AA: The American ISIS

Both Alcoholics Anonymous and ISIS believe that alcohol is evil and makes you do bad things.  Of course, ISIS bans alcohol for that reason.  But they are raging hypocrites, and their leaders engage in all the prohibited ‘evils’ including drinking, drugs, rape, and homosexuality, while forbidding those behaviors to the masses.

AA is a drinking club and blood cult of mischief with a similar dynamic.   Continue reading AA: The American ISIS

Dan Genis: Aronofsky’s Robot Zombie

In Darren Aronofsky’s Pi (1998), the young protagonist Max Cohen is a brilliant Math genius at an unspecified downtown New York City university.  He discovers a 216-digit string of numbers that hinted at “The true name of God.”  Max tries to unite math, computers, drug use and kabballah to uncover the secret of the universe.  Like his hero Alastair Crowley, who attempted a similar feat almost a hundred years earlier, his attempt failed miserably and painfully.  The film earned Aronofsky the Directing Award at Sundance and high praise from Roger Ebert.

Daniel Genis was a young and ambitious student at New York City’s elite Stuyvesant High School Continue reading Dan Genis: Aronofsky’s Robot Zombie

The Origin of Sin

We are born sinners.  In fact it’s the child’s job to push boundaries and break the rules.  Not everyone is born with a finely tuned moral compass, and so that’s just how we learn.  Of course, it’s the parent’s job to discipline with love.  The right balance is important: if the parent is too strict or cruel then the child learns that the rules are arbitrary and can be broken if no one is looking.  If the parent is too lax, then the child must either learn to police himself (with guilt and shame) or will simply continue to break the rules under the assumption that this is acceptable as long as no one says anything, and unintentionally develops the art of lying, manipulation, and self-deception.

Continue reading The Origin of Sin

AA’s Satanic Roots

Alastair Crowley chafed at the long and oppressive list of ‘Thou shalt nots’ in the bible, as well as the hypocrisy he saw in the church in which he followed his father who was a traveling preacher.  So he dreamed up a new religion whose only law was “Do what thou wilt.”  He named it Thelema and spent the rest of his life trying to justify it through a grand unified theory of science, magic, occult and drug use.  He founded two churches in which to practice this religion: OTO (Order of Oriental Templars) and  A∴A∴ (Argentium Astrum – Silver Star).  

The primary purpose of the religion was of course to convince women to sleep with him or engage in various depraved activities and to not complain about it afterwards.  Unfortunately he never achieved much success and died poor and alone, and highly reviled.   Continue reading AA’s Satanic Roots