We’re still just settling in here at our new blog that will be watching the Nxivm trial unfold in the coming months. Some of our readers are asking us what this Nxivm thing is all about, not having been caught up in the fascinating coverage that’s appeared in places like Vanity Fair and the New York Times.
So, OK, let’s ease into this thing. You wouldn’t want to try to understand something like Scientology, for example, without getting some basic understanding of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. So let’s get to know Nxivm founder Keith Raniere a little bit by watching him discuss ideas in his own words.
In 2017, Raniere sat down with Smallville actress Allison Mack for a lengthy “interview,” with Mack asking questions and then essentially basking in the glow of Raniere’s brilliance. Claiming to have an IQ of 240, Raniere billed himself as the smartest human being on the planet, and asked his followers to refer to him as “Vanguard.”
In this conversation, Mack asks him to discuss such topics as searching for authenticity in life. And about 14 minutes in, she’s so moved by his responses, she begins to cry.
A couple of minutes later, Raniere delivers this bit of wisdom…
Authenticity has a type of structure to it, or I should say a lack thereof, whereas inauthenticity is a structure. Inauthenticity is a type of blocking — it’s a type of calculated or structured block. And the essence of authenticity is what you might call pure naturalness. And although naturalness is sort of enrobed in structure, often when you get to something that’s authentic, you experience this type of creativity, this soul. And a soul, it’s not necessarily the soul of the human — it’s a soul of a living thing, you know, so you can have, you know, a lawn that is manicured a certain way and very, very precise, or you could have wild flowers. And although wild flowers aren’t as even and cut and maybe even functional, sometimes there’s something just incredible about the naturalness of it. Naturalness and authenticity have this parallel, but you don’t talk about flowers so much being authentic. You talk about humans being authentic and the authentic human is a natural human being, and what they’re doing, and of course they’re things, there’s people who are naturally inauthentic but that’s a different sort of a thing.
We want to get your impressions. Is this what you would expect the smartest person in the world to sound like? Does it speak to you as much as it does to Mack?
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Posted by Tony Ortega on March 14, 2019 at 17:00
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Tony Ortega is a journalist who was formerly the editor of The Village Voice. He’s written about Scientology since 1995, and in May 2015 released a book about Scientology’s harassment of Paulette Cooper titled ‘The Unbreakable Miss Lovely,’ and more recently a compilation of his stories, ‘Battlefield Scientology.’ He continues to monitor breaking developments in the Scientology world, as well as other subjects at The Underground Bunker. You can reach him by sending him a message at tonyo94 AT gmail.com (Drop him a line if you’d like to get an e-mail whenever a new story is posted.)
