Thank you.

A wise woman once told me that 'conformity was mother nature's way of ensuring survival of our species.'

And rampant, 'stampeding the herd' kind of fear is one hell of a catalyst to bring out the worst in conformity.

And that's not even getting into the biological drives, try overcoming the tyranny of the amygdala during a crisis...real, imagined or created.

Sorry Woke-Folks, Biology is so much more powerful than your cancel culture would have you believe.

After all, we're all in the same petri dish.

So, there's this one scene described in a novel which I can't remember nor find, Jesus and the Devil are having tea in an sunny outdoor Amsterdam cafe.

The Devil's kinda tired and doesn't want the job anymore.

"Yes," Jesus, says, "You did have the 20th Century."

Wasn't that a century of madness let loose upon the world?

Stalin, Hitler and Mao alone, millions upon millions gone, poof.

Whether it's a Little Red Book, or Mein Kampf or Das Kapital, or as you so adroitly point out NXIVM's dogma, a whole lot of people are willing to swallow the kool-aid -- or force others to -- as long as they get to wear the flesh just a little longer.

Better you than me becomes better them than us. And isn't that what Trump and Erdogan and Putin have so skillfully tapped into?

The point is that the universe, as we think we know it, is predatory...even Black Holes get hungry.

"I say, that's a nice galaxy you've got there, mind if I have a bite?"

And regardless of what labels we put on the causes of entropy for everything, including ourselves, be it the sabre-toothed cats, the cave bears or our neighbours, we still feel this need to look over our shoulders and wonder: who's got our back?

Better not be that horned dark malevolent Dude they call Lucifer, um I mean Keith Allen Raniere...or ANTIFA, or QANON or The Democrat-Election-Stealing Socialists!

What about the Catholics or the Protestants or the Muslims...so much better to burn them all than engage in dialogue, isn't it?

Here, suffering little children, hungry for sanctuary, here's a book called Dianetics, here's a nice little branding iron, here's a nice cassock or a nun's habit...here's a MAGA cap, see, you're safe now, you belong to something bigger than yourself.

All claim to have your back.

When this one English student asked me why study all this literature. Who gives a rat's ass about Shakespeare or Hemingway or Yann Martel and his 'Life of Pi'?

I responded with a stern 'language sir', but good question.

There's the knowable...what we study in Math and Physics and Chemistry etc. Then we use them to help us understand, push back the veil, if you will, make the formerly unknowable...well, knowable.

Speed of light stuff, E=Mc2 and the Theory of Relativity...Quantum Physics.

Then there's the kicker: there's the unfathomable.

The 'if the universe is expanding, Mommy Dearest, into what is it expanding?'

'What was before the Big Bang?'

'What if there's no more me?'

'What do I call the feelings I have when posing these questions...is it awe?'

So, I concluded, these writers are giving you their best on what it's like to wear the flesh...

...to, in a sense, help you better define yourself in the midst of so much uncertainty.

For if you allow others to define you, then there will always be a stranger in the throne room of your soul.

Lastly, Bowfinger wasn't dumb...it was satirical and spot on. A member of my family had an agent named James Rogers...ex of Mimi, daughter of one of L. Ron Hubbard's Auditors...enough said.