"I found my mind in a brown paper bag but then I tripped on a cloud and fell-a eight miles high."
It's been raining for 24 hours, and it looks like November outside. Me, I'm on the first day of my period and woke up with a serious cold, so I had to cancel my plans, as I'm not allowed to go to mom's hospital when I'm sick. Very delicate patients, outside infection, not a happy combination. So I made my calls, made myself some chamomile tea, and rummaged in my hard-disk for something to watch. The lucky winner was Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, an HBO documentary that had been sitting there for a few months. First of all, it's a fantastic documentary: the writing is great, the pacing is perfect, everything about it gets top marks. But it is quite the punch in the guts. I knew it was going to be bad, as it is after all about a cult, but I had no idea they were torturing people. Stupid naiveté on my part, I know.
My first contact with Scientology came in 2002, on my first year of University. I was walking down the street with a friend, in Padova, and this guy stopped us and asked us if we could fill a questionnaire for him. We thought he was a fellow student who was doing that for an exam or something, so we stopped. He gave us a list of questions "what's the meaning of life, what happens after death, why do illnesses exist" and asked us to rank them in order of importance. We did, and then he told us, all smiling, that right around the corner there was a place where we could get the answers to all those questions. I still remember the face of my friend, completely stunned. I recovered a lot quicker, and told him "you're telling me you've got answers to questions humanity have been asking themselves for thousands of years without ever finding a true answer?". He got even happier and said "yes". At that point I laughed in his face, called him a fraud and insane, grabbed my friend by the arm and rushed her away. And then we told all our colleagues what had happened. It sort of became this in-joke, "remember the crazy cult people near the stations? they're still there" or "they stopped me again this morning, you wouldn't believe the shit they're saying" and everyone got a huge laugh out of it.
It wasn't until years later I even found out Scientology was a thing. Like, a huge thing. It was right around the time South Park did that episode, so my reaction was still amusement. I never actually took them seriously. Now, I've been an atheist most of my life, so my brain just doesn't get how faith works. It just doesn't compute. But it's one of those things I respect in others, maybe have a private laugh about it, and then carry on and not think about it at all. And then this documentary comes, and it really opened my eyes, because I had no idea it's been going for so long, and it has so many members, and there's psychological torture, and actual fucking beatings, this is a whole new level. I'm glad this documentary exists and that I got to see it, because I had no idea it was so bad. I wanted to hug all the interviewees, those who had gone out, and I wanted to tell them it was alright and that they were so brave. There were a couple of times I couldn't help but crying. At first I felt like wanting to go back in time and punch that guy in Padova on the nose, but by the end of the documentary I was actively worried: what's happened to him? Is he alright? Did he manage to get out? God, I hope so. So yeah, it's one of those things that really need to be seen by a lot of people, because otherwise they'll just be allowed to keep doing all the abuse they're doing, and none will be the wiser.
My first contact with Scientology came in 2002, on my first year of University. I was walking down the street with a friend, in Padova, and this guy stopped us and asked us if we could fill a questionnaire for him. We thought he was a fellow student who was doing that for an exam or something, so we stopped. He gave us a list of questions "what's the meaning of life, what happens after death, why do illnesses exist" and asked us to rank them in order of importance. We did, and then he told us, all smiling, that right around the corner there was a place where we could get the answers to all those questions. I still remember the face of my friend, completely stunned. I recovered a lot quicker, and told him "you're telling me you've got answers to questions humanity have been asking themselves for thousands of years without ever finding a true answer?". He got even happier and said "yes". At that point I laughed in his face, called him a fraud and insane, grabbed my friend by the arm and rushed her away. And then we told all our colleagues what had happened. It sort of became this in-joke, "remember the crazy cult people near the stations? they're still there" or "they stopped me again this morning, you wouldn't believe the shit they're saying" and everyone got a huge laugh out of it.
It wasn't until years later I even found out Scientology was a thing. Like, a huge thing. It was right around the time South Park did that episode, so my reaction was still amusement. I never actually took them seriously. Now, I've been an atheist most of my life, so my brain just doesn't get how faith works. It just doesn't compute. But it's one of those things I respect in others, maybe have a private laugh about it, and then carry on and not think about it at all. And then this documentary comes, and it really opened my eyes, because I had no idea it's been going for so long, and it has so many members, and there's psychological torture, and actual fucking beatings, this is a whole new level. I'm glad this documentary exists and that I got to see it, because I had no idea it was so bad. I wanted to hug all the interviewees, those who had gone out, and I wanted to tell them it was alright and that they were so brave. There were a couple of times I couldn't help but crying. At first I felt like wanting to go back in time and punch that guy in Padova on the nose, but by the end of the documentary I was actively worried: what's happened to him? Is he alright? Did he manage to get out? God, I hope so. So yeah, it's one of those things that really need to be seen by a lot of people, because otherwise they'll just be allowed to keep doing all the abuse they're doing, and none will be the wiser.