Beguiled

Weird flexes going on here. Because the game is about creating and running your own cult, not being in it. Did you watch the trailer?! You want to get over some of the crap you lived through? Name some of your servants, I mean followers, after people from TWI and watch as they break their backs helping you get rich and lying to others. I mean you could even lay out the layout like at HQ lol, though I seriously doubt you would want to do that.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/841190/Honey_I_Joined_a_Cult/

An interesting "connection" to TWI lol.

I agree with everything you say waysider. What I'm trying to say and my own shortcomings are obviously preventing me from getting my point across is that the conversation is not going to happen, there is not going to be an "other person" if we have labels up that prevent further victims from seeing this space as a safe-haven for healing. Now, whether or not we believe that a simple misunderstanding of a word could/would actually prevent a person from enjoying said content and healing of this site is obviously the line in the sand for my particular argument. But I just wanted to let it be known that from my experiences, the terminology being used here could be counter-productive towards the site's primary objective, for some people.

So I searched "flat earth" just now here at GSC and I didn't see any results that I'm aware of, so I thought I'd bring this subject up because it has been a thing again since...well, since "mis-information" was a new political weapon. I bring it here because the mental hurdles and cognitive dissonance that "flat-earthers" display is exactly like "wafers." I'm sure most around here have seen these videos but man, coming back here to GSC and reading the past few days has really reminded me and made just way too many parallels between wafers and flat-earthers for me not to bring it up. While I'm not too inclined to get into the details right now of their arguments and beliefs, I figured I'd share a few clips of my favorite "debunker" to do it for me. The best part is seeing the "deer in the headlights" look of flat-earthers when confronted with information that they created from their own experiments that runs opposite to their beliefs. It's just all pure gold. _________________________________________________________ This first one is what Flat Earthers believe so you can understand where they are coming from. Just think of them like you were when you were in TWI and defending them and their beliefs lol. It makes for some great internal shenanigans.

In the most lovingly way possible I guess I disagree. (I'm totally just having a conversation, in case this comes off as more than that.) Adapting one's terminology to another individual's can continue to make things unclear and arguments can go on and on because people don't understand each other since their meanings do not line up. I believe that you have to define terminology first, be on the same page first before a productive conversation can actually begin. Those whose master status and identity are tied up in gender/sexuality identity will judge us based on whether or not we are respecting their language. I say their language because they are the ones proactively using and they are the ones defining it today, and therefore they are the ones who it affects the most. I feel that your response is precisely what they would expect, and then they may falsely judge us and not care what anyone around here has to say. Again, I know I'm way down the rabbit hole of "no big deal" and "who gives an f." It's just I'm around and aware of the people I'm talking about and I know that what I brought up is both factual and an issue...for them. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the site is/has/will be judged by others based off of the misuse of a label that is voluntarily being put out into the world inaccurately by today's definitions. I am trying to say that those that this label affects will react in a way that may seem reactionary and over-the-top to you and me (not listen to anything else we have to say), but that is the reality of those that are utilizing the language today. If we wish to utilize the same language (i.e. put it on the site), we must adhere to how it is being used today - else we signal to others that we do not care about our ignorance, because we "know" or do not care that we are right. And that just sounds way too much like those we broke away from imho.

Thank you Twinky, In the end I guess I'm not watching the video. But I did find 2 interesting comments to it. Two months ago someone said, "I last saw her perform at The Way Internationals 75th anniversary five years ago, vibrant as ever!" One month ago some said, "In Phoenix Arizona Claudette talked to me and warned me of the way international. I thank her for that conversation."

I'm just nit picketing so feel free to disregard, but those that are younger and come to this site will in fact notice that GSC can't even distinguish between sex and gender. I know I know, I can feel all of your eyeballs rolling into the back of your head. But since GSC decides to put it under everyone's screen name and does it improperly so we can see it over and over, it could easily turn off those who know better who can't see past this one thing. And trust me, to some it is a huge deal. So, just throwing it out there that a simple word change would tremendously help make it look like people know what they are doing around these here parts. I know if I was trans-gendered and was coming here for healing I might think this community wouldn't care about me because of the mistake and its widespread use on the site. Just my thoughts. Sex = Male, Female Gender = Man, Woman Cis-Man/Woman = Man born a male, Woman born a female Trans-gender = Man born a female, Woman born a male

Same. I should perhaps find common ground first but I generally only "flex, shout, yell, get angry" when I see that an individual is crossing boundaries and others let it slide. I guess that's how I saw him on this site. I do the same thing in my neighborhood for the record. Some neighbor continually disrespects me, my family, or my property then I see them as already crossing my boundaries so I need to make them known. I do it clearly so there is no confusion where I stand. Cross my boundary again and you will have to deal with me. I'm not saying it's right, but it is for me. I lose sleep when I see others sit back and let someone step over boundaries. But when I make an foot of myself to set them, I don't lose a wink of sleep. I just lose the respect of those around me, which I've finally learned to not gaf about.

Under my own personal definition of an athlete, with a dash/heap of anecdotal experience, I think athletes of the spirit is a very apt description of at least Christians, but most definitely wafers. Dictionary.com states that an athlete is a person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, stamina, or strength; a participant in a sport, exercise, or game requiring physical skill. In today's world I operationalize it as someone who is not only participating in a physical sport, but their master status and life is oriented around the notion of being an athlete. Generally speaking, but not in all cases, said person would have to be actively participating/training in a sport as well (and perhaps even at the highest level of competition that they can). AAU, the high school team, college, military, and so on. I have been an athlete for my entire life up until about 5 years go through team sports, my job in the military, racing motorcycles and cars, and surfing competitions. As an athlete and a teacher at a very large Division 1 University who has literally had entire basketball, football, baseball, softball, and soccer teams in my classroom at the same time - athletes are not something that anyone should look up to. Athletes in this world are children. They are dumb, they are ignorant, and they do not care about things that do not affect their sport, team, or own physical abilities. They have no respect for those not in their circle. Those I taught in my classes were all Division 1 athletes and some have gone onto being professional athletes as children. I would never look up to any of them and I never have told anyone about my being an athlete because of how I see them and because I can unequivocally say that I was just as bad as anyone I am referring to. They are too narrow-minded and only care about their physical abilities in so much that it elevates them above others. They believe they are better than others because they can do X or Y better than the next person, or you. Also, these teams would only be in my 300 person classrooms, not the 75 person ones, and they would sit in the back corners with their backs to me and their headphones on. They would have a chaperone follow them to my class to make sure they made it and then would come back after to make sure they were still there. EVEN THE UNIVERSITY KNEW THESE KIDS DIDN'T HAVE THERE SH!T TOGETHER. But all of the money that Universities get is basically through sport. All Division 1 schools shut down the campus for game days, fyi. Learning does not matter when millions of dollars are about to pour in. I am generalizing. I understand not all athletes are like this. But I would say that over 50% definitely are. Based on GPA's of said athletes I am being very generous in my opinion. I remember when my favorite Kansas University point guard back in the day graduated with a 4.0 and went on to the NBA, it was such a big deal lol. Anywhooo, I see no difference between athletes in college/professional level and those in TWI. Their way or the highway. Listen to what I have to say I'm better than you. I don't talk to people like you because you are not at the same level as me. I see athletes as young and dumb and willing to do whatever they are told to be on the team, much like TWI. Once on said team they will take almost any type of mental or physical abuse to stay or the team, or to be ranked higher within their own team, let alone their sport. I see coaches, trainers, and any other type of leadership as the same as in TWI/Christianity. Utilizing their position for their own status and egos at the cost of those beneath them. Yet those involved will defend the leadership because it is "making them stronger, better, more disciplined," et cetera. Leaders will control the athlete (read ignorant child still figuring out him/herself through the only lens they know, competition). Athletes have huge mental problems today, huge. The higher up you go in competition the more you will see how these athletes are not well-rounded and have little to no social and cognitive thinking skills. As long as they "strive to be #1 in everything they do" no one cares, let alone themselves, how skewed these kids' mental capacities really are. (And yes, I am including myself here. For the record, I decided I no longer wanted to be one of these people and literally threw my surfboard down at a competition as a symbol to myself and decided to go back to college. I thought I was better than everyone around me and I had no basis to think that. I told myself I had to prove it. So I stopped being an athlete and instead took a new path and outlook on how to approach life.) Everything I have said gets compounded 10 fold when said athletes participate in non-team sports, any type of racing, and especially any Olympic sport. Sociology, the discipline I have studied for a fortnite or two *wink*, lays out how they are basically slaves in the modern era. I would agree. But we look the other way because we have created a society in which only having one physical skill is supposedly better than having a hundred cognitive/social skills, and we put the highest dollar amount to this physical skill. If you are a man anyway... So when I see the term "athletes of the spirit" I think wafers definitely are an Christians are but not as badly. I smile inside when I see the term and I don't think it should stopped being used. Their viewpoint of the spiritual is just as skewed as athletes' viewpoints and reasoning are in the physical. They both believe they are better than you because...of this one thing they have that you don't. Just an alternative perspective from someone who has had some of the same spiritual experiences as you.

Did you see the plethora of rings he had in public? You really think that there wasn't a secret ring? I don't even need to believe in the secret ring. I believe rings he wore in public were used for the same thing. It would hold great power over those that knew, as well as feed his ego. I mean even the obsession with jewelry should be a freaking clue.

Ah man Twinky beat me by a year. I wanted to be able to tell myself I necro'd (slang term for "raising a forum topic from the dead") a 13 year old post lol. I too looked up to her just because of her talent and because I was young. I never knew her personally. But when my mother sang at RoA one year and I got to see Claudette behind the scenes and whatnot, it really was Wizard of Oz and pulling back the curtain. She smoked, was short with people, would snub people that were not worthy of her time. She clearly was TWI material. It is no surprise that she has her own business but won't talk to anyone not in TWI. She wouldn't talk to lowly disciples of god when she was at headquarters, why would she ever do it after? All I can say is she is two-faced like every single person who was been in TWI's hierarchy. She may have treated you well, but you are an exception. She thought her sh!t didn't stink. I feel no love lose that she lost the thing she loved, singing. :D

I have queries about this lol. When I clicked on the link I see 150 clips, including AoTS. Sure they say they are by Loy and yes I listened to 60s seconds of a couple of them and they are indeed him and current. But all of these clips are uploaded by Watson PA and then Watson PA gives them all 5 stars, calls him "the TEACHER" (not to be confused with "THE TEACHER"). Watson PA even gives the TEACHER'S email address of flysortie@gmail.com. So is Watson PA actually Loy? Do we know anything? Does he have followers and this is just one of them? I just have so many questions. But one thing is clear, he speaks and teaches the exact same way so he clearly hasn't learned anything and just continues to be a con-artist. I will be sending a loving message to that email some day. That p.o.s. destroyed many of our lives and/or families lives. He still has my parents under his control (even if he isn't in control anymore), and yet he is still trying to phuc people over just so he can sate his ego.

Yea, that's how I see it. When someone is blatantly a bully, a victim blamer, a contrarian, a passive aggressive whatever - then we will never share the same bread together. I don't know how old he is but the brain doesn't stop developing until you hit 25, then it takes a few more years to figure out what you know and what you don't know and to figure out the patterns you/society have created in your brain. I'm assuming he is 30 or younger and is still trying to figure out how to find his own mental footing. But if you do that at the cost of others, it's time for you to get slapped upside your developing head.

Last night was the first time I've been on here in about 3 years and this was the first thread I read. I have no one to blame but myself. Great video. Finding the common motive when two people disagree is always the solution. But that wasn't what I was doing. I was flexing in order to draw a line in the sand. "Your bullsh!t stops here." Perhaps that is my glaring problem, I wanted to create the boundary instead of trying to find common ground.

Bolshevik I’m calling out your victim blaming bs. I have taught University courses for a long time now and have been taught for 42 years. I know the type of person you are. I know how your thinking works (or doesn’t). You are not smart or provocative. All of your anecdotal claims are dubious opinions that don’t originate in anything near a logical mindset. Your social currency is doxa, mine is episteme. You are a troll, plain and simple. You have a singular belief that you have not shared which allows you to think you are above everyone else here and that everyone here is hindering our families in TWI. So what was done to your family that is currently in TWI? Nothing has happened to mine. Bam, my anecdotal evidence proves yours is wrong. /s *facepalm* I am a PFAL, AOP Advance class grad, born to my parents while they were in the Corps, later I went into the Family Corps with my parents and brother. My parents gave up their land, homes, horses, and investments to go back into the Family Corps. Once we were in Rome City they controlled our lives every second of every day. When I was raped in the FC they probably held no power over my 7th grade self either. Clearly that was my fault and I was not one with god. Only VPW and LCM’s dick can give godly power to those that “need” it. When we were sitting under the big tent at the RoA waiting to hear where we would go WoW and then to have the entire program cancelled they probably held no control over my family. We were in the middle of the RoA, now homeless and penniless and at the mercy of whatever Loy decided to do with us. The Milgram Experiment shows time and time again that it does not matter what walk of life you come from, you will listen and obey authority. Two out of three people will, every single time, and will give no regard to the consequences of others as long as the authoritarian figure says everything is ok. If we, the victims, do not document what happened to us THEN THE CYCLE WILL CONTINUE AND IN ANOTHER THOUSAND YEARS PEOPLE WILL FALL FOR THE SAME BULLCRAP. This is literally education 101 in high school, middle school? Any and all harm that comes to people, family, and friends still in TWI is NOT OUR FAULT. We control our actions and cannot control the retaliatorial actions of others because we are speaking out on our truths. You are literally blaming the victim. My parents will die with TWI in their hearts and minds before me and my brother cross their minds. GSC might actually reach someone close to them and help them understand their errors. You blame those seeking help and answers when TWI took away their ability to gain an education and to use logical reasoning. If you were in TWI for a long period of time (read decades) and as a youth then your lack of intelligence, sympathy, empathy, and can be explained then I too am sorry that they stole time from you so that you could get a better education and perspective on what you think you are saying. Which of course, no one knows what you are saying but you. Because in the end you aren’t saying anything. You are just being a thorn in our flesh because you don’t know how to help yourself or those close to you. Well guess what, the answers are here if you can get past the fact that we all will have some lingering effects in our beliefs, our thought processes, and the language we use because of TWI. So what evidence do you have that these websites influence those around our families? And more importantly, do you not understand that that is not our problem? We are here speaking truths about what has happened to us, period. If you are not strong enough or mature enough to hear the truth of how TWI has hurt so many people, then it is I who feel sorry for you. Of the most fundamental truths that I have learned as a teacher, it is that you are projecting. You are acting just like a “wafer” but you have your sights on a different target. Or really the same, right? Because you are attacking ex-TWI-ers just like the TWI does. I have been a University professor and have read the peer-reviewed research on this and many topics for over a decade. The research proves time and time again that we must always find the truth of a matter before we can begin healing for ourselves, let alone others. Sure, people on this site .... me off and I wish they would stop using old terminology or would just “get over it.” But you know what? At the end of the day we were all robbed of our time. Time we could have been spending elsewhere improving our education, our families, our careers, et cetera. So I understand why people act the way they do and you know what I do when I get frustrated, I walk away for a bit (read years lol). But every time I am at a crossroads in my life and every time I cannot find a way to move forward I end up at GSC and unwrap something new that I didn’t know needed healing. GSC has been THE ONLY SOURCE OF HEALING AND SUPPORT FOR ME FOR THE PAST 15 YEARS and I only post a couple times every few years. I am a ghost around here and yet this community of like-minded individuals is needed for those of us truly destroyed by TWI. You have chosen to continue to be a “wafer” even though you are outside of their garden. You have chosen to be ethnocentric and ignorant to feed your ego. Sound like anyone we know? You speak in riddles that have no discernible thesis nor conclusion. (Btw, this is documented in peer-reviewed research as being a cornerstone of the uneducated mind.) VPW’s Life Lines comes to mind. Those of us who are PFAL and AOP grads are not continuing to act out our training in any way, shape, or form. Please give me ONE example of how we are. If anything it is YOU who are still emulating the condescending nature that we all learned in TWI. I was trained in those classes to be on a higher plane that those around me. I know the truth and they don’t so clearly I am superior and thus my questions and answers will sound pompous to others, yet profane to myself. I was taught that it was our way or the highway and if you don’t like it then I’m sorry to hear that. SOUND LIKE ANYONE AROUND THIS SITE? (Spoiler Alert: It’s you…) You say that “our one job is to forget.” Once again talking out of your foot and proclaiming what I should do, just like TWI. You do understand that forgetting and not speaking up is tantamount to enabling those who caused us harm, right? You understand that the peer-reviewed research proclaims time and time again that we as a society must document and not forget, lest our sins come back to bite us. Jfc this is common knowledge outside of academia. You are purposely being obtuse or you do not realize that you are just like those that you think you have broken free from. You have almost 8k posts in which you are showing your ignorance over and over again. It is you who are the problem. You need a slap in the face to show you that YOU ARE STILL ACTING LIKE A WAFER (I hate this term but TWI-er doesn't roll of the tongue). You are close-minded, uneducated, and quick to dismiss, only interject half conversations, and speak in riddles all while thinking highly of yourself and putting down others. It's passive aggressive bullying at its finest, whether you realize it or not. I mean I’d go on but jfc the parallels are glaringly obvious. “When the birds are silent the rest of us don't have to consider them.” I think this every time I see you post. We are here for healing. You are here for pointing fingers anywhere but towards yourself. It’s exhausting and why I am on a rant. I give people like you ZERO chances. You either know what you are or you do not. If you don’t then this will be a wake-up call and I'll gladly eat crow. If you do then you will reply in unorganized thoughts and riddles that may or may not have relevance towards acknowledging the healing that truth brings around here and that you are coooooonstantly victim blaming and putting the onus of responsibility on anyone but yourself. You do not deserve my respect but I have given it to you, barely. I couldn’t care less how you reply to me. I can take anything you can dish out. I live in FL if you want to do it in person. I’m not a keyboard warrior like you so I’ll gladly show you how your thinking is wrong if you’d like. But in the meantime, stfu and recognize that this site is for those of us who are .... hurting from TWI’s .... and we don’t have more time for it here. We will speak the truth and if that truth hurts your family members, or my family members, it is NOT OUR FAULT. You are a TWI apologist at this point. The fact that others are cordial with you and you are not with them speaks volumes. (I am well aware of my supposed hypocrisy to this point at the moment, but sometimes I need to step out of line to get others back in.) I am not a regular so I don’t gaf who I .... off. And even if I was I still wouldn’t care. I am a victim of many things and will not put up with your pseudo-intellectual doxa when my intellectual episteme already shows me what this site is and who you are. This site has helped my life and my family, you have not helped anyone or anything. PERIOD. “Posting to the internet always has unintended consequences.” Let me help you out kid. Every single action we do as mammals, let alone human beings, has latent consequences. We are not responsible for said consequences. We can only control our own thoughts and actions. Every time you post one of you 7k plus comments you think you are being sly, slick, and mighty. But the reality is that you are showing those of us around here why we need this place every time you show your foot. You should be thanking those around here for their hard work, time, patience, money, et cetera. Yes there are a lot of egos and I don’t like most of them around here, but that’s my own personal shortcoming, not theirs. I literally come to GSC every 3-5 years and I GET HEALING EACH AND EVERY TIME. You are on here every day and spew vile everywhere I look. Again, as an educated person it is clear you project. I hope you can start to see that. You know you could help those you think need helping instead of complaining that those that "could" hurt your family are using this place of healing as ammo. It’s not our fault that people lurk for information to hurt others. Do not blame the victim. Do not protect the perpetrator. GSC does not harm indiscriminately. It heals indiscriminately. When a website can provide more powerful healing than a lifetime of being in TWI, then of course there will be those who seek to hurt and dismantle us. When you go on reddit or whatever .... echo chamber you hide in while on the ‘net, do you tell them to stop talking about the subject because they are harming people? When you proclaim “my post you already read is clear, I think you are deliberately being ignorant on this chockful” you are not being anything but a smug and ineffectual communicator, let alone whatever else you think you are. And for the third or fourth time I will let you know that you are projecting your inadequacies onto the people replying to you. It is not up to us to determine what you mean. It is up to you. If we cannot understand your thesis, let alone your thoughts because you cannot sufficiently communicate them, then you need to take a step back and once again acknowledge it is you who is in the wrong. You talk about GSC causing harm indiscriminately and when skyrider tells you that you are false you brush him off as not understanding that a bomb doesn’t care who it hurts. Tbone accurately states that it is TWI that is like a bomb. Again, you are projecting. I do not know how long you were or how long you got out, but I’ll say it again: I see no difference between your thoughts, attitude, and words than anyone in TWI. I am 42, I was in TWI for 25 years. Born into the Corp. I know TWI. I know how it and everyone involves works. You have yet to cast your shackles my friend. Until you do I suggest you stop trying to help others. You are harming more than you are helping. We see your mind skipping around and having conversations without us. We see you having thoughts and then spewing half thoughts onto the page. We see you. We see this site. You see neither. Wtf does the world population and PFAL grads have to do with anything? What would they do to us? As a statistician I would love to know what you thought you were doing with numbers lol. You are seriously throwing incomplete thoughts and incomplete conversations at GSC in an attempt to sound like _____ (fill in the blank). So needless to say your 7.7k posts on this site alone have had major latent consequences which include telling me to get over it and that I haven’t experienced healing from GSC in the past 15 years. You need to close your mouth and either get an education or listen to others. Either way, you are doing to us what you claim we are doing to your loved ones. It needs to stop. You need to stop. I could say more but I’ve exhausted myself. Time for warm milk and a nap. Where’s my blanky?!

A cult is created when a person pushes lies onto others for personal power and prestige. A religion is created once the cult leader dies. :D (It's probably an oldie but most definitely is a goodie.)

Mostly. But there were plenty until 70 years ago. Which helps take this conversation to where it should go if anyone cared to take it there. The proliferation of products and commodities to use up resources as the means of production lay way waste to environmental components. If you own the land, materials, and people you will rise up above those doing hard, daily work while eliminating the environment of its natural resources. TWI is no different. Those in charge do little and have much.

Why is this all a surprise? We live in a caste system in the U.S., despite what you think. All groups that are formed within society just emulate society and its stratified structure. From the KKK to the corporate office, from the coal miners in the Carolinas to people playing a game on a reality show like Survivor. Every group just copies a smaller version of what they already know. All current religions do the same thing. From nonprofit organizations to Google and Apple, they all do the same thing. If I put 30 people in a room and lock it and have them come out with a system on how they would run a company or country, they all end up copying what we already have. (I was a professor on this subject and I did this exercise often.) Weber and Marx were all too right. So what is so illuminating here? Is it the fact that you expected it to be different? Do you not approve of their methods? Is I that they should have rose above such things as they were spiritually better than that lol? Yes, TWI is exactly like our wretched society; we have the bourgeoisie and we have the proletariat. Although I suppose I will concede that perhaps this forum allows for the proletariat (you and I) to gain a class consciousness after years or decades of having both society and TWI instilling a false conciousness that vast majority of people eat up and live by. I think in the end it is the fact that TWI promises to help us rise from the muck and mire of our status in society and give us the spiritual rewards (false conciousness) we need to rise above it. We can see we are not reaping the rewards others are in society (proletariat) without the word helping us rise above it. Promises to lift us out of our status in society and with god are often the underlying message in teachings. But these promises are coming from people who recreated a stratified system of power where they are in charge within their little bubble (TWI). Their promises are as empty as the American Dream. And let's face it, TWIs teachings and mission are just like the American Dream, you have to be mentally asleep to believe it.

Hardly. All I see on this forum are ex-TWI giving waaay too much of their mental time and energy to TWI.

@JavaJane We were at the rock of ages sitting there to go WoW when Martindale decided we would not be going and that WoW would be cancelled. We then got sent to a new location obviously, where my family was kicked out of the corps by someone who had a personal vendetta against my father. That member was released from TWI and then TWI apologized to my family for being kicked out but that they would not restore their corps status. This affected all of us very profoundly. I was told my birth was also an accident when my parents were in the Corps training at Emporia(?), at which point they were kicked out of training. They returned to complete their training with my brother and I in the family corps. So even at my birth I ruined their spiritual plans and they never deviated from them. They were kicked out of the corp twice, essentially. Yet they keep grasping on to something that was never their earthy family. I have tried so many times to lovingly discuss and confront things with my parents. Their minds are so messed up they have an answer for everything, and it's sad that the words are never their own. I just don't deal with them. They essentially don't exist to me. No point in wasting energy. It has taken me this long on this earth to finally learn that being angry just wastes energy better spent elsewhere. I have a ton of accomplishments in my life and they were all achieved through anger. I'm learning to let go.

@Lifted Up My post in this thread is the first time I've ever let the universe know about what happened. I was in FC 18 if anyone was there or knows anyone from that time. I know the exact person who did it and her entire family is still strongly in TWI as far as I know. "Saying" those words in an internet forum to complete strangers made me reach out to my brother who is younger than me and I told him about it. All he said was he knew I've been dealt bad cards my whole life and didn't even want to talk about it. I am 6 months shy of 40 and haven't cried this much in decades, or ever. Clearly a valve opened up, but the lack of understanding from my family has been devastating. I can't even talk to my parents because they are still "going strong" in TWI. Looking back it is clear that it is this one incident that fractured my entire family by making me pull inside myself. In turn I started acting out against my parents and started bullying my brother. I almost feel worse for my brother now, he has no love in his heart because of my reaction to being raped and how I treated him afterward. He literally told me he doesn't understand why people need family and love and support. I died inside. He is more scarred than I. I am the typical older sibling who has jumped from career to career and he is extremely rich/wealthy now through a very hard work ethic because of my bullying. Ironically he is the exact type of person I despise and believe are ruining the world and I had no idea. I've confronted my parents about other things regarding TWI throughout the years and my mother just defends everything in typical fashion by turning a blind eye or citing the same bs we all know and have heard a million times. And for the record, my incident occurred while my parents were on LEAD as well. I remember because I balled my eyes out as I was scared for my parents being alone and hitchhiking for a week. Even at a young age I knew you could get the same experiences doing something much safer. But wtf do I know? I quit a teaching job at a university right before covid hit as they were about to give me tenure so I could be the stay at home parent for my first born. (Don't feel bad for me it was a good decision.) I decided to have a child finally because I realized how miserable I have been chasing money and having no love in my life. It was and is scary but I am so grateful I had the self awareness to go against the grain of what society thinks I should do. It has taken me 3 decades to be able to love another human being, and I am grateful that I'm late to the party instead of missing it entirely. TWI definitely engrained into me that what people think of you matters and you better fit in or else you aren't welcome. (Eventually I was marked and avoided!) Now at almost 40, everyday I have to wake up and fight what society expects and instead do what is good for me. I've never done anything good for myself and I don't even know if I know how. But I'm trying. I'm trying real hard to keep it together. (I have so much anger that my parents always pick TWI over me even as I write this. Any help on letting that go would be greatly appreciated.)

I am a male who was raped in the Family corps when I was in 7th grade at Rome City. She was a high schooler and was best friends with the high school girls whose parents were on staff. Makes me wonder where she learned it from?! It's also taken me a long time to look back and see all the bs that was going on around me.

1. Rrobs clearly cares more about lifting himself up (and failing) with what he feels is correct, true, righteous, et cetera (I agree with others in that it's repackaged dogma) versus actually having an intellectual conversation on the proposed social problem. Which, as others have stated, was clearly his failed attempt at disguising other motives with a current topic of the week. 2. As my students stay, don't feed the troll. All he cares about is the attention we are giving him. He is condescending and not a leader or a teacher. He most likely sees himself as both. But no rational person could read his responses and think he is either. 3. Academia does not dismiss the bible, it is the bible that dismisses academia. What does that tell you? So again, I will talk to you (and not at you) when you learn how to have a conversation of give and take. You currently do not. You are ethnocentric to a degree I haven't seen in awhile. Is this part of your corps training or something? 4. He reminds me specifically of this clip from Good Will Hunting. He is the blonde in a ponytail who thinks he knows more than Matt Damon but finds out that he does not. Seriously, watch this clip and tell me it's not a replication of what is happening in rrobs posts.