The resurrection lie is the biggest carrot the Society has to offer. I can remember it being used on me, and using it on others. In a study with our children, one of my sisters started a round of 'who do you hope to see in the New Order?' and all the kids dutifully parroted back their wish to see various deceased loved ones they knew about or vaguely recalled.
In a family as huge as ours, death is a chronic visitor. All my grandparents, mother, all my Dad's siblings, two of Mom's, all gone, from cancer, stroke, heart disease, or just plain old age. An uncle, cousin, sister-in-law and husband lost in their youthful primes, to accidents. A precious niece and nephew, dead of SIDS. This is not a complete list, just an outline.
It was a shock to find out that the carrot is plastic and that the Society nails folks' feet down so you can only chase the carrot in the one tiny circle that they have scribed into the dirt.
Losing that fond dream of seeing Mom and others again wasn't the worst part of deculting. I've always known that dead is dead. If there is no god to resurrect them (and I'm sure enough of that for my own satisfaction) then they are past all pain and suffering, and have fulfilled their purpose in the general scheme of things. No matter how sad or sorry I am at their loss, for them, it's not tragedy. Sorrow and regret are provinces of the living, not the dead. They are, bluntly, fertilizer now, and that's a fine thing in its proper context, and not a fearful fate. Our inability to reconcile ourselves to it is our problem. Their problems are finished for good...
The worst part was the realization that I had traded my personal ethical integrity in exchange for the promise of that plastic carrot, and wasted all those years, and, worst of all, abused and terrified my kids with cult dogma, in order to buy a timeshare in pursuit of it.
