I can't remember why I bought this book, it sits on a shelf in my library and quite frankly, I'm afraid to read it. It unsettles me whenever I flip through it. Although I have recently plowed through the introduction and realize that it has been written from a research / theoretical perspective, as opposed to an "endorsement" angle. The author worked in Toronto for many years researching and counseling victims of cults through COMA (Council On Mind Abuse), and working with severely behaviorally disturbed children (young psychopaths).
Until finally, he came up with this:
This book explores a strange new spirituality about to enter into competition with other established religions. My purpose here is to convince you that its emergence is probably, if not inevitable.
I begin this exploration with an unproven assumption based on Darwinian evolutionary principles: a new predator will appear on our planet, an evolutionary prototype designed to prey on humans. Another assumption then follows: this predator will evolve gradually and incrementally from humanity, just as we apparently evolved from lower forms to prey on them. A further assumption suggests that these predators have already appeared as evolutionary prototypes, as new humans with advanced methods of survival and new forms of spiritual expression and religious organization designed to support and advance their predation.
Tucker admits that he has no know direct knowledge of such a movement existing or being organized, the book is "part imagination, part prophecy, part conjecture" and may be some "strange hybrid of fiction and fact".
In the wrong hands, I regard it as being a step-by-step handbook to becoming a sociopath.
Personally, I don't subscribe to malevolence in the world as much as I suspect ignorance "never ascribe to conspiracy what can be explained by stupidity". But from time to time, I find myself doubting that, or questioning if maybe there is some, directed, malevolence active in the world. If Tucker were right, it may explain a lot.
