Thanks for pointing it out, Doug. It's quietly appalling... It's very hard,
if you're used to living in a mainly secular and sceptical society, as
Australia has mostly been, to take this stuff seriously, as it just seems
like an incredibly macabre joke. But clearly that inability to take this
stuff seriously has been one of the reasons that it's spreading.
My children brought back some American books from town one day as a joke -
evangelical Christians were giving them away. I read them, as far as I
could stand it, before throwing them out. (I didn't want such horrible
books in the house; they made me feel cold with despair). They had chapter
heading like THE END OF UNCERTAINTY and they were all about the Saved and
the Apocalypse. I think this stuff is seriously scary. Like Fundamentalist
Islam, it's a reaction to modernity, I suppose: contemporary life is so
uncertain, so fast, so full of challenge, that people turn to these
certainties and simplicities with relief, forming their identities as Good
and certain other things as Evil.
Best
A
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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