make it so, number one

[rone]

<kanzen> I think I want a tshirt that reads "Xenu is my copilot" with a picture of DC-8 somewhere on it

Comments

My guess is that Hubbard was a spectacularly successful troll

[mouseworks.livejournal.com]

He was more sociopath than anything else seems to be the concensus of the older s.f. writers who remembered him.

The people who fall for this are another story.

I remember hearing a tape by another cult master, the Bagwan who took over the town in Oregon. He was actually telling his disciples that (a) afterlife, who knows or cares and I certain don't care what happens to you when I die, (b) if you want to give me money, I'll take it, (c) craving after spiritual advancement is silly. The woman who played the tape for me heard the whole thing metaphorically. I gave her a copy of _Karma Cola_ when I left Albany. Lady, the guy says it's just about getting chicks and cars. Really, there's no deep meaning there at all.

If people like Hubbard and the Bagwan didn't exist, the kinds of people drawn to them would invent them. (Some of the more spectacularly short lives cults seemed to have been precisely this sort of thing where the founder *was* as nuts as his followers).