That which is popular is not always right. That which sounds pleasant is not always true.

It isn't true. None of it is true. It's all wrong.

The words are always in my mind. Always haunting me.
A dark feeling, as if standing on a thin glass floor.

Pyramid scheme cult.

Pyramid scheme cult, and everyone is in it.

It doesn't matter how it happened. All it took is for one human to speak the words. A single cult leader, one to invent the cult-replication dogma.

Of course there must have been horrors and terrifying things that would cause people to delude themselves into joining. Of course reality is often a nightmare. Of course even I have temptations to deny the tragedies within life. So maybe it's not so bad to join, when it offers a desperate person such a wonderful thing. Such a happy, pleasant escape from the dark realities of life.

But then it spreads. Like a hideous virus, more insatiable than even the black plague, it spreads itself from one host to another, to everyone in the surrounding community. All succumb.

It spreads quickly, until none are left untouched. First to your close friends, then to your aging parents. Then to your cheerful neighbor. Then to your innocent children. Anything that can comprehend the cult verses and understand the dark logic behind them is ensnared.

How do you fight something that makes such beautiful promises? How can you deny something that spins such lovely lies?

What is the one thing that humans fear so much? What makes war so terrible? What makes a stillbirth so cold and grim? What makes a plague devastating? Why is murder not to be considered? Why is death so dark, so wrong, that we would seek to end it?

Of course we cannot really end death. Of course not. But the pyramid scheme cult does not care for truth.

If we believe and obey the words of the cult verses, we are told we can live forever. Immortality in exchange for obedience and faith.

But the cult verses also promise something else, the stick to the carrot. Suffering, death, despair, and forever darkness and fire, if we dare disbelieve or disobey. But you only get to find out after you die.

I know it's hogwash. Of course it is. Yet, the rules that the rest of them obey are not meant to create friendships or bonds with those who do not believe. They are to kill sin. If they cannot kill it, then they shame it, putting on a face of righteousness. They are as cruel to sin as they can be. We all know the tales of the dark ages.

But does sin exist? No. Of course not. It's not real. It's spoken of only in one source: The cult verses.

We all used to be free before. We would drink, smoke, take mushrooms, tell stories of the grand ol' gods of lore, and of our folk heroes. We'd pass the time making love, having friendships, and living our own life as we saw fit. It was a bit more chaotic back then, but at least we were free.

They lock us away now, or would, if we hadn't already fought so hard against it, to establish secular governments that might try to protect us.

But it's never enough. The virus corrupts.

I miss those days of freedom. I think somewhere deep in their minds, the rest of the town might feel the same.

But the expression on their face, and their words, say otherwise.

"Shameful."

"Evil."

"Abomination."

"Sin."

That terrible word that strikes such fear, such judgment, into the hearts of my townsfolk. Sin.

The word itself is fabricated. It does not exist outside the book. The word sin has no true meaning.

The virus writes its own code and ruleset. It makes up words, and assigns them meaning.

They're not like normal words, like "wood," or "beaver," or even "machine." Those words are all describing real things. But the words invented by the cult do not describe real ideas, real concepts, or real objects. It makes up a fake, impossible idea. One that cannot exist in reality, but does exist in the cult-reality.

So it invents the concept of sin.

Then it offers to forgive our sin.

What do we need forgiveness from anyways? We had a fine life before.

It's only now that everyone has succumbed to the cult that it feels like everything is wrong. So incredibly, terribly wrong, that we must beg forgiveness. But we don't beg forgiveness for falling for a pyramid scheme cult, as we should. Instead, the cult tells us what we must beg forgiveness for.

The cult has its own rules, its own laws and commandments that we must obey.

None of them make sense, except in the most obvious, cursory sense.

Of course it makes no sense to murder each other. We didn't do that before either, not the majority of us townsfolk.

Of course it makes no sense to steal from each other. We don't need that written down to understand such a thing. We always knew theft was dishonorable. We didn't need to be told. It is a facade of righteousness.

But the book never spoke against true crimes.

Instead, it meanders towards crimes that make no sense.

To murder a witch is right. To slay a homosexual is just. The cult verses tell us to kill people. Innocent people.

Were we not just told to not murder before? How does such a negation take place?

How can a single book that contains such terrible cult verses contradict itself, and why do people fail to notice this discrepancy? The cult cheats.

But there is one terrible sin in this cult that all humans commit.

It is that of lust. Of course we feel lust. It's native to our instincts.

Just as we see a fresh, delicious fruit and desire to eat it, it's normal to look at a beautiful maiden or fellow, and notice their pleasantness.

Yet the cult verses deem it wrong to have normal human instinct, condemning us all.

What folly. It should be thrown out. How dare such a thing exist? How dare anyone condemn our natural state of mind, and our natural humanity?

It's an affront to nature to invent such a stupid, foolish rule.

They'll kill me for saying it. They'll murder me with fire, for that is the fate of heretics, at least once upon a time. Yet even now, I must write anonymously.

If they don't kill me, they'll shame me. Of course it's wrong to talk about sex or drugs, or even ideas that they deem dangerous. Anything that doesn't support the existence and spread of the cult virus is deemed wrong or bad. It's never done in an overt way these days, but with tiny little things. Friendly remarks. "Be careful what you say, lest you offend someone’s faith."

The thin glass floor. It's always there. If I was to ever dare say anything that might topple the cult, the entire community would destroy me. The cult has had them ensnared since they were children. They no longer have free-will, as a proper human should. Their personality is gone, replaced by the cult. If their personality has grown back, it is like looking at a broken mirror. You see a human face, until you suddenly mention the wrong thing. Then you see only a missing gap, surrounded by cracks, and the darkness of the wall behind the mirror.

“Sinful degeneracy,” they whisper.

They have a thin intelligence, but it's only enough to spread the cult further. Whosoever believes in the cult is trapped by it, and doomed to spread it, desperately spread it, to their children, to strangers, to anyone willing to listen.

Believe and obey, and get a reward. Disbelieve or disobey, and get a punishment.

Make the reward immortality in heaven. Make the punishment immortality in hell.

Make the rules impossible to conform to: All humans are guilty by their nature.

Create an escape clause: Join the cult, and believe in the dogma; obey the rules.

And then they want your money, your secrets, your loyalty and obedience, they want more members, and the ruleset grows as the cult becomes stronger; the power of the cult over human politics and human society grows, and soon, it corrupts us all, and we stop being free humans, and instead, become deranged cultists.

But what if we notice? What happens if we notice the cult growing stronger, and try to stop it?

The most absurd rules fade away. It turns from a wolf to a tamed puppy. Just a harmless little thing suddenly.

Where once the cult was strong, it said: Kill witches. Kill heretics. Kill homosexuals. Even the Jews have been seen as threats before, by the mouth of Luther himself.

Now that it is weak, those rules are gone. The cult seems safe. It just says, "Don't judge." It says, "Love thy neighbor."

But the book remains intact. The entire book still remains, including the verse, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."

“If anyone rebels against your orders and does not obey every command you give him, he shall be put to death.”

"He who believes in me will live, even though he dies."

Illogic. Madness and folly. Lies.

It reprograms the host. It rebuilds itself using the source-book when the time is right. When the dormant, friendly-version of the cult has passively infected everyone, a terrible event could happen, one that scares us to our core.

Plague. Climate-change. War. Starvation. Meteor.

In the panic, people might lose their reasoning and sense of modern society, and search their mind for survival instinct.

Some might find a true instinct, one of legitimate survival in hard times. One that benefits the being itself. Those instincts are good and true to life. Love, hunting and foraging, empathy, curiosity, socializing, and good-will towards life.

But in that search for instinct, the cult dogma might prevail.

It only needs a single second to slip in. Just one second of darkness of reason, logic, fact, and true genetic instincts that are native to life, and the cult dogma reforms itself in its totality. Suddenly it’s back in everyone’s mind, a feedback loop where people ask each other: What should I do? What should I believe?

The cultists whisper: “Have faith.”

Fear grips me. Why do certain parts of the cult grow dormant when the cult is threatened, while still containing the full number of teeth within its code? The cult verse does not ever shrink. Only how it is expressed in its hosts changes. A survival mechanism.

The cult continues to spread. Where it is culled, it grows back, sometimes differently. Sometimes people rebel, they demand the truth. But the cult reforms. From one version of the cult to another, with another name, it reforms, and continues to spread, tricking the people. Tricking even you, perhaps.

Where it is weakened, and made tame and toothless, time, or calamity that inspires the fear of death, will cause it to regrow teeth. The source-book contains all the programming code necessary to bewitch your mind, and make you see good as evil, and evil as good. To see lie as truth, and truth as lie.

When all people believe in the cult, the cult becomes monstrous. It completely takes control of the society. Heretics are burned. The innocent slaughtered, for the dogma brands all humanity sinful. All competing religions and societies will be destroyed, with only the most powerful cult, the most contagious, long-lasting one on top.

There is no escape from a viral pyramid scheme cult.

Those words... Viral pyramid scheme cult.

You will be converted. Then you will convert.

Lest ye be damned.