The Internet on Tom Cruise on Tom Cruise: Scientologist.

I'd like to apologise for my failure to be offended by the Tom Cruise Scientology video. I should remember that when the States were a series of colonies, we were an experiment in religious tolerance: that the most absurd, most conservative religious sects of Europe were deposited here, and that our national tendency towards superstitious, hateful evangelism is a direct result. Although I should have noticed by now that tolerance of any kind is clearly a terrible idea, I seem to keep doing it anyway. I'll never learn. I'm deeply sorry.

I'm also entirely wrong about all of this because, as many of my fellow nerds will, I think, agree, I don't find a religion based on the writings of a science fiction author to be all that strange. Last night I had a dream in which Storm and Beast appeared to me as gods, and Marvel isn't even my preferred universe.

Being a fool, I think that most of what Tom Cruise says doesn't seem particularly crazy, simply enthusiastic. Which is what happens to most people who find a faith, rather than being born into one. The person who can see that this thing they found, simultaneously incomprehensibly ancient and brand new, this thing that really works, that makes such perfect sense, is the correct thing for them, rather than the correct thing, full stop, is exceptionally rare.

When he sounds a bit off, it seems less a result of the religion itself, and more because he, as an individual, is a smug bastard. My favourite parts of the video are the late remembrance that Scientologists can be female, as opposed to being Tom Cruise, and the hesitation before saying "us" when clearly he'd been thinking "I".

I suppose you're intimidated by the flashes of culthood. Complete compliance is demanded! You must not be a spectator: take action! Bring more people to the truth! Alas, I seem to lack the tools to be sufficiently intimidated by this. Having endured thirteen years of religious education for two different religions, both of which I stopped following by the age of thirteen, I seem to have developed the notion that people are intelligent and strong and usually can't be made to believe things they don't want to believe. Could Tom Cruise make you a Scientologist? Did he? No.

The element of the video that I find to be disturbing is the simple fact that Scientology is, of course, exploitative and charges people for enlightenment and knowledge. This is despicable. Tom Cruise's first words in the video, "I think it's a privilege to call yourself a Scientologist, and it's something that you have to earn," is nought but a sales pitch.

Of course I don't think that people should have to pay in order to feel sane or healthy, to rise in a hierarchy, to gain knowledge. This is why I also distrust privatised health care, weight loss programs, Louis Vuitton, and academia. Yet again, Scientology fails to bother me. I've grown far too accustomed to tolerating capitalism.