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Waxit, a "productive discussion" must be both "productive" and a "discussion." To "discuss", each of us has to listen to the POV of the others, and probably get something out of it, whether big or small. We have to acknowledge that we are ALL trying to communicate, and are entitled to courtesy, and, at least here, a chance to be heard. To know if it's possible to have a "productive conversation", we need to know if the participants are really willing to converse. If one or more are just interested in advertising, mudslinging, trolling, or insulting, then we can't really have any kind of "conversation." It really sounds like you're disinterested in anyone here- except as an AUDIENCE or as someone to AGREE WITH YOU automatically. We're often open to changing positions, but only if the other side makes more sense than our own, not just because someone insists they're right, or insists they know what God wants, or insists they're right because they have great conviction. If you really want to change minds here, you'd actually have to DISCUSS and CONVERSE. Stop and ask yourself if you're really ready to do that, please.

From The Bourne Identity - here is the scene of Jason talking to Marie in the diner     – screenplay rewritten as Jason on his way to L.E.A.D. I’m not making this up – (tosses his way corps name-tag on the table) this name-tag is real. And who else would have an empty safe deposit box, only $20 in their pocket and a road-map to Tinnie, New Mexico? Oh I appreciate you buying me breakfast, by the way...Anyway, I come in this diner and the first thing I do is figure out how I can kick everyone out - in case I had to run a class. I can tell you the license plate numbers of the two cars outside that have Way bumper stickers. I recognize that stray dog in the parking lot from an old porn video. I can tell you the waitress is wearing a little gold crucifix and might be a good candidate for the PFAL class and that the 250 pound guy at the counter is a Bible salesman and thinks he knows how to handle “the Word”. I know that the best chance of a ride out of here is in either one of the two cars with Way bumper stickers or that tractor trailer hauling cattle to Hereford, Texas. I know I can go for days without sleep, be subjected to repeated face-meltings and public humiliation, and still do the 4 fifteens and run 5 miles before breakfast. Now why would I know all that?... And why would I remember all that but forget about my personal identity?

Reading back thru that thread "Face Meltings" where DWBH posted........adds a whole 'nother dimension to subjugating. Whether it was the corps program or fellow laborers......ISOLATED from public view brought out their "training methods." Face Meltings Threats to kick everyone out Prisoner of War (pow) tactics Verbal Onslaughts and Scream Sessions Sleep Deprivation Taunting, Mocking, Public Humiliation Break You Down.....Eliminate Individual Identity Group Commitment Twi is the True Household If You Ever Leave......Greasespot by Midnight It just seems to me.....1) The strong, independent ones left early and/or were gone by 1978, 2) The average, committed ones dissented on occasions and tried to right the ship, and 3) The deeply, loyal corps and staff zealots stayed into the 2000's even after martindale was ousted. Splinter leaders who still suck off the teat of wierwille's teachings to this very day are weasels extraordinaire. Yeah, I wanted to love and help serve God's people.......but did I have to go thru "prisoner of war training camp" to do it? Wierwille ORDERED this??? Break us down......and then, "put us back to together" to run missions? Subservient to their orders? Sounds like the Identity of a Jason Bourne.

Here is one of DWBH's posts on John Summerville and TFI......

Glenn O was, IIRC, 9th corps. I remember him. Hope he's still alive and doing well.

that stuff is funny, Inkernet ! sometimes when people would ask me what's something heavy that I learned from the Advanced Class, I would say "found out that Mickey Mouse is wrong seed."

The article in Life Magazine The Groovy Christians of Rye, NY

Well, I've been thinking about that... and how easily people get conned (in general) these days. So I found an intriguing essay about classic literature that contrasts with VP quite well. https://medium.com/@spencerbaum/3-reasons-why-you-should-read-more-classic-literature-in-2019-e762cb5c910c Call me Ishmael. The famous opening sentence of Moby Dick, so short and provocative, is welcoming and familiar to the 21st century reader, who is accustomed to snappy prose with short sentences and lots of white space. A few sentences later in Melville’s masterpiece we get a sentence that’s more representative of the novel to come. In just a bit I’m going to quote that sentence, and insist that you read it. And I mean really read it. Don’t skim it. This essay is about to make the argument that there is value to the way the classics force us to slow down and concentrate, and it will be easier for you to understand that point if you experience it first. Here’s the quote from Moby Dick. Please read it slowly and carefully: "Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off — then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can." This brings us to the first and, to my mind, most important reason to read the classics in 2019 2020. 1. You should read classic literature because it forces you to think deeply and concentrate. 21st century media is hell on the attention span. But you already know this. You know that our digital devices are shortening our attention spans, teaching us to only skim the surface of ideas, and making us addicts to tiny dopamine bursts that come from (among other things) the Like and Share buttons. As we near the end of the second decade of the 21st century we’ve developed widespread awareness that our devices have made us shallow thinkers. We’re less cognizant, however, of the effect of the content itself. Or the style in which the content is written. Have you ever wondered why so many of the articles you read, like this one, are organized in numbered lists? Or why the writing in these articles is so often organized into ultra-short paragraphs, many of them only one sentence long? We, the content creators of the 21st century, have learned to write in snappy lists with short sentences and one-sentence paragraphs. We write this way because this is what you, the content consumers of the 21st century, choose to read. You like content that is clear, concise, simple, and to the point. You’re in a hurry (always), and we writers know, God do we know, that we are competing not just against other essays or other books, but against the endless siren songs of Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and Twitter. We know that if we ask too much of you, say, if we give you a long sentence or, God forbid, a long paragraph, we might be taxing your mind more than you’re interested in having it taxed. We know that a complicated, multi-layered thought, one that might require you to slow down or reread a sentence or look up from your screen and think for a minute is too much to ask when your phone is bursting with notifications and there’s a new video on your favorite Youtube channel and everyone’s talking about that new show on Netflix but you haven’t even seen the last new show everyone was talking about yet and you’ve got ten tabs open on your browser and 3,000 unread books on your Kindle and holy hell who has time to consume it all just open my vein and fill it with listicles please! There’s a cost to all this. In the book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (a 2011 Pulitzer Prize finalist for general nonfiction), Nicolas Carr looks at all the research in neuroscience and psychology about what the Internet is doing to our brains and determines that, yes, our ceaseless attempts to skim this glut of information is making us shallow thinkers who are far less capable of deep, focused, intense thought than our parents and grandparents were. You should read the classics in 2019 to unlearn the shallowness and impatience you are learning in your hyper-accelerated 21st century life. When you read Melville (or Hugo or Austen or Tolstoy or Plato or Shakespeare) you are sharing headspace with someone who is much better at slow, deep, meaningful thinking than you are because they’ve never lived in the shallows like you do. ***** The essay continues, but I hope you get the point. Wierwille obviously didn't want you to THINK.