Human beings tend to not like things to be complicated. We want the answers, the reason, the formula for making things work. That is true mostly when we are feeling mentally meticulous (sometimes we really need to digest the material and think about it) and also when the search for answers is dangerous or painful—when we might have to “go through hostile territory” to get answers. So, I tend to look for simplification. I try to find a common denominator, a theory reduced to a concise paragraph, statement, or better yet, to s simple phrase. And since my favourite subject is myself, I try to simplify my own behavior, as well. Men and women are endowed with every gradation of courage, from the calm energy of reflection, which is rendered still more effective by physical firmness, to the headlong precipitation of reckless spirit; from the resolution that grows more imposing and more respectable, as there is a greater occasion for its exercise, to the fearful and ill-directed energies of despair. Mind and matter glide swift into the vortex of immensity. People have a tendency to stereotype or categorize people. There is no man whose imagination does not sometimes predominate over his own reason, who can regulate his attention wholly by his will and whose ideas will come and go at his command. My imagination was a tarnished mirror. It would not reflect, or only with miserable dimness, the figures with which I did my best to people. Let us not imagine evils which we do not feel, nor injure life by misrepresentations. If the majority—however that is defined—do things in a certain way, then what they are doing is right, and what the others do is not. Behavior defined this way is called a statistical norm. If we all agree that fifty-one percent, or two-thirds, or ninety percent represents the majority, then the behavior of that percentage becomes the norm.  

 Perhaps the biggest and most benighted fools have been the best hell-makers. Whereas the best of our Heavens is but a poor perfunctory conception, for all that the highest and cleverest among us have done their very utmost to decorate and embellish it, and make life there seem worth living. So impossible it is to imagine or invent beyond the sphere of our experience. Many men have been praised as vividly imaginative on the strength of their profuseness in indifferent drawing or cheap narration: –reports of very poor talk going on in distant orbs; or portraits of Lucifer coming down on his bad errands as a large ugly man with bat’s wings and spurts of phosphorescence; or exaggerations of wantonness that seem to reflect life in a diseased dream. We are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images are the brood of desire. We cannot just accept the majority’s opinions of behavior as defining what is right, moral, good, or normal. The nature of men is always the same; it is their habits that separate them. Much of the Sacramento media acts like wild animals and they lie like it is their native language. Perhaps the problem is simply that people in different places do things differently, and that my “different” behavior might be acceptable in another culture or land. This is the cultural relativity position, which assumes that there are no absolute rules. Even today, when the laws forbid it, it is “normal” for reporters to hack personal email, stalk, and slander private citizens. However, still disapprove of or even feels horrified at the idea. So, there is something to be said for relativity. There are cultural patterns in each society and social class that appear strange to people outside of the group. However, this does not tell us if there are any cross-cultural (universal) patterns of “normal” or “abnormal” behavior.  

Hazing, or an initiation, rite, is defined as any humiliating or dangerous activity expected of you to join a group, regardless of your willingness to participate. Almost 2 million high school students, 48 percent of all students who join school groups, are hazed. Of these 2 million students, more than 800,000 were hazed when they joined their sports team, almost 560,000 were hazed by a peer group or gang, almost 300,000 were hazed when they joined a music, art, or theatre group, and almost 250,000 students were hazed when they joined a church group, and 80 percent of college athletes had experienced some form of hazing. Hazing purposely subjects prospective group members to a series of activities, often ludicrous and sometimes dangerous, designed to test the limits of physical exertion, psychological strain, and social embarrassment. The list of silly, stupid, or dangerous, illegal, and even lethal activities actually required by some groups as a rite of passage into groups is long. Examples include holding someone unexpectedly, while someone else hits them in the back of the head as hard as they can; taking students to the river at night and holding them by their arms and legs and you swing them and threaten to drop them in the river; abandoning students on mountaintops or in remote areas in bitter cold conditions without suitable clothing; repeatedly punching the stomach and kidneys of students who forget their parts of ritual incantations; incarcerating initiates in a locked storage closet for two days with only salty foods, no liquids; forcing initiates to abuse alcohol or illegal drugs. So as you see, what some communities deem as normal would be seen as insane and illegal by others. For you are the children of your father the devil, and you love to do the evil things he does. He was a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies.