as most people know,
negative feelings can be very compelling. In the midst
of intense self-pity, it's almost impossible to think
about what's good in our lives. Indian yogis and Tibetan
Llamas may be the only people who are completely free of
these feelings' dominating influence (hell, maybe they
even get pissed off every once in a while..

What are those reasons again?

To wrap up, here's a brief summary of the main reasons I
despise the Church of the SubGenius:

~ It encourages people to see predominant views of human
existence as the "final frontier" of human awareness.

~ Its attitudes are prejudicial towards all people who
don't completely with the views of the Church, yet it
hypocritically advocates a "revolutionary" sense of
community among "true humans."

~ It enlists people's faith and support through a
distorted, contemptful and generalized portrayal of a
broad group of philosophies and people, "in-group"
elitism reminiscent of middle-school cliques, fear of
social ostracism, jeering affirmations of superiority,
subjective opinions depicted as objective information,
et-cetera. These devices discourage people from taking
an informed or objective viewpoint on the issues that
they're associated with.

~ It justifies extremely shady intentions (i.e. social
suppression of non-material awareness) with the
altruistic goal of "opposing the Aliens." SubGenius
propaganda continually tries to convince people that the
latter attempt is synonymous with the former, when they
obviously represent two separate agendas.

Waging War on Transpersonal Awareness

As the saying goes, "This means war." Sects and cults of
the Rationalist "religion" are waging a war against the
Transpersonalist movement. It seems, however, that the
majority of Transpersonalists are either unaware of
this, squeamish about speaking out about it, or simply
indifferent.

Among all the Westerners with transpersonal leanings,
there are certain cultural trends that play into this
lack of opposition. One of these is the lack of
"activist spirit" that the Church attributes to
SubGeniuses. On the other side of the coin, we have
those people who are so "activist" that they accept
"anti- establishment" views or unsubstantiated rumors of
conspiracy without giving much thought to the logical
value of those ideas. There is a need those who are
mired in these thought patterns to get out of their
respective ruts, for the "Mellow People" to get off
their asses and for the "Fringe New-Agers" to rely more
on objective logic and on their own experiences.

The war against transpersonal awareness is often
expressed in the content of movies and TV programs.
Fortunately, both polarities are represented in these
mediums; on one side, we have movies like Phenomenon,
which express the message that the mysteries of our
existence are within reach. while on the other, we have
such films as Village of the Damned and TV series like
The Visitor, which focus on the idea that mysterious
Aliens are giving people super-natural powers. So far,
the ratio between the two has been pretty balanced. but
the it seems that the latter group has recently begun to
outnumber the former.

A final question I'd like to address is, why would
people want to suppress social exploration of the
transpersonal, and who would benefit from that
suppression? Food for thought, huh? There are many
possible reasons, which I'll discuss in a forthcoming
essay.

------------------------------------------------------------------

[Image] If you're not a member of the church and would like to
become a fully indoctrinated, prejudicial Rationalist for ever and
ever, follow this link to a fun-loving, happy-go-lucky SubGenius
site full of harmless, open-minded humor.

[Image] I posted some thoughts on the Church in the
"Counter-culture" discussion forum on the DisInformation web site.
One person's response was especially thoughtful and direct.

For some background on/confirmation of the (hypothetical) beliefs
of the Church of the SubGenius, try to get your hands on Matrix II
by Val Valerian. Valerian's view is that reality is a more complex
affair than the physical, and that both extraterrestrial and
non-physical consciousness exist which represent various paradigms
and intentions toward humanity. In Val's defense, the book does
not reflect the anti-transpersonal underpinnings of groups like
Schwa and the "Church." Valerian applies many non-material
perspectives to the UFO/ET phenomena; it seems that he didn't
intend for the information he collected about these subjects to be
interpreted in such a limited (and limiting) context.

------------------------------------------------------------------

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Original file name: Why I DESPISE The Church .txt - converted on Monday, 21 July 2003, 13:47