#sect

Among [Applewhite's] other teachings was the classic cult specialty of developing disdain for anyone outside of the Heaven's Gate commune. Applewhite flattered his would-be alien flock that they were an elite elect far superior to the non-initiated humans whom he considered to be deluded zombies.[...]Applewhite effectively fed his paranoid persecution complex to his followers to ensure blind loyalty to the group and himself while fostering alienation from the mundane world. This paradoxical superior/fearful attitude towards “Them” (i.e., anyone who is not one of “Us”) is one of the simplest means of hooking even the most skeptical curiosity seeker into the solipsistic netherworld of a [mentally unbalanced] leader's insecure and threatened worldview. ↗

— Zeena Schreck

#mass-suicides #psychopathology #religious-science-fiction #sects #sociology

I'll stop eating steak when you stop killing spiders." Absurdity: comparing cows to spiders. Arachnids are pure evil. They're like a cigarette manufacturer or a terrorist. They're organized religion on eight legs. ↗

— Davey Havok

#arachnids #bugs #cows #death #debate

God is merciful cant we all be on the right track of faith but just using different roads? ↗

— Ali Al-Ahmed

#god #religion #sectarianism #faith

There are no insect eggs in my food.” Mrs. White reiterated. You should use that in your advertising,” Nate suggested. ↗

— Brandon Mull

#humor #insect-eggs #food

I guess when someone tells you something they they usually guard, you feel privileged, not because you know something no-one else knows, but because you feel chosen. You feel like that person wants her life to intersect with yours. I think that's what felt best about it. ↗

— Markus Zusak

#intersect #life #secrets #life

Insect life was so loud that when you parked the car and got out it sounded as if you had suddenly tuned into a radio frequency from another planet. ↗

— David Samuels

#humming #insects #nature #radio #life

It is amazing what a lot of insect life goes on under your nose when you have got it an inch from the earth. I suppose it goes on in any case, but if you are proceeding on your stomach, dragging your body along by your fingernails, entomology presents itself very forcibly as a thoroughly justified science. ↗

— Beryl Markham

#life

Life is but a flash of time, a momentous flicker-- in the life that we know and space we live in on earth.© VW ↗

— Virginia Wright

#buzz #buzzzzzzzzzz #childrens-books #honeybees #insects

The Maestro spoke again. "When we are not, at what point do we become?" I could not reply. For I had grasped no shape of his thoughts. I understood neither what he said nor his intent behind it. ↗

— Theresa Breslin

#existence #leonardo-da-vinci #life #matteo #post-mortem

The poets say some moths will do anything out of love for a flame [...] The moth takes off again, and we both step back, because he's circling at eye level now and seems to have lost rudder control, smacking into the wall on each round. He circles lower and lower, spinning around the candle in tighter revolutions, like a soap sud over an open drain. A few times he seems to touch the flame, but dances off unhurt. Then he ignites like a ball of hair, curling into an oily puff of fumes with a hiss. The candle flame flickers and dims for a moment, then burns as bright as before. Moth Smoke Lingers. ↗

— Mohsin Hamid

#insects #love #moth #smoke #star-crossed