Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id UAA04078 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 18 Jan 2002 20:05:21 GMT Message-Id: <5.1.0.14.0.20020118150213.02c3f400@pop.cogeco.ca> X-Sender: hkhenson@pop.cogeco.ca X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.1 Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 15:02:42 -0500 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: Keith Henson <hkhenson@cogeco.ca> Subject: Re: Scientology 1/4 In-Reply-To: <4e.511c572.2978c6be@aol.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
At 08:53 PM 17/01/02 -0800, "Dace" <edace@earthlink.net>
wrote:
> >I don't doubt that victims of kidnapping are liable to bond with their
> >kidnapper. (Of course, this effect would have benefitted "deprogrammers"
> >back when anti-cult activists were kidnapping cult members.) I don't
know
> >about Moonies,
>
> Moonies and EST both used mild forms of capture-bonding. People differ a
> lot in how much it takes to turn on this mechanism. The Moonies would
take
> people 40 miles out from the nearest town. Their potential recruits would
> develop considerable anxiety about getting back--enough to turn on the
> mechanism in some people. The EST crew used to keep people all day
without
> bathroom breaks to turn it on.
But shouldn't this have turned potential recruits against them? Why do some
people bond to their tormentors while others are alienated? At some level,
individuals who bond with their captors are making a choice.
Definitely. The historical choice (and what the mechanism is keyed on) is
the choice of living or dying. Put "stockholm syndrome" in Google and read
half a dozen of the hits.
We are free,
and no one controls our minds. If we do as we are told, it's because we've
acquiesced to our enslavement. It takes two to tango. It's not as if
there's an evil cult gobbling up innocent victims.
Well, actually, there *is* an evil cult gobbling up victims, innocent and
non alike. Put Ashlee Shaner, Stacy Moxon and Lisa McPherson in Google and
do a bit of reading. Bad as this is, corrupting the courts and other
government agencies is worse. The US tax payers got taken for about $2
billion when the IRS commissioner was blackmailed into submission.
To your point "we are free," ever been subjected to "crush" selling? I
have once, bed salesman guy. Only way to get rid of him short of violence
was to buy the damn bed and cancel it the next day. Those provisions of
the law are there because people *can* be manipulated. Now there is no way
I will let one of those people in the door.
Both sides are subject
to the same virulent memes, and everyone involved at some point chooses to
let down their defenses to these memes while those who escaped found it
within themselves to fend them off. The excellent Hubbard biography,
Bare-Faced Messiah, repeatedly notes that those who joined up seemed
pre-disposed to it even before they'd heard of it. They took to the cult as
much as it took to them.
Correct. Cults is taking advantage of psychological traits left in us from
tribal times. And if this does not concern you from the damage done to
people and their families, consider if from the standpoint of supporting
these people on the dole when they get old and are "offloaded" by the cult.
> And consider army basic training as turning on capture-bonding. You can
> get people trained to kill others in a few weeks.
Those who do the training aren't so much controlling the minds of the new
recruits as unconsciously passing on the toxic memes already established in
their own minds.
I am sorry, but I don't really see the difference you do between being
controlled by a meme and being controlled by other people (who are
generally controlled by a meme or memes).
> >but at least in the case of Scientologists, only a few are
> >ever subjected to anything like imprisonment, and only after they've
> >demonstrated a lack of properly fervent belief. Even then it's not what
you
> >would ordinarily call capture. They go about in their gray T-shirts
doing
> >menial labor, jogging more than walking, socializing only with each
other,
> >and it's nothing at all like the trauma of being kidnapped. (I see them
all
> >the time in the neighborhood where I live in LA). Not only is
> >capture-bonding irrelevant to the recruitment of new members, but the
> >Rehabilitation Project Force doesn't seem to provide any kind of basis
for
> >this phenomenon.
>
> The people who have been in it, and I know a number of them, say that it
> did. Running around a pole and/or working 20 hours a day, eating slop
from
> a bucket, being locked up and psychologically and sometimes physically
> abused they say had effects much like those you see in battered wife
> cases. Most of the time they rebonded to scientology where they were
> previously about to leave.
Like I said, I see these people all the time. They're clearly not running
around exhausted and terrified. In fact, Scientologists generally look very
chipper, whether they're in those pseudo-naval uniforms with the stripes
denoting their progress up the "bridge" or the corporate types in their blue
button-down shirts or the ones wearing gray T-shirts and pushing
wheelbarrows. They all look perfectly normal.
You are not looking at the people in the prison camp at "Happy
Valley." Try RPF scientology in Google and read the first hand
reports. While you are at it, look up Flag order 3905 (forced abortions).
But let's assume people are being seriously abused and imprisoned and worked
into exhaustion. When these people then re-bond with the cult, it doesn't
mean their minds are now under the control of their diabolical leaders. It
just means they've re-entered the collective delusion.
This is acceptable to you?
<continued>
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