Why I have a Problem With the
Church of the SubGenius

The following is an abbreviated list of my main "issues" with people the Church, addressed in the second person:

You claim to mock elitism, while representing a clique based on intellectual superiority, paradigm dominance, and spiteful stereotypes of a number of groups in our society. The justification for this is that your club "could, and should," include just about everyone; it's only a few sad cases that could never make it to your level of realness. Apparently, some people are just too dense to realize that fascist materialism is the definitive religion of the next millennium.

You assume that cleverness is an indicator of understanding. You believe that there are two extremes for how people go about life: one can be smug, clever, and strong, or alienated by a pathetic insistence on pursuing "insignificant" questions.

You follow an actual pseudo-religion based on finding targets for mockery in any non-materialistic paradigms. You run these attributes through your propaganda machine, and the end result is a brilliant job of spin-doctoring designed to give people simplistic, pigeonholing beliefs about everyone who doesn't follow your own brand of Western Materialism. This ongoing cultural narrative presents the selected attributes as a single stereotype, disregarding any diversity in the belief systems you attack. Most of you are smart enough to know that all of this is happening, but you're also self-deceptive enough to think that all of this doesn't taint the ideal of honesty guiding your culture.

You mock cultish societies and beliefs, yet you:

You consider yourselves so "real.." yet, despite pretensions of confidence that you're strong and reasonable, you have to continually affirm the idea of your worth and righteousness. You do this with an endless stream of spiteful talk about people who you regard as inferior to yourselves at an almost inherent level. (sound familiar?) In other words: if you're so sure of yourselves, why can't you seem to shut up about it for a day or two? "Bob" forbid you should stray from your internal censors without the affirmation of your peers...

You have certain implicit beliefs which you think represent some kind of innate human wisdom; for example, "if it we feel good enough about it, there must be something real going on," or "if enough of us all agree on something at the same time, the truth of that idea is confirmed." My own take on this is that you're pursuing an almost religious mission of perpetuating attitudes which have historically subverted objective thinking in society.

Among other people, you mock those who are openly passionate about their ideas (as opposed to your own tendency to conceal opinions in convoluted masses of self-affirming, propagandistic dialogue). You seem especially bent on making parodies of those who oppose the suppression of social knowledge--by institution , or simply by convention. Maybe you do this because your own culture emulates many of the patterns through which institutions, or society, can work to subvert objective thinking. The Church teaches people that it's OK to bask in the feel of a "power in numbers" bully complex--that Unity excuses subordination. I tell ya, you people have really got the human spirit all figured out.

You frown upon taking an individualistic sense of passion and inspiration about developing one's understanding. Instead, you emphasize an almost fascist mind-set toward forming one's beliefs and attitudes. You attach mottos such as "No Doubt" or "Question Questioning" to what's basically in-group conformity. Dogma by any other name...

Your culture's unity relies heavily on antagonism toward a host of designated "enemies." The only real difference from other warmongering is that everything is worded as an endless joke. Malicious, sardonic wit always helps out when you feel a bout of doubt. Still, you do have an underlying sense of seriousness, and a clarity of purpose, which I sort of respect... despite the slight odor of zombie-like zealousness. Contrary to popular belief, the best kind of Zombie is the kind that really knows how to laugh--especially when they find themselves taking an "incorrect" thought too seriously.

You set up your dialogue--internal as well as external--such that ideals of true objective thought are always cast in opposition to your lauded "real" values. Objectivity about your own dogma is depicted as the enemy of every vague but stirring ideal from "knowing what's really what" to "being there for each other." For some reason, I don't always see the connection; it must be because I lack the intelligence to realize how utopia can only be realized through homogenous viewpoints and immutable explanations.

You claim that "scientific logic" forms the basis for every unequivocal statement you adhere to; you don't seem to notice that also thrown in the pot is a medley of presumptuous inferences, sweeping generalizations, and many dubiously unsupported assertions. Your faith in the righteousness of this "logic" is closer to that of a religious zealot, who eats up any "facts" that his supposedly omniscient god throws out, than that of a true scientist.

...Of course, that's not to say that you're wrong about everything. To assume that you're "not wrong" about everything, however, doesn't quite seem to capture the essence of scientific thinking.

You work to continually downplay the impact of the beliefs which really make up your cultural paradigm. The constant barrage of attacks on "subgenii" obscures the ways that your leading figures have laid out a whole world view. The technique is simple: tell people you're not asking them to believe anything, but give them so many things not to believe that you establish a whole paradigm without ever saying any of it directly. The "subgenius foundation" has created a veritable religion, by leading people to put their faith in "non-beliefs" about politics, biology, the human spirit, trans-material realities, and "non-ideals" for social interaction, personal ethics, and so on.

(Along the same lines..) You use the most extreme examples of non-materialistic philosophies, and refer to the most outrageous kinds of people from the mystically inclined segment of society. The fallacy here is that you connect these laughable images to everyone who falls under the non-materialist umbrella. Considering the diversity of beliefs among all those people, it seems that your propaganda's stereotyping is deceptive--a Beavis and Butthead dialogue justified by your dire mission of "spreading skepticism." It's a good thing all you brilliant skeptics don't turn your scrutiny back on your own assumptions; you might actually doubt something.

Granted, there are a slew of flaky New Agers and UFO cultists out there, but a person doesn't fall into this category simply by virtue of living in a Western country and not accepting all the Materialistic notions that society expects people to follow. Sorry, guys; I know you have a lot invested in this stereotype, but things just aren't that simple.

Many people under the umbrella of non-materialism have gotten where they are largely because they are skeptical. They don't buy into all the dogma of their self-stereotyping cohorts, but neither do they accept the most widely upheld perspectives on trans-material: that it is either a pathetic fantasy, or a mysterious reality that we have to die to understand. They aren't trying to be an alienated minority, unlike those who take pride in an elitist or martyred separation from most of society.

Thanks to the diligent efforts of people like yourselves, however, it is becoming impossible to be a non-materialist and have most other people respect this. A large part of your mission, as I'm sure you know, is not only to point out the alienation of certain groups, but to actually engineer it. You might tell yourselves that you're just helping along a natural process of "natural selection" in our society, but it's more like Manifest Destiny.

Rampant stereotyping of non-materialists ensures that an increasing number of people are so biased to begin with that any sign that a person has non-materialistic beliefs will set off a buzzer in people's heads; some stereotype activates itself, and the person knows they're dealing with another "flower child" or "dangerous crackpot." Through such machinations, groups like the Church protect the integrity of "Normalcy" in our society, while working to suppress any social openness to alternatives. And all in the name of getting people to see things clearly...

You define your social attitudes as the antithesis of the "hive consciousness" which you attribute to "subgenii," as if all it takes is caring about your friends, having a sense of humor, and having lots of fun. All these things are great (hey, I actually like 'em too), but there is a little more to it than that. Dogmatism takes root in associations that we form in the background, while we're doing other things. You can be a drone in a group mind at some level, while also being a happy, creative individual; it's a little trick called compartmentalizing.

It seems that a lot of people in the Church believe that they can't take the best aspects of their culture--the part that encourages imagination, caring, and having fun--without also accepting a slew of other beliefs and values. The truth is that most of the time the other stuff is only related to those core values by association; you don't need one to have the other. To throw the Church's proclamation back in its own members' faces: "Wake up; you could find joy and fulfillment without your religion."

My biggest problem with the Church of the SubGenius is probably the way it does things that have historically worked against a society achieving freedom, awareness, and genuine peace, while convincing people that it's the ultimate champion of those qualities.

Basically, you're incredible hypocrites, and most of you never stop condemning others' hypocrisy long enough to catch the irony. The Church of the SubGenius may be the pinnacle, to date, of a social mentality which directly subverts the ideals which humanity's wisest thinkers and mystics have explained.

As to why I even insist on making these observations... I guess I just figure that someone has to. A total lack of critical discourse can be a dangerous thing. (if you disagree, I could mention all the historical examples that illustrate this point.) I'd rather that a lot of people were doing this with me--discourse was meant to be social--but that doesn't seem to be the way the deck's stacked, so here I am...

It gets back to a certain basic division: I believe that people should be able to form their beliefs themselves, and the Church believes that people can be happy and creative and open-minded, but should also conform to a basic foundation that it determines. Think about all the times in human history when similar war-lines were drawn; which side do you root for?

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