DIY Cult

There's one question that gets us out of the trap that religions and other cults set for us:

ie: What does god want?

• If the answer is "nothing", then both of us - that god and I - can just go about our business, each requiring nothing from the other.
• If the answer is anything but "nothing", then that god wants for something, which means that god is not complete, which means that god is not god.

And we have to keep in mind that every cult will set itself up so that something or someone is the "god" - the object of all the devotion and sacrifice and effort. It can be a person, or an ideology, or a business plan, or whatever. But it's always going to end up being sold to the devotees as "The Perfect [INSERT ENTITY/CONCEPT HERE]".

And no matter what else, when the inevitable collapse of the fantasy comes, the cult leaders will always always always try to fall back and regroup with:

• Communism didn't fail, we failed communism
• The plan didn't fail, we failed at executing the plan
• The policy didn't fail, we failed to fully implement the policy
• Conservatism didn't fail we failed to be sufficiently conservative

BTW, all that stuff about "it didn't fail, we did" is co-opted and adulterated and perverted, but it rings true because there's actually a small kernel of truth in it, having been derived from a universal truth:

Democracy fails

when we fail democracy

So we have to crank up the critical thinking, and make some decisions.

• What do we want to devote ourselves to?
• How do we differentiate between something decent and equitable vs something perverse and uncivilized?

From 23 years ago, Carey Burtt Films: