Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id TAA04013 (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 19:55:03 GMT Message-Id: <5.1.0.14.0.20020118145142.02c42010@pop.cogeco.ca> X-Sender: hkhenson@pop.cogeco.ca X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.1 Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 14:52:11 -0500 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: Keith Henson <hkhenson@cogeco.ca> Subject: Re: Scientology 1st half 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?
> >Yes, certain vulnerable people will respond very positively to attention,
no
> >matter where it comes from, but this doesn't mean they've lost all
control
> >over their own beliefs.
>
> I think there are such people. Some of them recently flew airliners into
> the WTC. I cite Jim Jones' cult, the Heaven'g Gate cult, the Aum Cult,
and
> the Solar Temple as just a few such cases. Any time you see people doing
> seriously counter survival acts or neglecting their children for some
> cause, their minds have been parasitized.
Exactly. Rather than falling under the control of malevolent individuals,
their minds have been parasitized by the same leaches feeding on the minds
of their leaders.
This varies from cult to cult. Sometimes the leaders are as screwed up as
the followers. Scientology is like that, I deposed David Miscavige back in
1998. In the middle of the deposition he broke into this rant about being
buggered in public. The transcripts gets posted every 2 months or so on
a.r.s. If you can't find it let me know.
In other cases, the leaders are utterly cynical about their sheep like
followers. I think Hubbard started out with nothing but contempt for his
followers (you can see it in the abusive names he used such as "selling
them a bridge). Later he was a victim of the guru trap and started
believing he was infested with thousands of murdered space alien spirits.
> >Does a wife-beater exert "mind-control" over his
> >wife when he apologizes and showers her with attention and affection?
>
> Yes.
Consciously, the wife-beater believes he's somehow justified in his
behavior. This delusion becomes collective when his wife acquiesces to it
as well. A violent marriage is still a partnership. In many cases, the
wife is easily capable of opting out but stays nonetheless. Unconsciously
she craves receiving the abuse as much as he craves dishing it out. This
may sound harsh, but it's preferable to viewing women as weak and helpless,
childlike and enslaved. All humans are capable of self-liberation. We are
free. We are responsible for our actions, even if we join a cult. We
aren't children under the spell of a witch.
While I think both may be caught in a dynamic psychological trap, I think
interviewing a bunch of women at a shelter would give you a more realistic
view of the business. Might I also suggest you might not want to express
the above to those women?
> >There's a difference between exerting charm and brainwashing.
>
> Only in degree. We are, every one of us, involved in trying to mind
> control the people around us. For example, both of us are trying to get
> other people to think like us (adopt our memes) right here on this list.
Charm and mind-control are precisely as different as reality and fiction.
If persuasion counts as a kind of mind control, then the term is clearly
meaningless.
I don't see why. Full blown mind control of the kind that flies into the
WTC is at the extreme end of the spectrum. Me signing to buy that stupid
bed is somewhere in the middle, and asking someone nicely to pass the salt
is near the other end. Many things in life lie along lines like this.
> >The idea of mind control is rendered superfluous by memetics.
>
> I don't think so, though the "controller" may become a meme rather than
> another person. "Mind control" is an imprecise notion, but what do you
call
> what happened to Patty Hearst?
If it's memetic, then why insist on calling it mind control? Control
implies a controller. It personalizes what is actually an unconscious,
memetically-driven process. Patty Hearst was responsible for her actions.
She allowed herself to be seduced by the rebel meme.
I don't think you have read that story. Patty made the '"choice" many of
your and my ancestors made. Live or die. The ones who made the die choice
are not our ancestors.
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