The Prison of Belief

Thoughts on Amway, Scientology, Herbalife and the cult of 'belief'.

All ideas and products are marketable goods, as long as there is a void of demand. It is the main precept of the system of capitalism.  Under this banner, both the good and the bad take refuge. Believers in cult like ‘religion’ or ‘business’ paint themselves as entrepreneurs or messiahs.

Man invents his gods to fill voids.  What he chooses to believe, like natural selection, determines what he is, or hopes to become, whether one will be followers or leaders in the open market of ideas and argument. People long for 'something to believe in'. Man seeks answers to the problems of life.  It is in this void where the charlatans, the messiahs, the entrepreneurs, the preachers, the kingpins and dictators arise.

Movements come and go. Just as many businesses fail, ideas are subject to failure as well.  How could man, for instance, have been so insane to believe that slavery was a good and natural thing? Mythology of religion taught that slaves were to obey their masters? Belief, therefore, heavily determines what is acceptable, whether these beliefs are founded in truth or falsity.  

Where no man is an island, all are conditioned to become 'joiners.'  It is what one chooses that can determine the outcome of the individual and ultimately of society.

While it seems absurd that people would choose to join any totalitarian regime, the question becomes clouded by ignorance.  Those with the best of intentions do not see the snare, or the mistake of belief.  They believe they are the lucky ones, the insightful believers that have discovered some truth and now are willing not only to follow its precepts, but to proselytize, to move it forward.

Cult like behavior is more the norm than the the exception.  It is an offspring of the human experience. Rebellion and upheaval is the father of movements like the Third Reich.  The void is filled by those who want the power to dictate and control a down-line pyramid of followers willing to believe the propaganda, the plan.   

All men have a cloud of belief hanging over their head, it colors their world.  Sadly, black clouds will arise, threatening. The ‘prison of belief’ is the causation of war and ultimately threatens men on so many levels.

Predators fear the presence of a superior.

L. Ron Hubbard feared the predator of the United States government and went into hiding for many of his final years to avoid being held to account for fraud.  His cult followers continued to 'puff themselves' up in the face of their mounting taxation problems with the U.S. government, and the defection of heretics who were revealing the the absurdity of their  supposed 'religion' by revealing the cult's secrets.

Other cult initiators operates very much in the open under the guise of being a successful businessman.  They hide in the open under 'Orwellian banners' of 'patriotism' and 'charity.'  They employ armies of lawyers to suppress the disaffected, and avoid being held to account in courts of law and of governmental regulation.  The initiators of the Amway and Herbalife cults fall into this category.

It is with the hope that the present 'Herbalife' question will bring an end to an ever expanding number of MLM predators. How embarrassing to Amway Herbalife must be