Why does a cult need an anti-cult cult?
Well, first, lets have a good look at the cult vs anti-cult cult rhetoric. What is obvious is that it is all about the audience. Basically, the absolute truth is that both sides need each other. Because the other provides the reason for standing up on stage. There would be no reason for standing up on stage to an audience, who is either cheering or booing, but regardless, totally engrossed with the actor on the stage, without the other. Can you imagine a football game without any opposition? There would be no football game and therefore no audience whose only purpose in being an audience is to see their team win against the opposition. But more importantly there can be no football stars without an audience. Without an opposition there would just be a couple of people throwing a ball around. For fun. No audience. No stars.
And just importantly, like a football game. Its us and them. 'We' won they say. What they really mean is "we are one". Its a kind of false togetherness.
So the whole thing is self-evidently symbiotic egotism where the other provides the absolutely necessary foil for their own self-righteousness. Imagine all that endless shouting into a nameless void. All the shouters would be nothings and nobodies in emptiness. Actors without an audience. Certainly not stars on a stage. As Saussure suggests, this is the semiotics of cult and anti-cult cult where each gives the other meaning.
This would seem to contradict what we already know about both truly spiritual people and whistle-blowers. They both try to avoid the audience. In fact they do everything and anything to avoid an audience. So the story goes, Christ went into the desert, alone. The Buddha sat under the Boddhi tree, alone. And whistle-blowers try to avoid all public attention. They have no need of comparison or an audience (and arguably comparison is always for an audience) because comparative judgement before an audience arises from and serves the ego. On the one hand, the spiritual person is specifically interested in having a relationship to the universal, which necessarily requires, so it would logically seem, transcending the confines of the ego. On the other hand, the true whistle-blower is motivated by the moral issue alone. Certainly not the attention of the audience.
The corollary of this is that what's really at stake in this endless talk of good and evil is an identity struggle whose underpinning function is egotistic aggrandisement. That's why the cult needs the anti-cult cult.
On a lighter note for next time. What is all of this about a cup of coffee and piece of cheesecake?
Well, first, lets have a good look at the cult vs anti-cult cult rhetoric. What is obvious is that it is all about the audience. Basically, the absolute truth is that both sides need each other. Because the other provides the reason for standing up on stage. There would be no reason for standing up on stage to an audience, who is either cheering or booing, but regardless, totally engrossed with the actor on the stage, without the other. Can you imagine a football game without any opposition? There would be no football game and therefore no audience whose only purpose in being an audience is to see their team win against the opposition. But more importantly there can be no football stars without an audience. Without an opposition there would just be a couple of people throwing a ball around. For fun. No audience. No stars.
And just importantly, like a football game. Its us and them. 'We' won they say. What they really mean is "we are one". Its a kind of false togetherness.
So the whole thing is self-evidently symbiotic egotism where the other provides the absolutely necessary foil for their own self-righteousness. Imagine all that endless shouting into a nameless void. All the shouters would be nothings and nobodies in emptiness. Actors without an audience. Certainly not stars on a stage. As Saussure suggests, this is the semiotics of cult and anti-cult cult where each gives the other meaning.
This would seem to contradict what we already know about both truly spiritual people and whistle-blowers. They both try to avoid the audience. In fact they do everything and anything to avoid an audience. So the story goes, Christ went into the desert, alone. The Buddha sat under the Boddhi tree, alone. And whistle-blowers try to avoid all public attention. They have no need of comparison or an audience (and arguably comparison is always for an audience) because comparative judgement before an audience arises from and serves the ego. On the one hand, the spiritual person is specifically interested in having a relationship to the universal, which necessarily requires, so it would logically seem, transcending the confines of the ego. On the other hand, the true whistle-blower is motivated by the moral issue alone. Certainly not the attention of the audience.
The corollary of this is that what's really at stake in this endless talk of good and evil is an identity struggle whose underpinning function is egotistic aggrandisement. That's why the cult needs the anti-cult cult.
On a lighter note for next time. What is all of this about a cup of coffee and piece of cheesecake?