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Extra Super-Special [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-12-11
I was enjoying a t.v. series about a young woman who, after the untimely death of her mother, started doubting the origin stories her mother told her. It was kind of a supernatural murder mystery. A devoted cult followed her every move because She Was Special. So she ran around the Welch countryside, single-handedly raising the homicide rate there by 1000%, and nothing would deter her from the mission to discover her roots.
Call me incurious, but if people started dying just after I moved to small town, I would quickly move out again.
During this time she received ghostly messages that she was, indeed, special. I’d like to see a show where the main character isn’t so special for once. Or someone who wasn’t Cleopatra or Julius Caesar in a past life.
Today, I glory in being sub-par.
Anyway, she finds out the truth in the end: yes, she is super special! And that revelation was worth all the pain she caused others, not to mention the deaths.
I just wanted to yell at the screen, “You are NOT that special! Leave those poor Welsh villagers alone! Get therapy, or an exorcist.”
Cult Stories to Entrap You
Wednesdays we discuss coercive control: cults and abusive partners.
What fascinated me were the ideas the t.v. cult used to reel her into cooperating with them:
You are special
Therefore your place is with us
Those dead people were just unfortunate accidents, forget about that. Normal rules do not apply
There was always a part of you that was underneath the life you chose - before meeting us. You can connect with that part now. (note: every human on Earth feels that way.)
Don’t you want to know the truth? We can tell you that. (Almost nobody knows the truth. Imagine all those surprises when DNA tests were sold to the public.)
The danger, as with any cult, is that you are made to feel special. Either because you are in a group that is special, or are following a leader who is. That thought, one of a special and unique you, is the shimmering diamond on the water that just turns out to be a trick of the light.
The next danger is isolation from others so that when they laugh in your face doubts don’t enter your mind. Couple this tactic with exhaustion or malnourishing diets, and critical reasoning is suspended.
Getting back to our heroine, the answer is as simple as it is difficult. Maybe you were kidnapped as a child to be used by a cult as a gateway for an archangel before your non-mother rescued and raised you in London to be a world-famous classical musician. OK. Let’s accept all that.
Nowhere in that field of super-specialness is there enough justification for staying in a town where a number of people connected to you are murdered. I don’t care if you “want to know.” Knowing isn’t as important as other people’s lives. There is no super-special person exception to the basic rules of life.
Today, I glory in being sub-par.
Especially after that show.
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