a book and a play that help shed light on the subgenius phenomenon

i found out about this story listening to all things considered on npr today, and it just does a perfect job of explaining the purpose of the church of the subgenius. a 1989 book called the araboolies of liberty street came out, and there is a new play of the same name debuting in a theatre (yes, i use british spelling because it has more flavour) in maryland. just read the story at npr.org and then come back here and read the rest of this post. now the whole point of the chuch of the subgenius is to celebrate being different and weird, and to make that something to be proud of, rather than something to feel inferior because of. the point is to not feel like you are inferior because of your oddities that people may pick on you about or insult you for. in the church of the subgenius, there is nothing worse than a normal person. normals are the scum of the universe. and why is that? their slavish conformity takes away all individuality, all creativity, and turns them into cogs in the machine, mindlessly acting out the will of the “hive-mind” of society and popular culture. people become “wage slaves”, making money and wasting it on things they don’t need, working hard but to get ahead so they are more “successful”, but never actually being satisfied or being happy. in fact, the harder people try to get to a situation in life where they are happy, the less successful they are at reaching happiness. that is the whole point of “slack”. the point of “slack” is to not be brainwashed by advertising into becoming a shopaholic, not to spend yourself into debt and be enslaved by the system, not to spend years working hard in a company that gives you hardly any reward for all your hard work, but to be liberated from all that, by thinking for yourself, and indulging in pleasure rather than abstaining from it. the point of “slack” is to stop fighting against everything and to just go with the flow and enjoy things. the point is to find inner peace and happiness by removing all obstructions to this happening. the point is not to care if people think you are weird or different, because in your mind, our unique qualities make us special in a good way, and people who are not weird at all, who are completely normal, are quite boring and uninteresting and no fun to be around or to be. and the point of the church of the subgenius is to spread ridiculous bullshit and have people pretend to believe it, in order to help people realize how prevalent bullshit is and how much bullshit most people actually believe in, because the more obvious bullshit you are exposed to, the more you can notice patterns and start to realize that other less-obvious things are also bullshit too. the point is to give abnormal people that society looks down upon a group to belong to and a place they feel welcome, where they can express their individuality. the point is to use absurdity to help people deal with the fact that reality itself is often absurd, and to see the humor in it and stop taking everything so seriously. and this play that npr discusses is about a family of liberated people who are, in effect, subgenii, and discuss how the normal people try to oppress them with a fascist state that does not allow anyone to be different. because you know how children like to pick on anyone who is different. and adults are just the same. like nowadays, germany is refusing to let tom cruise be filmed there for a movie about a planned coup against adolf hitler back during nazi germany. why? because tom cruise has an unpopular belief system, scientology. the irrational and morally questionable belief system of tom cruse, scientology, is pretty much illegal in germany, whereas germany taxes everyone in order to pay money out for free to churches that advocate another irrational and morally questionable belief system, christianity. the difference is, christianity is popular and scientology is unpopular. besides that, they are basically the same thing. i listened to the local christian radio station at work the day before yesterday. it was such mindless nonsense. there was a preacher talking about how the apocalypse was coming and how 2/3 of the jews would be killed in a great war by the evil arabs against the holy land of israel, and how only those who have accepted jesus christ as their personal savior get eternal salvation in heaven, and how everyone else burns in hell for all eternity. the preacher is some mexican guy in california named roll reace or something like that. he is probably an illegal immigrant, but they still put him on the radio every night at 7:30 for half an hour, because he is a born again christian. and he mentioned some things from the theory of dispensationalism he adheres to, and of course the rapture, and he talked about other various bullshit. in fact most of the doctrines of born-again protestant evangelists were false doctrines developed in the 1800s that totally go against traditional christianity, but that is another story. traditional christianity is catholicism, and by revolting against it, the protestants were in a sense revolting against jesus by revolting against the church that the disciple paul established in jesus’s name. in the pre-catholic days, there were several different competing schools of thought in christianity, such as the gnostics, and christians were much more nonviolent and courageous, but that is another story. suffice it to say, christianity has devolved into a pathetic mockery of what it once was, and now its most ardent supporters preach hate instead of love. the church of the subgenius, however, has not lost its way, at least not yet, because the original founder, who calls himself ivan stang, is still in charge of everything. he is very adamant about the way things must be done, and he is much more tolerant of other belief systems than most members of the church of the subgenius. ivan stang believes in being tolerant of those who are different, especially if they are in the minority, and he believes that the cult he founded is the best way to promote the values he holds dear, by disguising it as one big joke, when really, they really do have a message. now a lot of other subgenii hold completely different belief systems from ivan stang, and subgenii are really all over the map when it comes to what they believe in, although generally we believe in individual freedom and are opposed to governmental or corporate intrusions into our freedoms. another thing about the church of the subgenius is, by mocking evangelical christians, subgenii are helping to fulfill biblical prophecies, so that if the crazy mexican dude is right and the rapture is coming, it will be in part because of postmodern humor cults that insult christianity during the end times. by the way, the church of the subgenius has a whole lot of doctrine in common with evangelical christianity, like how we are living in the end times, and how the fightin’ jesus is coming back and this time he is gonna be pissed off and kill people. yeah, i used to think the “fightin’ jesus” doctrine was just a subgenius one, but the other day when i was listening to roll reace, the crazy mexican preacher, he was talking from a christian fundamentalist point of view about how jesus is coming back, and how jesus will be quite angry and will be coming to punish sinners by killing them and sending them to eternal hellfire. of course, jesus will be coming to protect the jews of israel from the arabs who try to destroy israel, and he will only succeed in saving 1/3 of them. but that is just the christian doctrine. anyway, the church of the subgenius also has a lot of doctrines in common with real cults like scientology, the raelians, and the ones who killed themselves about 10 years ago, heaven’s gate. all of those 4 religions are ufo cults focused on space aliens in their doctrine. i especially like the raelian doctrines about aliens and ufos and all of that. the raelian doctrines are even funnier than the subgenius ones, even though the raelians are serious! the subgenius ones are less funny because they are told as jokes and not as things people actually believe in. anyway, lately all the cults, including the subgenii, have developed stylized symbols for them that look like the symbols for other religions. subgenii and scientologists based their symbols on the christian cross. the raelians based theirs on the star of david. if you look closely, the symbol for raelianism is actually a star of david with a nazi swastika inside of it. and the funniest part is, i think the raelians are so stupid, they do not even realize that is what it looks like! the raelians are somewhat obsessed with the nuclear bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki and think they were very immoral, which has helped them get a lot of followers in japan. the raelians are most notable for pretending to clone human beings, of course. and the scientologists are most notable for hollywood stars like tom cruise who are members. now you know what cult is really awful? the unification church of sun myung moon. the unification church owns the washington times, which was ronald reagan’s favorite newspaper, and they have close ties to the republican party and to the religious right in the united states. they also now own united press international, a wire service that they bought a few years ago. they are bad news. they perform mass marriage ceremonies. their leader, rev. sun myung moon, claims to be the reincarnation of jesus christ, and several republican congressmen were found at a ceremony crowning him messiah. sun myung moon is famous for escaping the north korean death camps and crossing the border into south korea to freedom in a miraculous story of survival. but he is much more dangerous than the leader of raelianism, rael, who is a harmless kook. and as for ivan stang? he usually pretends not to even be a cult leader, instead pretending that the fictional character j.r. “bob” dobbs is the cult leader. ivan stang is very modest and does not like people looking up to him too much. what he really wants is for everyone to think for themselves, and to not look down on those who are different. so should germany be punishing tom cruise just because he is a scientologist? of course not. scientology may be an evil cult, but the german government immorally subsidizes christianity using the hard-earned money of german taxpayers. now, other churches can be subsidized too, if they are recognized by the german government, and this includes major ones like judaism and islam. but if there is one thing islamic religious leaders do not need, it is more money to spread their ideology of killing people even further. islam celebrates murder of innocent people, and suicide bombing. yet the german government subsidizes it. now it is true that christianity celebrated the murder of innocents during the crusades and the inquisitions. but at least christianity has reformed itself somewhat since then, and is no longer an ideology of mass murder, at least not pre-armageddon mass murder. and the jewish old testament celebrates mass murder several times in the book of exodus, the 2nd book of the bible. not something to be proud of. all 3 major abrahamic religions believe in the old testament and support the genocide in the book of exodus, the genocide the jews carried out against the people of canaan after returning from their slavery in egypt. so is it any wonder there is an israeli-palestinian conflict? i am not saying that an evil cult like scientology is any better; they are smaller and less influential, however, which means they are less dangerous than a more popular religion. and the church of the subgenius is least dangerous of all. some subgenii, the holocaustals whose leader is named papa joe mama, advocate killing all non-subgenii, but this does not take place until after x-day, the day when a gigantic alien armada of flying saucers surrounds the earth to conquer our planet and enslave the humans. and x-day does not happen until july 5, 1998, according to subgenius doctrine, which holds that there is a gigantic conspiracy that has been changing our calendars and that the date july 5, 1998 is still in the future. and so the subgenius religion is harmless. but it is a genuine bona fide religion; let there be no doubt about that. it may not make any supernatural claims, but that is not the point of religion. that is the point of spirituality. anyway, one of the subgenius doctrines is called time control, and it really does work. in order to understand how to use time control, first you need to know its limitations, and that it is not time travel. but you can speed up or slow down the passage of time. it is very simple. chemicals known as stimulants can be used to slow down the passage of time, and chemicals known as depressants speed up the passage of time. it really works. for example, a cigarette is a type of stimulant. if you smoke a cigarette, this makes time go by slower. alcohol is a depressant. if you drink a bottle of wine, this speeds up time. there are more advanced levels of time control than this simple chemical type, but this basic type of time control works best. another type of time control involves changing clocks to read different times. this is more like time travel. if you change a clock to read 2:30, then it really is 2:30. all the other clocks might say it is 7:25, but all the other clocks are wrong and the one that says 2:30 is right. why do we tend to accept what the majority of clocks say? it is merely a social convention. by rejecting the social convention and granting yourself authority to decide what time it is, you have the official power to change what time it is, and what date it is too. now, probably nobody else will recognize this authority, but this does not matter, because they are normal and you are abnormal, and therefore you are right and they are wrong. anyway, there are even more advanced forms of time control, but these are the basics and they always work. well, usually. if someone is addicted to cigarettes and is calmed down by smoking, cigarettes may actually have the reverse effect on time. and if alcohol causes you to have a panic attack, its effects on time are reversed, too. but the exception proves the rule. and anyway, there are plenty more ways to do time control, like simply following the theory of relativity by albert einstein and using it to speed up or slow down time through acceleration of matter. through relaxing meditation, people can make time go by faster. and professional athletes can slow time down to a crawl. this is all possible through the miracle of subjective reality, where reality is simply a subjective experience that is different for each person, rather than an objective thing that simply exists only 1 way. subgenii hold that reality is subjective and not objective, because that is the postmodern view, and it is also in keeping with the theory of relativity and frames of reference. and through extreme subjectivity, we can return to a geocentric model of the universe, where the sun rises and sets, rather than the earth spinning on its axis. in fact, the earth can even be flat! why not join the flat earth society? if it looks flat, it is flat. that’s common sense, which is pretty uncommon nowadays. anyway, abnormal people are superior to normal people, because everyone is inherently abnormal, but the normals repress their abnormality and try to all be the same, and this slavish devotion to normality makes them inferior to people who are radical individualists. ideologies where people all believe the same thing are a form of mind enslavement and group-enforced normality that takes away individuality, freedom of thought, and the ability of people to be truly rational. that is why all ideologies must be rejected, including the ideology that all ideologies must be rejected, which is a paradox and therefore it must be true.