Teg

 Teg waited patiently for the receipt to pop out of the slot proving that he had just put eight dollars’ worth of ethanol-infused gasoline into the tank of his ’95 Saturn S-1. Why eight dollars? Two reasons: first, eight dollars was one hundred percent of Teg’s funds and second, at 25 miles per gallon, eight dollars would purchase a bit less than 2 ½ gallons of gas, enough for a one-way trip to Eppley Airport in Omaha, 58 miles away, with enough fumes to roll into the parking garage. Give or take. Despite being in possession of a countenance that suggested, if one were being charitable, that his intellect was somewhere in the neighborhood of “dim”, Teg was adept at doing math in his head. This facility with numbers was why he was heading to Eppley with no money and an undependable vehicle. 

Two things were going to happen at the airport. He was going to meet a guy named Steve in the parking garage. He’d met Steve once before, although on that occasion he introduced himself as “Clint”. Steve/Clint was one of those guys who looked like he never washed his hair, but was vain enough to have a carefully sculpted beard and mustache. To describe him as “menacing” would be a mistake. Not because it was inaccurate, but because Steve didn’t know what it meant and would surely think it was an insult. Some of his tattoos were spelled correctly, but not the ones on his face. 

 Steve was going to give him 10 cases of Hrast that he had “found” somewhere. Well, not “give”. The Love of His Life, Ariadne, or Manila, or Svetlana or Joan – he still was unsure of her name, had sent Steve $360 by some online cash transfer app. The second thing was that Steve was supposed to give Teg a $20 gas card so he could be able to get back to Lincoln. The rest of the plan was that Ariadne/Manila/ Svetlana/Joan would sell the cases of Hrast to local bars for $10 a bottle (for some reason Slovenian Whiskey had become popular among the neo-hipsters), cutting Teg in for 10% of the profit, which wouldn’t pay his rent for the whole month, but might cover a week. (Teg calculated that his $84 cut, plus the $20 gas card, minus around $15 in fuel cost, would indeed cover one week of his $360 rent – if he could find another dollar) 

“Fuck you Teg”. That was Steve, who had no intention of giving him a $20 gas card, “Tell Agnes that she never paid me for a gas card, and the price next month is $5.00 per case”. Mostly, the fact that he now knew that the love of his life was improbably named Agnes was what got through to Teg. A tiny part of his brain though, focused on the fact that he had just enough gas in his vehicle to get out of the garage and about halfway to the interstate – if he was lucky.

Teg, being the math savant that he was, knew that $8 in gas had gotten him to Eppley, so all he needed was $8.00 to get him back to Agnes (Agnes? Really?). He also knew that Agnes would be very sad if he didn’t bring back $1200 worth of Hrast (the resale value). What if he brought back $1190 worth of Hrast and $10? If he could sell one bottle for $18, he was all set. 

Teg was one of those people who are irrationally optimistic. He always was convinced that things would work out, even when it was abundantly clear that they wouldn’t Sure, it’s not a bad thing to have a can-do attitude, and being consistently negative is going to yield consistently negative results, but there should definitely be some kind of basis for optimism. You’re not going to get hired at NASA on the strength of a GED. If Teg were most people he would just call Agnes and explain the situation, but being that Agnes was the Love of His Life (for a certain value of “love”), even if she didn’t know it, but you don’t let The Love of Your Life down. So, irrational optimism it is. How hard could it be to sell one bottle of whiskey for $18? 

Pretty hard as it turned out. 

Teg, math savant that he was, was no savant when it came to discerning people’s motivations. Surely that guy who smelled faintly of cat urine really did have $120 back at his house and would surely pay him for the case of Hrast that Teg let him have on credit. Surely that Omaha cop really was doing him a favor by taking only two cases of Hrast instead of locking him up. Surely, he’d be able to convince the tow truck driver that it was all a mistake that the Casey’s manager got his car towed while he was in the bathroom, and the remaining seven cases of Hrast would be safe in the back seat until it all got worked out. 

Surely. 

At least the clerk at the Casey’s let him use the phone after the manager left so he could call The Love of His Life and leave a voice mail message. 

Once again, Teg was on the side of the road, waiting for The Love of His Life, who he now knew was named Agnes. The day might have gone downhill faster than the Jamaican Bobsled Team, but what do you know? There’s still a little Hrast in his flask.

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Follow Up - Part VI - So, You Think You're NOT in a Cult?

Cultishness is not just one thing, it exists on a continuum. On one end there's the People's Temple of Jim Jones, which ended with scores of dead adults and children, on another end there are groups where people live among us, with regular jobs and ordinary lives, but believe outlandish things. 

At several points in this series I have emphasized that what makes a cult isn't what you believe, it's what you do. Groups which are regularly characterized as cults often have beliefs that fall outside the mainstream, and are often viewed as "wacky", but what about those mainstream beliefs? Aren't they a little wacky too? 

The main reason that a belief is not considered crazy is that it's familiar. If you grew up in a "western" nation, it's likely that you were raised in a Christian family, in a predominantly Christian community. Even if you're not religious yourself, the underlying assumptions are bound to have influenced you. Assumptions that there is a God, that there's an afterlife that includes some version of Heaven and Hell, that praying is something that you do. But if you were brought up without any religious influences, how likely would you find any of those things? And if you are religious, are a regular church goer, your beliefs are a bit more specific: you believe that God exists as a Trinity composed of three "persons" who are at the same time separate and distinct, while the same; you believe that one of those persons became human due to a "virgin birth"; you believe that this person broke multiple laws of nature and physics (miracles); you believe that he was killed, but was alive again three days later and subsequently "ascended" into "Heaven" (when you know that there's nothing up there to ascend into)…and on and on. You believe these things because someone told you to believe them. There's no way to objectively checks these things out, no way to verify them, yet you choose to believe them. As part of your belief you accept the authority of leaders (they may be ministers, bishops, or even the pope) as they extrapolate the beliefs in the religious realm and apply them to political, social and family matters. Everyone who believes differently than you is wrong, society must be molded to conform to your beliefs.

Sure, you're not in a cult.

Maybe you think that you're not in a cult because you're not being brainwashed. But you cling to your beliefs and will not even consider that other points of view might be valid. If someone in what you call a cult thought like that, wouldn't you consider them brainwashed?

Okay, well, you're not drinking poisoned store brand Kool-Aid knock off, or letting your teenage daughter marry the Man of God. But those are just the extremes. There's plenty of cultishness in between free-thinking and group suicide.

Think about what you unthinkingly accept, and how you want those things to be imposed on everyone, and tell me again that you're not in a cult.