In memory of Chrissy Amphlett: 1959 - 2013

And Chrissey's wicked sense of humour, on the same show (host is the incomparable Julia Zemiro). This may offend some people but I find it hilarious, and yes, it was broadcast on free-to-air TV on a Saturday night.

Scientology – a 20th century science fiction religion

I’ve just read 2 books: Beyond Belief; My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape, by the current leader’s niece, Jenna Miscavige Hill (co-written with Lisa Pulitzer); and Going Clear; Scientology, Hollywood & the Prison of Belief by Pulitzer Prize winning author, Lawrence Wright. I bought both these books after reading reviews in Rupert Murdoch’s paper, The Weekend Australian Review (Rupert’s Australian publications are a lot more left-leaning than his American counterparts I suspect). Previously, I had just finished reading a Scottish crime thriller, but both of these books were a lot harder to put down.

I should disclose that I had my own brush with Scientology a few years before Jenna Miscavige Hill was born, when I was around 30 (sometime between 1978 and 1983) when I was solicited in a Sydney street, along with a friend, and invited to take part in a ‘session’, but I’ll talk about that later.

There are many different ways one can define religion – to me it’s part of a personal internal journey: very introspective, self-examining and impossible to share. But the public face of religion(s) is often something different: judgemental, proselytising and mentally claustrophobic. I suspect that many followers of Scientology see themselves in the first category, but the institution itself falls squarely into the second.

Religion, in the context of historical Western civilization, has been predominantly about mind control, and it was largely successful up until the Enlightenment, when novels, new scientific discoveries (in all fields) and Western philosophy all made inroads into the educated Western psyche. In the 20^th Century, mind control appeared to be the principal political tool of totalitarian regimes like the former USSR and China. It’s not something one would expect to find in an American institution, especially one tied to the celebration of celebrity, but that’s exactly what Scientology is if one believes the accounts revealed in these 2 books.

I defy any normal sane person to read Micavige Hill’s book without getting angry. I imagine a lot of high-level people with the Scientology Church would also get angry, but for different reasons. Of all the events that she recounts from when she signed her ‘billion year contract’ at the age of 7 (she tried to run away a year later) to when she finally left under enormous duress as a married adult (after threatening to jump off a 5 storey ledge), what made me most angry was something that was at once petty and unbelievably controlling and intrusive. As a teen she received letters sent by her estranged mother, but she could read them only after they were already opened and she was never allowed to keep them. At the age of 10 she had to fill out a form so she could visit her parents for her 10^th birthday. Yet this is nothing compared to the alleged abuses by the organisation that Lawrence Wright documents in his carefully researched and fully referenced book.

Stalin was infamous for creating a culture where people reported on their neighbours thus creating fear and mistrust in everyday interactions. China had a similar policy under Mao and during the cultural revolution families were split up and sent to opposite sides of the country. According to Miscavige Hill, both these policies were adopted by Scientology, as it happened to her own family. According to her, all her friends were estranged from her, especially in her teens, and the Church even attempted to separate her from her recently wedded husband (also a ‘Sea Org’ member in the organisation) which culminated in her threatening suicide and eventually leaving, totally disillusioned with her lifetime religion but with her marriage intact.

The Catholic Church has the confessional and Scientology has ‘auditing’ and ‘sec-check’, both using their famous ‘E-Meter’. In the comprehensive glossary at the back of her book, Miscavige Hill defines ‘Sec Check’ as “A confessional given while on the E-Meter. Sec-checks can take anywhere from three weeks to a year or longer.” But unlike the Catholic Church confessions, the Scientology equivalent are not confidential, according to those who claim to have been blackmailed by them, but are according to the Church. According to Scientology’s doctrine the e-meter never lies so people being audited, including Miscavige Hill, quickly learn to confess what the auditor wants to hear so they can get it over with. Later, if they try and leave the Church, as she did, these confessions can be held over them to stop them publicly denouncing the Church. Some of these confessions are of a highly personal nature, like the intimate details of sexual relations.

Naturally, the Church denies any of these allegations, along with the practice of ‘disconnection’ (denying access to family members) and child labour, which Miscavige Hill experienced first hand from the age of 7. Allegations of basic human rights abuse are predominant in both books, yet all legal proceedings against the Church seem to eventually be settled out of court (according to Wright’s account).

Miscavige Hill also provides insight into the conditioning of both receiving and giving instructions without question. In principle, this is one of the biggest philosophical issues I have with a number of religious educations, including my own, whereby one doesn’t question or one is discouraged from thinking for oneself. Part of an education I believe, should be the opposite: to be exposed to a variety of cultural ideas and to be encouraged to argue and discuss beliefs. Teenagers are at an age where they tend to do this anyway, as I did. Reading Albert Camus at the age of 16 was life-changing at an intellectual level, and deepened my doubts about the religion I had grown up with.

Wright’s book is a good complementary read to Jenna’s autobiography, as he provides a history lesson of the whole Church, albeit not one the Church would endorse. The book contains a number of footnotes that declare the Church’s outright disagreement on a number of issues as well as numerous disclaimers from Tom Cruise’s attorney, Bertram Fields. Wright is an acclaimed author, with a number of awards to his name, and is staff writer for The New Yorker. His book arose from a feature story he wrote on Paul Haggis (a disillusioned Scientologist) for that magazine. The book starts and ends with Haggis, but, in between, attempts to cover every aspect of the religion, including a biography of its founder, testimony from many of its disaffected members, and its connection to Hollywood celebrity.

Paul Haggis is a successful screenwriter and his credits include some of the best films I’ve seen: Million Dollar Baby, The Valley of Elah (which he also directed) and Casino Royale. His career-changing movie was Crash, which I’m sorry to say I haven’t seen. I remember when it came out, it was on my must-see list, but it never happened. He also wrote Flags of Our Fathers, which Eastwood directed following Million Dollar Baby. In The Valley of Elah is a little known movie starring Charlize Theron (I believe it’s one of her best roles) and Tommy Lee Jones; part crime thriller, part commentary on the Iraq war. I saw it around midnight in a Melbourne arthouse cinema, such was its low profile. He also made The Next 3 Days with Russell Crowe, which I haven’t seen. We never know screenwriters - they are at the bottom of the pecking order in Hollywood - unless they are writer-directors (like Woody Allen or Oliver Stone) so no one would say I’d go and see a Paul Haggis film, but I would.

Haggis campaigned against Proposition 8 in California (a bill to ban same-sex marriage) which I’ve written about myself on this blog. His disillusionment with Scientology was complete when he failed to get the Church to support him.

Scientology promotes itself as a science, and, in particular, is strongly opposed to psychiatry. But at best, it’s a pseudo-science; a combination of Freudian psychoanalysis and Buddhist philosophy. The e-meter auditing, which supposedly gives it its scientific credibility has never been accepted by mainstream science or psychology. L Ron Hubbard, before he started Dianetics, which became Scientology, was a highly prolific pulp sci-fi writer and best friend of Robert Heinlein (a famous sci-fi author with right-wing politics). But while Hubbard lived and wrote during the so-called ‘golden era’ of science fiction, his name is never mentioned in the same company as those who are lauded today, like Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke or Ursula Le Guin (still alive, so possibly later) and I’ve never seen or heard his name referenced at any Sci-Fi convention I’ve attended.

When it comes to psychological manipulation, Scientology excels. In particular, the so-called ‘Bridge to Total Freedom’, aka ‘the Bridge’, which is effectively a sequence of stages of spiritual enlightenment one achieves as a result of courses and ‘sessions’ one completes. At the end of this process, usually taking many years and costing thousands of dollars, one is given access to ‘OT III’ material, the end of the journey and one’s ultimate spiritual reward. According to Miscavige Hill, people ‘on the Bridge’ are told that given early access to OT III would cause serious injury, either mental or physical, such is its power. Now, common sense says that information alone is unlikely to have such a consequence, nevertheless this was both the carrot, and indirectly, the stick, for staying with the course. As revealed, in both of these books, OT III is in fact a fantastical science fiction story that beggars credulity on any scale. It’s effectively an origins story that could find a place in Ridley Scott’s movie, Prometheus, which is better rendered, one has to say, in its proper context of fiction.

In my introduction, I mentioned my own very brief experience with Scientology in Sydney (either late 1970s or early 1980s) when I was interviewed and offered an ‘e-meter’ session. Something about the whole setup made me more than suspicious, even angry, and I rebelled. What I saw were basically insecure people ‘auditing’ other insecure people and it made me angry. I had grown up in a church (though my parents were not the least religious) where once we were called to stand up and declare ourselves to Jesus in writing. I remember refusing as a teenager, mainly because I knew my father opposed it, but also the sense of being pressured against my will. This feeling returned when I was in the Scientology centre in Sydney, or whatever it was called. Interestingly, they took me upstairs where I met some people about my own age who were very laid back and surrounded by a library of philosophical books. I said I would prefer to explore their ideas at my own leisure and so I bought a copy of Dianetics and had nothing more to do with them. I never read Dianetics, though I’ve read the complete works of Jung and books by Daisetz Suzuki on Zen Buddhism, so I was very open to religious and philosophical ideas at that age. Likewise, I’ve never read any of Hubbard’s fiction, though I once tried and gave up.

3 Cheers for New Zealand

I don't have much to say about this, just watch the video. When the Parliament starts singing at the end it really made my eyes well up - that would never happen in this country.

Congratulations New Zealand, may many other countries follow your lead.

Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas is a very recent release, which I saw last weekend; a collaborative effort by the Wachowski siblings (Lana and Andy) and Tom Tykwer. The Wachowski siblings famously gave us the Matrix trilogy (shot in Australia) and Twyker gave us Run Zola Run (made in Germany) a brilliant film that played with different media (like anime) and time (not unlike Ground Hog Day, only different). Cloud Atlas was shot in Scotland, Germany and Majorca, and, considering all its different scenarios shot with conscientious realism, it must have been very expensive.

It has to be said straight away that this film, with its 6 overlapping stories, all in different periods, and only tenuous connections, won’t appeal to everyone, yet I liked it a lot. A bloke sitting a couple of seats away from me kept looking at his iphone; a sure indication of boredom. I suspect the only thing that kept him in his seat (other than the outlay for his ticket) were the action scenes and any storyline was irrelevant to his need for entertainment. Without actually talking to him, this may be a harsh judgement, but I suspect he simply gave up trying to keep track of the 6 interlocking stories; so, for many, this may be a flawed film. Even David Stratton (arguably, Australia’s most respected film reviewer) who gave it 3.5 stars (his co-host, Margaret Pomeranz, gave it 4) said he’d like to see it again.

I think what saved the film, for me, was that all 6 stories were good stories in their own right and they all followed the classic narrative arc of setup, conflict and resolution. I thought the editing between stories (especially at the beginning) was too frequent, but that’s a personal prejudice. Once I got past the setup for each story (some took longer than others) I had no trouble following them. I made no attempt to follow any links between them (more on that below) and they all had the same theme, which was human rights and oppression, and how it hasn’t changed historically, except in its focus, and how it will continue into the future of our evolutionary development.

One story was set in the 19^th Century, 2 in the 20^th Century, 1 in the present, and 2 in the future. At almost 3 hours duration each story really only took up half an hour, therefore it didn’t drag, at least for me. As a writer I like to have 2 or 3 subplots happening at once – that’s how I write – so multiple storylines are not a problem in themselves. The popular series, Game of Thrones, has multiple storylines of 4 or more, yet I’ve never heard anyone say it was too difficult to follow.

Only one character, as far as I could tell, traversed 2 of the stories (in the 20^th Century) and there was a very clever link between the 2 future stories, which was only revealed towards the end, and I won’t give it away, except to say (spoiler alert) that it reveals how a mortal from the past can be seen as Godlike in the future. In other words, they gain an iconic status as a result of their personal sacrifice. I thought this was the singularly most germane insight of the entire movie.

To call it ambitious is an understatement. Even within individual stories, they play with time, using every storytelling device that film allows, with flashbacks, flash-forwards and voiceovers. At least once, I observed that the voiceover from one story continued into another story; to emphasise a common theme rather than any continuity in content. The trailer emphasises the common thread in a mystical sense, yet, for me, that is not what the movie is about. I thought the 2 future stories were the most powerful, especially the near-future one. My advice to anyone viewing this is just go with the flow; don’t try to analyse it while you’re watching it but just treat each story on its merit.

Correlation of gun deaths to gun numbers world wide

Just over a week ago I got into a discussion with someone on Facebook (no names, no pack drill) about gun control in the USA, or lack of it. My interlocutor was an obviously intelligent bloke and claimed his argument was objective and emotion-free, based on mathematics. To this end he produced a graph demonstrating that there was no correlation between gun murders (homicides) and gun ownership across the 50 states of America. After the debate I found another graph that disputes his findings, but that’s not what my argument is about.

In truth, I think he was just as emotive about this issue as me, perhaps more so, but believed he could take refuge in the safe haven of statistical analysis. In fact, he made the extraordinary statement (from my perspective) that violence in the US is ‘cultural ….but there's no evidence it has anything to do with guns’. In other words, he acknowledges that America is a violent country but it has ‘nothing to do with guns’, because there is no correlation between gun ownership and homicides between states. The point I want to make is that one can make an illogical non-syllogism if one can back it up with statistics. He effectively argued that yes, there are a lot of gun-related deaths in America (over 10 per 100k of people; arguably the highest in the developed world) and America has a lot of guns (9 for every 10 people; the absolute highest apparently) but there is no connection between the 2 stats.

So I pulled out an old psychology text book on statistics and did some analysis of my own. There is a well-worn formula called the Pearson Correlation that exploits standard deviation of both sets of data and delivers a figure between -1 and +1 that is easy to interpret. 1 is obviously a perfect correlation and 0 is no correlation, with -1 an inverse correlation.

Using data on Wikipedia I did a correlation for all 74 countries that Wiki lists for total firearm-related death rate (the list of gun numbers is considerably longer). The Pearson Correlation was -0.07, which is marginally negative and seems to support my Facebook antagonist. But a handful of countries have huge death rates in the 30s and 40s per 100k, which wipes out any correlation that the majority may reveal.

So if one removes all African countries, all Central and South American countries, Caribbean countries and all Middle Eastern countries (except Israel) we are left with all of Europe (both West and East, where we have figures) and most of Asia (except Philippines; refer below) and North America; 46 countries out of the 74. Now we get a Pearson’s Correlation of 0.83 which is quite high. However, if one adds just one anomalous country like the Philippines, which has a gun death rate of 9.5 (almost the same as US) but with gun ownership less than 5 per 100 people (20% of US gun ownership) the correlation drops to 0.6, a considerable difference made by one country out of 47. On the other hand, if one drops the US from the list, the correlation also drops to 0.67, so it’s a significant weighty statistic in its own right.

If one just takes England, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and United States (countries most culturally similar to the US) one gets a Pearson’s Correlation of 0.95 (almost exact). But taking US out of this smaller list of 6 English-speaking countries the correlation only drops to 0.86, which suggests that the US is not an anomaly in the same way that the Philippines is.

So much for statistics. Mass shootings that grab global media headlines, apparently make up only 1% of gun-related deaths in the US (according to my Facebook opponent) therefore from a statistical point of view they shouldn’t influence the debate at all, but that’s just nonsense. The point is that they should be 0% as they tend to be in other developed countries. The obvious question to ask is what is the difference between the US and the other handful of similar countries (like England, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) that provide the strongest correlation? I would suggest it’s gun control. If the US has the largest number of guns per people of anywhere in the world and the highest gun-death rate in the Western world, then it’s screaming out for gun control.

I argued on Facebook that gun-deaths in America drive up gun ownership, indicated by the fact that there is a spike in gun purchases following mass shootings. America appears to have the most liberal gun laws in the developed world – a legacy of the NRA, one of the strongest political lobbies in America. It’s unlikely that Obama will be able to do any more than previous administrations, despite his history-challenging rhetoric. Every tragic shooting reopens this debate, but nothing changes, and every incident only reinforces the belief held by many Americans that they need to be armed.

Islamophobia

Tonight, as I write this, Dutch politician and outspoken critic of Muslim immigration into all Western societies, Geert Wilders, is speaking somewhere in Melbourne (where I live) on this very subject.

He’s in Australia on invitation from a fringe organization, Q Society, who are openly anti-Muslim. Not surprisingly, they had trouble finding venues, and their meetings will be picketed by protesters, including the one held tonight as already witnessed on the news.

I’ve seen all this before, more than once, where some foreign group is going to overwhelm our cultural heritage and supplant our identity or the identity of our children. This is pretty much the rhetoric of Wilders, specifically aimed at Muslims, yet I heard the same rhetoric aimed at ‘Wogs’ (Italians and Greeks) when I was growing up, then Asians, especially refugees from Vietnam, and now it’s Muslims, as they are the predominant refugee group seeking asylum in Australia.

Xenophobia has always been alive and well in this country, as it is all over the world, yet we pride ourselves on our multiculturalism. Wilders, and the people who support him, equates multiculturalism with cultural relativism, therefore it is untenable. This is a gross simplification and misrepresentation, and is certainly not what most people see or experience who live in Australia.

Wilders has come here to warn us that we live in a delusion and that we will become an Islamic totalitarian state simply by maintaining a tolerant and open attitude towards Muslims. Wilders believes strongly that all Muslims are trapped already in this state and we will be forced to follow. Obviously, Wilders hasn’t met the Muslims that I know and he’s never had a conversation with Waleed Aly.

Wilders’ bonhomie claim to a ‘friend’ and kindred spirit in Australian politics is Cory Bernadi, who was recently forced to resign his front-bench post in Federal politics as a result of him comparing gay marriage to bestiality. Personally, I’m not surprised that Islamophobia and homophobia should produce common bedfellows. They are both based on paranoia, intolerance and a desire to freeze our society in aspic.

My observation from witnessing 3 generations of immigrants is that it’s the children who determine the result. They experience a range of cultures that sometimes creates conflict with their parents, but they’re the ones who seize the opportunity of education, social interaction and workforce experience. At the end of the day, they have to reconcile their cultural heritage with the society they call home, and, generally, they seem to manage quite well.

I find it interesting that Wilders repeatedly points out our Judea-Christian heritage being at odds with Islam, yet we are a secular society, and its strength is not to politicise religion; something other societies struggle with.