Don't be a Dupe!
2005 was a very difficult year for my sister. She was facing a tremendous struggle as she strove to beat drug addiction, the falling out of a relationship, and as usual, unruly bouts of Type-I diabetes. On her way home from work one evening, she saw a well-lit neon sign from the road that read, “Psychic Readings starting at $10.” She stopped and went inside the old, creaky house that had the sign. Sis made it home that day minus $63. A few days pass by and she’s in and out of the house a little more than normal, so on one particular trip out the door, I decide to ask her where she’s headed.
Now crossing brains with her erudite, outspoken atheist brother is not what she has in mind, so she puts off giving a clear answer. “I gotta run an errand. Be back.” This went on for several more days when finally, she burst in the door, sniffling, and with tears in her eyes. I followed her upstairs, and after some prolonged hesitation, she shared with me a tidbit of what had happened—she was duped by the same “madam” charlatan psychic she had begun visiting several days earlier.
Shaking my head in anger, just as I was about to say something chopping and derogatory, she cut me off. With her head still facing the ground in shame, using the side of an index finger to wipe away a stray tear running down her cheek, she said, “I know, I know. I should have known better.” “How much did you lose?” I asked. She said, “$65.” But sis and I know each other too damn well. “Why don’t you tell me how much you really lost?” I said. With gritted teeth, a quivering lip, and embarrassment written all over her face, she said very slowly, “ssssssssix hundred and ninety-two dollars.” I stood there, contemplating how I would reply as I gathered a few more details of how it happened.
This fat-forearmed, spirit-frolicking fraud, this wart-necked, lying lard-ass, toad of a woman found a trusting, vulnerable girl to exploit—and exploit she did! The moment sis entered the room, she was bombarded with, “My, my, the negative energy surrounding you is strong!” From there, it went to “Ah, I see now…a curse has been put upon you by a man and a woman you know.” With some further dressing up, it went from there to the main-course like you knew it would: “I need some money to buy sacred items from Jerusalem so we can begin the ritual and end the curse.” A little butter here, a touch of garlic there, a little dressing down below, and the sale was made! A naïve, unsuspecting person had been stripped of what limited livelihood she had, not realizing the whole scheme was bogus until it was too late. But as much as I’d like to, I can’t really be mad at the psychic! You don’t blame the croc for being a good ambush predator and snatching up the deer that comes to drink from the water’s edge, do you? No, you blame the innocent-but-clueless deer!
I wasn’t the kindest that day. The “I told you so” mentality had me consumed, so much so that I couldn’t resist the urge to say: “Little Miss Bimbo Baggins got taken for a ride, did she? I bet she doesn’t hate the skeptics quite as much now, does she? You got what you deserved, honey!” Before I could say anything else, she looked up at me, and with tears in her eyes and quivering cheeks, screamed, “I’m a trusting person, ok!”
Sis always was a trusting person. She goes through life assuming (a) that people are generally telling the truth and “wouldn’t lie,” (b) that people usually have her best interest at heart, and (c) that the spirits and powers that be are “up there,” looking out for her wellbeing down here. Well, sis got played, and she learned a valuable lesson (I think). But she did deserve to get flimflammed. That’s what happens to “trusting” people.
And hell knows, sis isn’t alone. Many people are taken in Nigeria banking scams, or “get rich quick,” pay-before-you-play programs, like those “work from home” schemes that show a picture on their websites of a young, handsome man sitting in his Porsche, parked out in front a multimillion dollar mansion as his wife sips away at a margarita next to a sparkling-blue, 24-foot, in-ground, swimming pool. Hey, we’ve all been tempted to click on such links occasionally (Come on, now! Don’t deny it!) But just like all that clairvoyant crapola, it’s bullshit made to suck in three classes of pathetic people: the greedy, the gullible, and the stupid. Now the owners of these sites and the perpetrators of these scams, they are the smart ones! They make some pretty mean money in their filthy profession too. And who are their victims?
The elderly are big suckers. They spend their days thinking the world is still a place where the milkman rolls up his sleeves and lays a carton of milk on the doorstep, saying, “G’morning, maam!” before leaving. Then, there are the sheltered suckers. These dupes consist of the young, like children or sheltered people, who’ve lived privileged lives. Some broken-English-speaking, sly fellow, with a ponytail and a yin-yan necklace actually convinces these morons to send their credit card numbers to him in an email to “commid de sum of $2,900,000,000 US doller tu u acount” when in reality, they’re just going to take what’s available in the dupe’s account and get lost on a beach in Maui. And they’ll be saying to themselves, “Stupid Amelwican! Hehehehe!” all the way there!
That just leaves the religious dupes like dear old sis. The religious are the biggest dupes of all. How do you know if you’re a religious dupe? Well, for starters, if you buy prayer shawls or anointing oil from Pastor Hagee’s church, you’re a dupe. If you sit close to the TV during a religious telecast, laying your hands on it in hopes of being healed of whatever ails you, you’re a dupe. If you pray to God to save your child’s life, and God lets your child die, but you keep on praying to him anyways, hoping he will help you through the difficult period of grief to follow, you’re a dupe. If you travel to Lourdes, France to see the famous Lourdes Basilica because 66 healings have been officially recognized by the Catholic Church, or perhaps just because you seek an encounter with The Virgin Mary, yes, (say it with me now) you’re a friggin’ dupe! You get the idea. But religious dupes are even more “duped” than other dupes.
Greedy dupes have their egg-in-face moments and get taken, but from the sting of being played the fool comes a valuable lesson on how not to get taken again! The same lesson is learned by the wet-behind-the-ears chump who started off too innocent and too sheltered in life to know any better. And chances are, even the elderly will learn to be more cautious after being victims of heartless scams. But religious dupes, they are another matter. They never learn because in religion, there’s often no obvious victim. It’s not clear to the believer that they’ve been had, and this motivates the faithful to continue to play that endless, trial-and-error game of “Wheel o’ Prayer.”
When heartfelt prayers fail, the religious dupe keeps on praying. When his business takes a dive financially, the religious dupe keeps on tithing. When Aunt Olga dies of breast cancer, despite the efforts of the “healing ministry” of the local church, the faithful keep on going with the bullheadedness of a flea-ridden mutt, getting zapped by an electric fence. The religious dupe is too stubborn to learn from his or her mistakes and give up what obviously doesn’t work. They choose to persist in the mentally calamitous execution of their insanity—they choose to persist in doing the same things over and over again while expecting to get different results. That’s the textbook definition of insanity, friend! The net result is, the religious dupe rarely ever learns from even the most painful and heartrending of mistakes. Perhaps stubbornness is an unlisted fruit of the Spirit?
Now no one wants to be a dupe, but keeping from becoming one demands that we retain a healthy level of skepticism about absolutely everything—and with skepticism comes another dirty word to some—cynicism. A healthy level of cynicism is necessary too. Even if being a pessimistic, troubleshooting skeptic isn’t your thing, you’d better learn the trick of the trade fast! Yes, people will lie to you about anything, directly or indirectly. No, people very often do not have your best interest at heart. They have their own interests at heart. And no, if the spirits and powers that be are “up there” at all, they certainly aren’t watching out for us down below (or they are, but are doing a terribly suck-ass job of it!)
Using cynical street-smarts, what should our attitude be towards religion of all kinds, including the Christian religion? Christianity is a faith that is 2,000 years old, hailing from a time when men believed in miracles and gods that rise from the dead; knowing what we know of human nature and the all-too-human tendencies to lie, exaggerate, and fall prey to the ignorance of the times in which we live, how can we view the religion as anything but a stupendous fraud of frauds? The handwriting is on the wall! Don’t be religious! Don’t be a dupe!
(JH)
Now crossing brains with her erudite, outspoken atheist brother is not what she has in mind, so she puts off giving a clear answer. “I gotta run an errand. Be back.” This went on for several more days when finally, she burst in the door, sniffling, and with tears in her eyes. I followed her upstairs, and after some prolonged hesitation, she shared with me a tidbit of what had happened—she was duped by the same “madam” charlatan psychic she had begun visiting several days earlier.
Shaking my head in anger, just as I was about to say something chopping and derogatory, she cut me off. With her head still facing the ground in shame, using the side of an index finger to wipe away a stray tear running down her cheek, she said, “I know, I know. I should have known better.” “How much did you lose?” I asked. She said, “$65.” But sis and I know each other too damn well. “Why don’t you tell me how much you really lost?” I said. With gritted teeth, a quivering lip, and embarrassment written all over her face, she said very slowly, “ssssssssix hundred and ninety-two dollars.” I stood there, contemplating how I would reply as I gathered a few more details of how it happened.
This fat-forearmed, spirit-frolicking fraud, this wart-necked, lying lard-ass, toad of a woman found a trusting, vulnerable girl to exploit—and exploit she did! The moment sis entered the room, she was bombarded with, “My, my, the negative energy surrounding you is strong!” From there, it went to “Ah, I see now…a curse has been put upon you by a man and a woman you know.” With some further dressing up, it went from there to the main-course like you knew it would: “I need some money to buy sacred items from Jerusalem so we can begin the ritual and end the curse.” A little butter here, a touch of garlic there, a little dressing down below, and the sale was made! A naïve, unsuspecting person had been stripped of what limited livelihood she had, not realizing the whole scheme was bogus until it was too late. But as much as I’d like to, I can’t really be mad at the psychic! You don’t blame the croc for being a good ambush predator and snatching up the deer that comes to drink from the water’s edge, do you? No, you blame the innocent-but-clueless deer!
I wasn’t the kindest that day. The “I told you so” mentality had me consumed, so much so that I couldn’t resist the urge to say: “Little Miss Bimbo Baggins got taken for a ride, did she? I bet she doesn’t hate the skeptics quite as much now, does she? You got what you deserved, honey!” Before I could say anything else, she looked up at me, and with tears in her eyes and quivering cheeks, screamed, “I’m a trusting person, ok!”
Sis always was a trusting person. She goes through life assuming (a) that people are generally telling the truth and “wouldn’t lie,” (b) that people usually have her best interest at heart, and (c) that the spirits and powers that be are “up there,” looking out for her wellbeing down here. Well, sis got played, and she learned a valuable lesson (I think). But she did deserve to get flimflammed. That’s what happens to “trusting” people.
And hell knows, sis isn’t alone. Many people are taken in Nigeria banking scams, or “get rich quick,” pay-before-you-play programs, like those “work from home” schemes that show a picture on their websites of a young, handsome man sitting in his Porsche, parked out in front a multimillion dollar mansion as his wife sips away at a margarita next to a sparkling-blue, 24-foot, in-ground, swimming pool. Hey, we’ve all been tempted to click on such links occasionally (Come on, now! Don’t deny it!) But just like all that clairvoyant crapola, it’s bullshit made to suck in three classes of pathetic people: the greedy, the gullible, and the stupid. Now the owners of these sites and the perpetrators of these scams, they are the smart ones! They make some pretty mean money in their filthy profession too. And who are their victims?
The elderly are big suckers. They spend their days thinking the world is still a place where the milkman rolls up his sleeves and lays a carton of milk on the doorstep, saying, “G’morning, maam!” before leaving. Then, there are the sheltered suckers. These dupes consist of the young, like children or sheltered people, who’ve lived privileged lives. Some broken-English-speaking, sly fellow, with a ponytail and a yin-yan necklace actually convinces these morons to send their credit card numbers to him in an email to “commid de sum of $2,900,000,000 US doller tu u acount” when in reality, they’re just going to take what’s available in the dupe’s account and get lost on a beach in Maui. And they’ll be saying to themselves, “Stupid Amelwican! Hehehehe!” all the way there!
That just leaves the religious dupes like dear old sis. The religious are the biggest dupes of all. How do you know if you’re a religious dupe? Well, for starters, if you buy prayer shawls or anointing oil from Pastor Hagee’s church, you’re a dupe. If you sit close to the TV during a religious telecast, laying your hands on it in hopes of being healed of whatever ails you, you’re a dupe. If you pray to God to save your child’s life, and God lets your child die, but you keep on praying to him anyways, hoping he will help you through the difficult period of grief to follow, you’re a dupe. If you travel to Lourdes, France to see the famous Lourdes Basilica because 66 healings have been officially recognized by the Catholic Church, or perhaps just because you seek an encounter with The Virgin Mary, yes, (say it with me now) you’re a friggin’ dupe! You get the idea. But religious dupes are even more “duped” than other dupes.
Greedy dupes have their egg-in-face moments and get taken, but from the sting of being played the fool comes a valuable lesson on how not to get taken again! The same lesson is learned by the wet-behind-the-ears chump who started off too innocent and too sheltered in life to know any better. And chances are, even the elderly will learn to be more cautious after being victims of heartless scams. But religious dupes, they are another matter. They never learn because in religion, there’s often no obvious victim. It’s not clear to the believer that they’ve been had, and this motivates the faithful to continue to play that endless, trial-and-error game of “Wheel o’ Prayer.”
When heartfelt prayers fail, the religious dupe keeps on praying. When his business takes a dive financially, the religious dupe keeps on tithing. When Aunt Olga dies of breast cancer, despite the efforts of the “healing ministry” of the local church, the faithful keep on going with the bullheadedness of a flea-ridden mutt, getting zapped by an electric fence. The religious dupe is too stubborn to learn from his or her mistakes and give up what obviously doesn’t work. They choose to persist in the mentally calamitous execution of their insanity—they choose to persist in doing the same things over and over again while expecting to get different results. That’s the textbook definition of insanity, friend! The net result is, the religious dupe rarely ever learns from even the most painful and heartrending of mistakes. Perhaps stubbornness is an unlisted fruit of the Spirit?
Now no one wants to be a dupe, but keeping from becoming one demands that we retain a healthy level of skepticism about absolutely everything—and with skepticism comes another dirty word to some—cynicism. A healthy level of cynicism is necessary too. Even if being a pessimistic, troubleshooting skeptic isn’t your thing, you’d better learn the trick of the trade fast! Yes, people will lie to you about anything, directly or indirectly. No, people very often do not have your best interest at heart. They have their own interests at heart. And no, if the spirits and powers that be are “up there” at all, they certainly aren’t watching out for us down below (or they are, but are doing a terribly suck-ass job of it!)
Using cynical street-smarts, what should our attitude be towards religion of all kinds, including the Christian religion? Christianity is a faith that is 2,000 years old, hailing from a time when men believed in miracles and gods that rise from the dead; knowing what we know of human nature and the all-too-human tendencies to lie, exaggerate, and fall prey to the ignorance of the times in which we live, how can we view the religion as anything but a stupendous fraud of frauds? The handwriting is on the wall! Don’t be religious! Don’t be a dupe!
(JH)