It’s a simple matter of history. WCG was a corrupt religious scam playing on the doomsday fears of religious fundamentalists to enrich the cult’s leadership. Dr. Walter Martin’s “Kingdom of the Cults” demonstrates this, along with countless letters, documents, stories, accounts from former members, pastors and myriad other sources that reveal Herbert W. Armstrong as the mentally unstable con artist he was.
Armstrong passed on his methods of operation within the venomous church culture he created under the guise of establishing himself as an “Apostle,” a religious authority to be respected on the level of Biblical legends, whose words he was “divinely inspired” to reinterpret.
After WCG’s ultimate ruination following Armstrong’s death and a massive schism, his acolytes in the ministry dispersed to vainly try replicating his financial success. They continued his cult of reverence and kept his legacy, memory and teachings alive to maintain the same illusions Armstrong was so gifted at generating, which they imparted to a new generation that doesn’t remember the “glory days.”
At this point, a question begs to be asked: how can we tell the true believers apart from the con artists? In other words, how do we know which of these COG leaders are consciously operating a scam and which are simply parroting the things they were taught?
Within PCG, LCG and RCG, the picture is fairly clear. Flurry is deluded, a narcissistic true believer in his own importance. Meredith is drunk on his power as the rightful “heir” to Armstrong’s throne, even as his health declines. Pack, while a megalomaniac, is clearly working the con, as is COG-PKG’s Ron Weinland. These cult leaders were in the know and party to WCG’s corruption and have taken its business model for their own.
But do the second generation ministers realize what they’re doing? Or are they simply running on automatic, mimicking the methods of their predecessors solely because it’s how they were trained?
Within the membership, there’s clearly a problem of automation as second and third generation church members simply live as their parents taught them. They keep Armstrong’s teachings alive because it’s all they know and many aren’t even certain why they believe it anymore. They don’t have the conviction and fiery passion of those first generation converts to Armstrongism. They were simply wound-up and set loose upon the world. Many in UCG these days don’t even know who Armstrong was, yet they automatically defend his theology without knowing its source.
But to what extent does this apply to the COG’s ministry? For instance, how many are faithless narcissists sucking as much money from their congregations as possible, and how many actually believe tithes and donations “belong to God?”
The situation seems murkier today than it was a few decades ago.
On the one hand, there are plenty of Ambassador College grads still around to run the COG, and that institution’s corrupt culture directly shaped their managerial styles and beliefs. There have also been so many false doomsday alarms and other failed prophecies, it’s not hard to imagine faltering faith among the COG elite, turning their positions from divine callings to simple income sources within an economy where they have no marketable job skills.
On the other hand, there are younger pastors who have bought into the politically conservative evangelical zeitgeist who may actually believe they belong to an exclusive club of “the chosen” doing the right thing in God’s name.
With these two types of ministers floating around in the COG, it paints a picture of “knowing” pastors and “automated” pastors engaged in an interesting political dynamic within their churches.
A clash of these different ministerial attitudes was exhibited during the COGWA/UCG split, where the ministers with a fluffier outlook ousted the old school pastors from the organization. The ones who were concerned about having enough money to “preach the gospel” usurped those who wanted to wantonly spend tithe money on headquarters relocations and third world congregations to expand their power and suck more funds from its members. When the old school pastors lost their jobs, they forged their own church to keep making money in an economy where they don’t have a place outside of the unemployment line, casting aside silly things like unity and faith to keep control of the scam.
The UCG crisis demonstrated the divide between the faithful and the professionals, the automated and Armstrong’s acolytes. There’s a reason why COGWA seems to be generally older than UCG these days, and why more and more grey heads seem to be jumping to RCG and elsewhere. The pastors who seem to have never known the score, who are simply going through the motions of their faith, have risen to power in an actual attempt to preach their gospel before the end times.
While UCG still possesses the poisonous, opaque, oppressive church culture and unethical practices found in other COG cults, it seems to come by them honestly more as a matter of tradition than through actual malice and reverence for Armstrong, a name they’ve systematically eliminated from their internal dialogue. UCG’s leadership may actually be deluded enough to think they’re doing God’s work.
So the next question is: which is worse and does it matter?
A kneejerk reaction might be to condemn the intentional con artists more than those faithfully shuffling along. The former seems more like the manipulative cult leader and the latter more like another brainwashed victim promoted through the ranks.
But when measuring the kind of damage these ministers can do to their flocks, the true believers can be more dangerous and misguided, because then it becomes a matter of faith, which can be a powerful force for crazy.
So really, it becomes six of one, half dozen of the other. Regardless what kind of ministry COG members subject themselves to, whether it’s run by scammers, true believers or some unholy hybrid of the two, the results look the same: the continuation of Armstrong’s legacy of oppression and corruption, regardless of whether they’re aware of it or not.
Silence
Fantastic article my friend, my favorite yet.
“Regardless what kind of ministry COG members subject themselves to, whether it’s run by scammers, true believers or some unholy hybrid of the two, the results look the same: the continuation of Armstrong’s legacy of oppression and corruption, regardless of whether they’re aware of it or not.”
Well said. My father for instance, is undeniably in the true believer camp. Taken from his COG website:
“Mr. **** ****** an ordained elder who pastors this Church, is non-salaried, and believes that a faithful minister of Jesus Christ has the duty and responsibility to reach out, and offer spiritual help and guidance to the true scattered remnant of God’s Church”
And that sounds great and all, but what he’s really doing is helping people waste their lives on a dead belief system. A system founded on greed and lies, with very, very few redeemable qualities.
Just like you said: no matter what their motivations are, the negative results are the same.
A brilliant analysis, and I think that Jace is right: This is the best one yet. It’s good to know that there is someone growing in grace and knowledge, even if it isn’t Armstrongists and even if it might be atheists (who seem to be honest, moral, ethical and even nicer than their religious counterparts).
I’ve been studying this problem a long time and plan to address it in a different way. It isn’t just the division in the ministerial approaches: It’s the members. Obviously, they are getting something out this and are following the ministry that proves it to them, whatever the “it” is.
I don’t buy into being apologetic for someone like, say, Terry Ratzman. I say this with a background of someone who knew Chuck Harris. I’d say that if this ever entered the fictional court of Law and Order, Assistant District Attorney, Jack McCoy would fry Ratzman in the court if he had survived the LCG shooting. You can almost hear his final address to the jury: “He doesn’t get a free pass! It doesn’t matter if he was “lonely”. It doesn’t matter if he had a mental illness. He knew right from wrong, but he took it upon himself to commit premeditated murder because he was Angry!”
And so forth.
Over at the Ronald Weinland False Prophet blog, I asked the question whether or not Ronald Weinland was an angry man (because I didn’t really know). The answer is that he has cursed those who mock him as a false prophet — the answer is that he is angry.
In fact, if you examine the current leadership of all the ACoGs, you will find that all of them are angry. This is not just a legacy from the very angry Herbert Armstrong with his legendary temper and J. Tkach, Senior, who yelled 5 hours at a poor innocent woman who had done nothing, because he was angry (and his son who exposed his anger at his first wife). Roderick Meredith is an angry man. So is Gerald Flurry. So is David Pack. And some may be surprised, but so is Dennis Luker.
Angry men attract attention and they attract a following. Some are impressed with the forceful “leadership”. Some follow a Nimrod hero. Others want to hear someone attack the world with anger because they are disabused.
If we look at the membership which has to know they are following false prophets and are accepting crap eschatology, the more we dig, the more we find that there is something very wrong with them. Most of those who I know are angry people who have their anger fed through the CoGs.
Not convinced? Then consider this question: Why are there so many splinters? Is it not because both members and ministers are angry with the Church Corporate with which they find themselves bound and are quite disatified with it, in spite of the fact that a casual outsider would be mystified because differences are indiscernable?
I think that pretty much all of the ministers have inherited the “Warrior Gene” and the base membership has the TC / TT variant of DARRP 32. They can’t have peace and they don’t want it.
And the man who started it all was able to yell the loudest and longest. Through his anger and temper he was able to attract a following and hold it together. The time of the kind of anger with the Cold War he could manipulate is gone now and it’s a whole new ball game. The glory days are not returning. People are no longer impressed with the yelling and waving of arms.
No, people today ask the question: “What’s in it for me?”. The ACoGs have insufficient answer.
Douglas Becker wrote:
Yes, yes they are. Luker is definitely angry, deep down. It’s what drives his ever emotional state and near-tears that have earned him a reputation of being emotionally unbalanced.
Douglas Becker wrote:
Exactly.
Jace wrote:
Yup. And it’s really about the effects, not the motivations.
Thoughtfully written and interesting comments that followed. I am fairly new to some of these sites, and first off I have to say it’s gratifying to see people who think and feel similar to myself express themselves here. The hardest part for a lot of us who grew up in WWCG under the dark cloud of HWA’s anger is separating fact from fiction. After 30, 40 or 50 years of thorough indoctrination, when one finally takes the intiative to act out on sometimes life-long questions, finding balanced answers is almost as frustrating as coming to realize you have been brainwashed into a cultic mentality regardless of what truth or not there was within the institution. For example, I never once in my entire life feared God to the degree I feared HWA or any other minister. Sooner or later, you guys are right, almost every minister I know will reduce himself to the common denominator of anger if you push him. If you want to speed up the process, I’ve become somewhat of an expert at it.
Some of the kids I grew up with are ministers, and I still have many “friends” who are ministers, scattered among the innumerable multitude of micro-cults. Rare is the one who will actually talk to you honestly, the young ones heatedly support the party line, just as you described, and the old ones do not tolerate questioning. Either way, it seems anger will easily emerge – but it’s always justified by either their position of authority or the righteous indignation of Christ toward the hypocritical. This is a good site because you guys talk about stuff. It’s a whole lot healthier to get stuff out and talk about it, right or wrong, than to keep yourself so bottled up fearing the wrath of the tribulation and the lake of fire… you’d think those two elements composed the gospel message, eh? Yes, anger is both the wheels and the grease that keeps the wheels of automated indoctrination humming smoothly. Not only was it used carte blanche in the church, it was also the order of the day behind the plain truth about child rearing – ‘raise those kids to be terrified of defying you and they will easily assimilate themselves into a “loving” relationship with their Creator’. Or as I heard the late Dr. Lochner once said, “We taught that your kids are born with the devil in them, and you’ve got to beat the hell out of em.” I think I might have liked him. When HWA died so did his empire: the colleges are gone, the church is gone, his Steuben crystal is gone, and most of his international rulers with whom he was intimate are dead or deposed. All that’s left are the second and third, and fourth generations of his authoritarian system who are left to deal with the fallout, learning to think for themselves, and struggling to determine fact from fiction.
All that’s left are the second and third, and fourth generations of his authoritarian system who are left to deal with the fallout, learning to think for themselves, and struggling to determine fact from fiction.
That’s so unfair.
It makes me angry.
Douglas Becker wrote:
You said it Doug. HWA reaped the rewards of his con off the backs of 1st generation sheep like my parents and grandparents. Then he died and left future generations, some still unborn, to be enslaved to his absurd little enterprise, long after he stopped profiting from it. It’s downright criminal.
Douglas Becker wrote:
Understatement of the decade.
You’ve mentioned this in other posts but I would argue that UCG actually hasn’t totally distanced itself from HWA. Sure compared to other splinters they definitely don’t emphasize him as much but I can remember, for example, a FOT video that was about HWA and UCG’s history. Granted it was very diluted and didn’t mention all the failed prophecies (obviously). I can also remember numerous sermons where the speaker would mention HWA, something like “Mr. Armstrong always said ‘Keep to the trunk of the tree’,” ect. Growing up I knew who HWA was, just didn’t know all the stuff I should’ve known/wasn’t told.
Of course there are a lot of people in UCG/COGWA who don’t know much of anything about HWA and this lot will only increase as the first generation members continue to die off and ministers are replaced (maybe) by newer “True Believer” pastors and elders. And yes there were/are people who are clueless as to who HWA is.
Douglas Becker wrote:
Excellent point. You took part of the next post right off my fingertips.
Do you think a lot of the COG’s anger is rooted in its failure to replicate Armstrong’s success? That they can no longer generate the same illusion of a world with its ear bent to their whims?
Douglas Becker wrote:
That would mean they’re no longer being “persecuted,” which means they aren’t special anymore.
@ Finn:
Welcome!
Finn wrote:
At this point, it’s hard for many of them to think too deeply about their lives to come up with ready answers for those who might challenge them. They’re so trapped in the automated routine they were taught, COG apologetics is virtually dead (though it barely ever existed at all).
Finn wrote:
Jace wrote:
This is the saddest part of all.
S Harris wrote:
Absolutely. I think that’s changed gradually though, and that many of the HWA faithful, the grayer heads, have jumped to COGWA. The last mention of HWA on UCG’s website is 2006, at least using their search function, and most of them are from ministers who have since been fired or stepped down.
Jace wrote:
At some near future point I plan to incorporate the concept of four dimensional entropy reduction relating to the financial entropy created by Herbert Armstrong.
Herbert Armstrong not only reduced his own financial entropy by moving financial energy (in form of $$$$) from the membership to himself (and the membership moved it from outside sources, such as, oh, working long hours at a nothing job), he actually reduced his financial entropy by getting it from members by using up their financial energy from the future. The Five Tithes reduced the rank and file member’s income to entropy by making his or her own income unavailable to the member — because they had given it to Herbert Armstrong so he could live his lifestyle.
By automating this process to continue after his death, he has done nothing more than create future entropy for the parents, grandparents and future generations which “bought in to” his scam.
[Entropy: Sun generates photons, photons generate energy to grow trees, trees chopped into firewood, firewood burned in the fire place. Now then, burn the ashes to get heat and light. Problem: It will take much more energy to do so because the energy has become less and less available at each step of the energy cycle.]
The Five Tithes link:
http://tscult.com/beliefs/tithes.html
“There is to be a grand new Church Corporate Campus for The Supreme Cult. Above is an artist’s rendition.”
So full of win!
@ Jace:
You must admit, Jace, that the “artist’s rendition” is far superior to David Pack’s pathetic amateur attempt at campus drawings.
Did he use crayons, do you think?
Douglas Becker wrote:
Epic.
I’d like to present my credentials here as one of the poor, sad, deluded “automatics” referenced in this article. But first, I’d like to make some comments about my fellow deluded automatons.
It has been my observation that if you check your capacity to think for yourself at the door of this or any other church, your soul (immortal or not!) goes right out the door with it. Sadly, it seems most of you who post here didn’t have that capacity when you checked in at church because you were forcibly brought “into the faith” as children. As a result, for good or for ill, your whole lives are naturally a reaction to the beliefs you were force fed — but please don’t flatter yourselves by thinking the only paths available to people in your shoes are either delusion or your own negativity.
I know a number of people who’ve been raised by misguided WWCOG members and have faced similar issues, but have chosen instead to embrace a life of faith. They do so with the understanding that while they love and respect their parents, they do NOT have to replicate their parent’s confused thinking. These people have sharp BS detectors, are happy to dismiss something they hear from the pulpit as nonsense when it is, and are utterly committed to what they’ve tested and found to be true.
I had the good fortune to be in my late teens before I ever encountered this peculiar practice — otherwise, I might well have fallen into the same negativity trap as you, for I must admit, I’m not as creative as some of the people I just described. I’ve been the so-called victim of lies, manipulation, and coverups like those decried here — and I was “put out of the church” for a period of time as a result of defying a totally duplicitous church “authority.” That was a great blessing — because it motivated me to bring some oxygen into the anaerobic thinking typical of the WWCOG era.
I quit reading church literature and instead began reading about other faith traditions and philosophies — everything from the I Ching to M Scott Peck. I took an audio course on the history of philosophy. I read a book on Zen Buddhism at the Feast of Tabernacles (during services, just to see if it would garner any raised eyebrows). I read Joseph Campbell, Huston Smith, Viktor Frankl, Simone Weil, and the self-described pagan, Mortimore J Adler (who wrote a wonderful book called “How To Think About God”). I also read anti-religionists and evolutionary biologists like Richard Dawkins and I would recommend them ALL — because in the end, they all pointed me back to faith.
They also equipped me to survive being a congregant of Ron Weinland, whose fold I left when he left ours.
And that leads me back to aforementioned cohorts. The things I see common to all of us who have chosen to live by the Word as we understand it and work toward unity despite the failings of church leaders is a willingness to learn from people outside the COG thoughtspace. Homeschooler networks, our evangelical neighbors, the local Chabad house… if they’re basing what they have to say on the Word, we’ll listen and put it to the test. That’s why so many other COGs decry UCG as “liberal” — and it’s what separated the ministers who left UCG from many of those who stayed: the ones who left believe they have all the answers; the ones still here are, for the most part, still asking questions.
I for one have NO nostalgia for the so-called “golden age of Worldwide.” The kindest description of the church at that time is “adolescent” — complete with the energy, hubris, cluelessness, and wanton disregard for others — that goes along with it.
But, read the Word! it’s no different now than it was then: liars, false ministers, schisms… even the apostle John was kicked out of the church. You can conclude from this that there is no God, and all people are scum. You can think you have God in your pocket… and all people are scum. Or you can recognize that YOU are scum, and that God has a different “you” that only He can bring to life. I’m betting everything I’ve got on the latter. Does that make me an “automatic”? I’ve made my case — you be the judge.
Hi PDA,
Thanks for your post. Your comments really are appreciated.
Firstly, we’ll just point out this article is primarily about ministers and church leadership, the rift between pastors who actually believe and those who clearly don’t. Are you a minister or a laymember?
Agreed.
This isn’t even logical. So because we didn’t come to the same conclusion you did, we clearly didn’t think about it? Laughable. If we really didn’t think about it, we would have accepted what we were forcefed instead of applying critical, independent thought to come to our conclusions. Without a capacity for independent thought, we would be automotons. Some did accept the programming and believed it wholeheartedly until encountering facts and logic. Not everyone who left was always against the church while growing up.
Not our “whole” lives. But yes, partially, that reaction has an effect on the landscape, quite naturally.
We don’t assume that. But it’s a simple matter of realizing what’s wrong with the church, and what’s wrong isn’t really a subjective thing. The problems within the church are serious and real by any measure, not a matter of mere opinion.
So do we. A few years later, they tend to leave. True story. The damage done by misguided COG members has a lasting impact.
We would certainly hope so.
So if they’re hearing bullshit from the pulpit, and they recognize it, why doesn’t that translate to trying to affect change within the church? Why doesn’t it result in members questioning their pastors? Why do they simply ignore the things they don’t like and allow their brethren to be misled? Why, if they aren’t automatons, do they by and large act like it?
And do you think things are any better now than when you were put out by the corrupt church authorities you mention? Because both past experience and the present situation across the COG proves otherwise.
So critical thinking, skepticism and intolerance for outright church corruption and its harmful culture, which are elements you admit exist, is just “negativity?” Yup, you must be a COG member. You’ve got the buzzwords down and everything.
Laudable.
Here’s a question purely out of authentic curiosity: how?
Which COG are you with now? UCG? It seems that way from your post, but we want to be certain.
What if they’re not basing it on “the Word?” Ignore it?
And how are members “working toward unity?” Things are more divided than ever. Believe it or not, the members have ALL of the power to affect change in the church. ALL of it. You collectively hold the purse strings and NOTHING is done without your hefty, compulsory contributions. If church members care so much about being united, why aren’t they?
These days, UCG is decried as liberal because it can’t seem to get a grip on what it actually believes anymore. Honestly, having grown up in UCG, there have been so many versions of “the truth” on certain subjects, it’s hard to tell where it actually stands on anything anymore. Dennis Luker is seeing to that.
The ones who left more accurately believed they weren’t getting paid anymore after Luker started cracking heads, and that leaving to play their own game was more lucrative than unemployment, and the best way to attract sheep is to collect the hardline conservatives into a new COG. A lot of COGWA’s leaders have been in the game too long to give it up now. They don’t know how to do anything else.
We would use stronger language than that, but we agree with the sentiment.
The only stance we take is that COG leadership is by and large comprised of scum, and this must be changed for the good of their followers. We don’t actually take a stance on God’s nature or existence. We have atheists, Christians and some non-denominational religious adherants (for lack of a simpler term) who contribute to this website. Not everyone is an atheist, and our only shared skepticism is toward the COG. When it comes to COG beliefs, we don’t care whether people hold them. We care about how ministers use them to control and manipulate people and we care about those that are contradicted by scientific fact. Things that are open to interpretation and subject to personal faith we have no issues with. It’s the things that are clearly lies that we object to.
Again, this post was primarily targeting ministers, because for them, they’re either in the church as a calling or as a mere paying job. For members, they’re just paying in, and one would have to believe to stick around in the first place. You’ve come to your conclusions. That’s fine. But you can’t keep trying to polish something with a past as ugly as the COG and expect it to turn up shiny. It’s just broken, plain and simple, and the longer these churches linger, the more people are going to get hurt unless there are some major changes made. Simply recognizing there are bad things about the church and sticking around to financially subsidize it anyway just isn’t enough. If there really are all of these critically-thinking, wiser-than-all COG members floating around the churches, why haven’t they lifted a finger to change things?
PDA wrote:
Meaning, I suppose, that his brand of Armstrongism became too close to the “golden era” you spoke of earlier, replete with false prophecies, desperate requests for money, and endless shouting? UCG, admittedly, is on the nicer side as doomsday cults go.
PDA wrote:
A troublemaker, eh? Perhaps there is hope for you yet.
PDA wrote:
On this we agree, I recommend them also! I am however, intrigued by the fact that the presentation of scientific fact, the promotion of logic, reason, and empirical evidence over superstition, somehow brought you back to the unseen and unprovable.
Perhaps the universe is simply too vast to comprehend? The natural world, too random and savage to boost ones sense of self importance, or the finality of life too cold a prospect to embrace. Back to Jesus then, where the forecast is always warm, sunny and with a 50% chance of hope! (unless you’re gay or an infidel, that is)
Silence wrote:
This statement can certainly be applied to my experience. I grew up in UCG and would say that overall had a very positive experience. I wasn’t the most overtly religious or fervent congregant growing up, as I’m sure most who grow up in the church aren’t. My zeal for the church came in my latter high school years and continued throughout college, even. But throughout I remained open-minded and curious, not in the questioning church beliefs for sort of way but in the same way you, PDA, have mentioned. I took several comparative religious courses in college, studied different philosophies and religious history. Growing up I always had friends outside the church – those of other religious traditions and even some non-believing atheists. I had many discussions with these friends outside the church about all sorts of religious and ethical issues: the nature of reality, God’s existence or non-existence, so on and so forth. I learned to think critically and to apply logic, and tried to understand where people from other perspectives were coming from. And all the while I still remained comfortably in UCG, I even considered baptism for a long while! I made it a point the read the entire Bible in a year, which I did, in less than a year. I understood the ins and outs of church doctrine (and how they differed from traditional christianity) and would take copious notes at sabbath services. I remember my Bible accumulating many scribbled notes on the page margins, with cross scriptural references and everything. I grew up in a very loving and caring family in the church, no crazy nut cases. By all accounts I had no reason to leave.
But, once I started to apply that same critical objective approach learned in college towards church doctrine and culture the vail quickly started to crumble. I saw that UCG/WWCOG and its sister branches couldn’t be the one true church founded by Jesus – they could only trace their doctrinal origins back to the Second Great Awakening, at the very furthest. I quickly discovered that key teachings such as British Israelism couldn’t even be remotely true and was easily refuted by modern DNA evidence, as well as cultural linguistics, anthropology, archeology and so on. There, poof, out the door went all the prophetic teachings of the coming end times. Catholic beast power, whore of Babylon? That’s not unique either, in fact it’s a belief held by many fundamentalist protestants, and in fact fits nicely into the history of anti-catholocism throughout much of America’s history. So again, nothing unique there. I started to look into WWCOG’s history, I mean really look, not just gloss over. 1975? Didn’t happen! In fact there were so many instances of Herbert W. Armstrong’s failed prophecies (which could be continually fueled by cold war paranoia and isolationism) that the church started to look more and more like any other doomsday cult, just with a splash of Seventh Day Adventism or Jehovah’s Witness mixed in. And that doesn’t even begin to touch on the personal and institutional corruption in WWCOG, not to mention its continuation in UCG and the other splinters. In short I actually took the “prove all things” mandate to heart.
And you know what makes me suspicious that local church leadership (and maybe even the higher ups) knew the thing is a scam too? When I stopped attending services and officially “broke off” I didn’t hear a peep from the pastor or any local elders. Nothing. No phone calls, no emails, nothing! Even though I had more or less purchased a ticket straight to the third resurrection and eternal death (based on church teachings of knowingly rejecting God’s truth, aka church doctrine). Nothing to try and convince me otherwise or even to hear out my reasoning. Not that it would’ve done any good, but it certainly didn’t show any concern for one of the sheep. I guess there was no reason to try and bring me back into the fold, I probably didn’t pay enough in tithes and offerings anyways.
PDA, I and many others here on silenced didn’t leave the COG due to some simple case of negativity or adolescent rebellion. Had that been the case I doubt this site would even exist. We wouldn’t care so passionately to speak truthfully of our experiences and observations of the COG and would simply go on with our lives outside it.