Is it permissable to mix [macabre] humor and dead seriousness in one diary?
Ooops. I don't have time for your answer, so here goes....
I predict that by the time I next log on to Daily Kos, somebody like Dood Abides will have used their skills with Photoshop and Snark to produce
the best ever Cultic Rabid Sheep with Venom Diary. [links to your raw material are featured below].
You want a cult? I'll give you a cult! Or two!! Or more!!! [more links are featured below]
With apologies that writing, editing, and illustrating are not my primary skills,
I offer you a selection of excellent starting points for your fuller understanding of
CULTS, as well as your raw material for Photoshop and Snark...... there's a link to a face that should never be forgotten whenever you hear the word "cult" . . . .
Your homework assignments are below the fold:
There's something about hanging around here that puts pie on a person's brain. . . . I remembered it wrong....their last celebratory meal featured blueberry cheesecake, not blueberry pie....
http://www.ufos-unbound.com/...
"WHAT IS A CULT?" [OMG!]
http://www.forteantimes.com/...
http://www.positiveatheism.org/...
http://members.tripod.com/...
Please Support The Heaven's Gate Goodbye Party Fund!
http://www.wwnorton.com/...
The home page of the millenarian group Heaven's Gate. Thirty-nine cult members died in a mass suicide in Rancho Santa Fe, California, on March 27, 1997
On a more serious note, a great exploration into the psychology of the cult-like terrorists and warriors we are so afflicted with can be found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
"Robert Jay Lifton (born May 16, 1926) is a prominent American psychiatrist and author, chiefly known for his studies of the psychological causes and effects of war and political violence."
"Destroying the World to Save It : Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism"
by Robert Jay Lifton
Snippet of a review by David Pitt: "But the book is much more than a story of a single cult. It's an exploration of the idea of cults: how they grow, who joins them, who leads them. Drawing on his knowledge of Japan--both modern and historical--Lifton places Aum in the broader context of world history, comparing it to Jim Jones' Peoples Temple and the Nazi movement. An intelligent, ambitious exploration of the power of cults and a definite eye-opener."
I heard Dr. Lifton on the radio [with Terry Gross?] just after 9/11/2001 and realized what a stupid error and trap we were in danger of falling into with our response. Could I reach my Senators to point them in this direction? Impossible to get through.
I met him a couple of years later and was very impressed with his ability to take on the burden of staring down "evil" for the sake of understanding it, preventing it, avoiding it.
To David Brooks & Co., "To Thine Own Self Be True....."
[What a pity that insight and introspection are not within their reach. I'm beginning to think it was so well understood by the Founding Father as a starting point in life that they didn't even mention it.]