A Slave To Power

[Clinamenic]

You could, alternatively, take a nonprofit route to get away from the shareholder profit maximization constraint, or form a public benefit corp as a middle ground. But even still, the question of revenue persists: is the organization raising enough money to financially justify a DEI program? Or do such things need to be viewed as a necessary liability incurred by a variety of orgs over time, with the ecosystem-level intention of nudging the status quo in favor of diversity?

This is what ties into that UK left activism thread. Protests can be effective if managed properly, and I suppose there are some examples out there of grassroots protests, but generally thats a reactive praxis, and a more proactive one requires the subject to dexterously navigate the corporate realm.

 

[craner]

An example I've encountered is when you come across someone who always seems as though they're subtly taking piss out of you. An air of sarcasm that can make you doubt everything you say, and which only becomes more palpable when they assure you that's not what they're doing.

I actually suffer from Sarcastic Voice Syndrome and it’s very annoying.

 

[luka]

isn't that because you literally think youre better than everybody else though?

 

[craner]

isn't that because you literally think youre better than everybody else though?

No, everybody thinks I think that because I have Sarcastic Voice Syndrome

 

[craner]

It's a disability

 

[craner]

I should probably list it on my Twitter profile next to my pronouns

 

[luka]

i think youre being sarcastic

 

[Mr. Tea]

i think youre being sarcastic

Such a severe case you can hear it even when he's typing!

 

[pattycakes_]

isn't that because you literally think youre better than everybody else though?

It's true tho

 

[pattycakes_]

 

[Clinamenic]

 

[sus]

I've been reading Robert Irwin's Satan Wants Me. Irwin was apparently a Islamic/Medieval historian before writing fiction full-time.

It's about a sociology student who slowly gets sucked into a Satanic lodge & initiated. And you watch how, despite at first having an ironic remove or feeling in control of the situation, the protagonist slowly comes to feel out of control/not himself. Like his own will and self-understanding has been hollowed out and replaced by the will of the initiators. All these subtle ways that he's mind-manipulated.

 

[sus]

He has to write a diary and have it audited by a Lodge member. At first he's just doing it because the money's good, he gets $100 a week. But pretty soon the auditor, Felton, starts showing up in his dreams. He starts thinking like Felton. His superego has been replaced by Felton.

Pretty soon Felton's telling him to do things, like skip out on visiting his terminally ill mother for a Lodge ceremony, with "I'm not telling you to do anything Peter. You're telling yourself via me."

It's a bit like auditing in scientology right? It lets the Lodge leverage his insecurities and desires. It's a way of gaining power over someone, getting them to open up to you in this very asymmetrical single direction way.

 

[william_kent]

It's a bit like auditing in scientology right? It lets the Lodge leverage his insecurities and desires.

well Hubbard did steal a few ideas from the Agape Lodge of the OTO as well as stealing lodge member and rocket scientist Jack Parson's girlfriend, Sara, and then in cahoots with Sara he stole all of Parson's life savings

and then he stole a boat

 

[Clinamenic]

well Hubbard did steal a few ideas from the Agape Lodge of the OTO as well as stealing lodge member and rocket scientist Jack Parson's girlfriend, Sara, and then in cahoots with Sara he stole all of Parson's life savings

and then he stole a boat

Theres a show about it:

Strange Angel - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[sus]

well Hubbard did steal a few ideas from the Agape Lodge of the OTO as well as stealing lodge member and rocket scientist Jack Parson's girlfriend, Sara, and then in cahoots with Sara he stole all of Parson's life savings

and then he stole a boat

wait what?!

 

[woops]

wait what?!

and then Jack p blew himself up with rocket fuel

 

[sus]

Any recs for books about this stuff?

 

[Clinamenic]

Any recs for books about this stuff?

Haven't read it or seen the show, but the show is based on Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons

 

[william_kent]

@sus - some of my recs:

​

Sex And Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons - John Carter​

Sex-Cult Rocket Man - JSTOR Daily

Jack Parsons, one of the “suicide squad” trio of young rocket-boy founders of Jet Propulsion Laboratory, had an improbable extracurricular life.

daily.jstor.org

Bare-Faced Messiah - Russell Miller



Let's Sell These People A Piece of Blue Sky - Jon Atack

"DIANETICS"

The word 'dianetics' is a variant of 'dianoetic', the earliest recorded usage is given as 1677 by the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. A group called "Dianism" was started shortly before "Dianetics". The founder of this group was a U.S. Navy lieutenant who had studied the works of Aleister Crowley. Dianism centred upon the eighth ritual of Crowley's OTO - the "magical masturbation". Curiously, this was the ceremony performed by Hubbard with OTO leader Jack Parsons in 1946. It seems eminently possible that "dian" refers to "Diana", the Roman goddess, who in turn was seen by Crowley as the "dark goddess" - the Empress, Hathor, Artemis, Shakti, or the Babylon, or "Scarlet Woman", of the Book of Revelation. Hubbard's ceremonies with Parsons were intended to incarnate this very force. Hubbard called his first daughter by Mary Sue Hubbard, Diana. He also renamed one of the Sea Org vessels the "Diana".

^ from
Possible origins for Dianetics and Scientology
Jon Atack