Rocky

Express yourself, good buddy!

Con artists use these psychological tactics to manipulate people to believe them every time No matter how smart you are, anyone can be easily swayed by emotions. January 25, 2016 (Inc. Magazine, this article is an excerpt from Maria Konikova's book, The Confidence Game) The confidence game starts with basic human psychology. From the artist's perspective, it's a question of identifying the victim (the put-up): who is he, what does he want, and how can I play on that desire to achieve what I want? It requires the creation of empathy and rapport (the play): an emotional foundation must be laid before any scheme is proposed, any game set in motion. Only then does it move to logic and persuasion (the rope): the scheme (the tale), the evidence and the way it will work to your benefit (the convincer), the show of actual profits. And like a fly caught in a spider's web, the more we struggle, the less able to extricate ourselves we become (the breakdown). By the time things begin to look dicey, we tend to be so invested, emotionally and often physically, that we do most of the persuasion ourselves. We may even choose to up our involvement ourselves, even as things turn south (the send), so that by the time we're completely fleeced (the touch), we don't quite know what hit us. The con artist may not even need to convince us to stay quiet (the blow-off and fix); we are more likely than not to do so ourselves. We are, after all, the best deceivers of our own minds. At each step of the game, con artists draw from a seemingly endless toolbox of ways to manipulate our belief. And as we become more committed, with every step we give them more psychological material to work with. If it seems too good to be true, it is--unless it's happening to me. We deserve our good fortune. Everyone has heard the saying "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is." Or its close relative "There's no such thing as a free lunch." But when it comes to our own selves, we tend to latch on to that "probably." [...] And yet, when it comes to the con, everyone is a potential victim. Despite our deep certainty in our own immunity--or rather, because of it--we all fall for it. [Or in the case of The Way International and Victor Wierwille's private interpretation party, WE all FELL for it]. That's the genius of the great confidence artists: they are, [or in the cases of Victor Wierwille and Loy C Martindale, they WERE] truly, artists--able to affect even the most discerning connoisseurs with their persuasive charm. A theoretical-particle physicist or the CEO of a major Hollywood studio is no more exempt than an eighty- year-old Florida retiree who guilelessly signs away his retirement savings for a not-to-miss investment that never materializes. A savvy Wall Street investor is just as likely to fall for a con as a market neophyte, a prosecutor who questions motives for a living as likely to succumb as your gullible next-door neighbor who thinks The Onion prints real news. **** Cases in point: how many celebrities, with how much money, fell for the sophisticated Ponzi scheme of Bernie Madoff? How many ordinary people spend months or years in Amway or other MLM games before they realize the time and resources they've squandered? How many followers of Victor Wierwille shuffled off to Amway to make money because they were comfortable with the business structure? How many more followers of Wierwille shuffled off to the various splinter cults, are happily still involved there in or after X number of years chalked it all up to experience and moved on? Now, what were the bullet points of benefits of the PFLAP class listed on the Wierwille-ite green card, again? What hooked you into taking that initial indoctrination class? Then... What were they teaching in their Witnessing and Undershepherding class?

I totally agree. The quotes Prof de Waal includes are primarily philosophers rather than neuroscientists. The philosophers, I suspect (I'm NOT an academic and didn't take any philosophy classes in college) are considering not what happens between one's ears but a more macro view of how society (environment(s) outside of the mind) do or do not relate to choices any person makes. Further, the deterministic view -- the range of our available choices in any given situation are essentially nil -- seems bizarre to me too. Yet, when someone says, you're not what you eat, but who you meet, I can see how that might be at least partially true.

Some food for thought. In Paradise Lost, the seventeenth-century English poet John Milton felt that the fallen angels had too much time on their hands, so he sought to occupy them with a discussion topic. He chose free will. We all have the impression that we possess free will, although it lacks a clear definition and may be a total illusion. As Isaac Bashevis Singer once put it, “We must believe in free will, we have no choice.” It is the perfect topic for eternal debate. This debate relates to the emotions, because free will is often conceived as their opposite. Making a free rational choice requires us to deny or suppress our first impulses. In fact, the whole idea goes back to the debate over how much our mind is shaped by our body. Those who believe in free will argue that we can simply set aside the body and its nonvolitional desires and emotions and rise above them; humans—and humans alone—can fully control their choices and their destiny. The opposite is a person without self-control, which philosophers have dubbed a wanton. A wanton follows whichever impulse hits first, whichever urge is most pressing and satisfying, and never looks back. Regret isn’t something you’ll find in a wanton. Young children and all animals are said to fall into this category. We may capitalize Free Will to convey our reverence for a concept so central to human responsibility, morality, and the law, but if we can’t measure it, how will we ever agree on it? Some say that free will boils down to making choices, but even bacteria make choices, and certainly all animals with brains have to decide between approach and avoidance, which prey to single out from the flock, or whether to travel north or south, and so on. The squirrels in my neighborhood decide whether to cross the road. Sometimes they do so right in front of my car, making me nervous. They run halfway, then quickly return, unable to make up their minds. Pairs of bluebirds in my backyard, getting ready to build their nest, visit every empty nestbox, hopping in and out multiple times, the male alternating with the female. They’d make excellent subjects for a House Hunters episode. After weeks of scouting, the male puts a few branches or grass stems into one of the boxes, then lets the female build the actual nest while he guards the site. The drawn-out decision process has reached its conclusion. Do bluebirds have free will? Francis Crick, the British co-discoverer of DNA, proposed in his 1994 book The Astonishing Hypothesis that human free will resides in a very specific brain area: the anterior cingulate cortex. But humans are not the only species with this area, and we have good evidence that it also helps rats make decisions. Yet despite the signs that animals make choices every day, we refuse to grant that they have free will. Their choices are constrained by past experiences and inborn preferences, we argue, and animals lack the ability to fully review all the options in front of them. Never mind that the same argument has been applied to great effect against free will in our own species, which is why some of history’s greatest minds—Plato, Spinoza, Darwin—doubted its existence. Free will just doesn’t fit the prevailing materialist worldview, as noted in 1884 by the prominent German evolutionist Ernst Haeckel: The will of the animal, as well as that of man, is never free. The widely spread dogma of the freedom of the will is, from a scientific point of view, altogether untenable. Every physiologist who scientifically investigates the activity of the will in man and animals, must of necessity arrive at the conviction that in reality the will is never free, but is always determined by external or internal influences. De Waal, Frans . Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves (pgs. 221-223). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

Seriously? That seems to equate to trolling. Not related to a discussion of a genuine issue and concern.

This also brings to mind how interpretations of things going on in the broader society. For example, someone somewhere decided microwave oven cooked food had all the live somehow removed from it. Consider the adage about how quickly lies can spread... lies, conspiracy theories and the like can travel around the world before the truth even gets out of bed. The corpse was likely a somewhat unwitting experiment in that kind of control. Especially the Family corpses. But I attribute problems I had (not FC) later to this kind of control I had experienced. I still deal with the ramifications of it in family relationships... More than 35 years after I left the cult.

Why do you NOT do what you think you intend to do?

Sounds like Ms Thomas is probably familiar with GSC.

I might disagree with you on whether or to what degree Victor indirectly or DIRECTLY promoted it on that very basis. He had long before us devised a con game (see threads and comments about The Book of Charlie, and long prior to said comments) when astute observers identified what he did in the PFLAP class to develop his "identity" (or, in modern marketing lingo, his "brand") as MOGFODAT, built a subculture around it, co-opted The Way East and The Way West and began getting non-profit rich. Victor had archetypes on which to model his scheme. And it wasn't the guy he stole the PFLAP class from. PFLAP was the indoctrination. Mike still models his life after this entire confidence game. In that regard, a case could be made that those TALES about the race track and black/white hearts was, in fact BRAINWASHING. To a degree, I fell for it. Evidenced by how clearly I remember those tales. I also remember walking around the campus in Emporia (which I think was where I attended the advanced class on PFLAP, even that isn't as clear as the brainwashing/programming) trying to receive revelation, including discerning of spirts. First thought, y'all! It was the same summer I first remember hearing detractors claiming we were brainwashed. Of course, none of us believed them. That was more than 4 decades ago.

Oh, okay. Was there a consensus? If so, what is your assessment of said consensus? Sometimes, so many replies add up to TL;DR. But I'm thankful there was lively discussion.

Intriguing discussion of Victor Wierwille's private interpretation teachings on cancer and devil spirits. Anyone have any idea how that relates at all to whether or not we have freedom of will? Perhaps someone could explore the question of whether "stream of consciousness" posting is contrary to freedom of will? Just sayin'.

From The Book of Charlie If all the trappings were stripped away, leaving only my true self, who would I be? Am I living fully as that self in every moment? And when it ends, will my story have meaning?” Over the past half century, scientists have studied the relationship between fear and courage, and what they have found tends to confirm the wisdom of the ancient philosophers. Psychologist S. J. Rachman, in his seminal book Fear and Courage, concluded that fear has three components. A feeling of apprehension. A physical response (like a pounding heart, a queasy stomach, a knot of anxiety). And a change in behavior to escape the fear and quiet the response. Courage, Rachman continued, is a deliberate decision to override the change in behavior that is part of fear. The courageous person faces fear, rather than try to escape it. In other words, without fear, there is no courage. One who senses no danger feels no apprehension. One who feels no apprehension has no desire to run away. Lack of fear, in Rachman’s terminology, is not courage. It is simply ignorance of danger. Stoic philosophers have regarded courage as one of the four most important—cardinal—virtues, along with justice, prudence, and self-control. Von Drehle, David. The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man (pp. 134-135). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. I'm fully aware a discussion of fear would fit well in the doctrinal forum. However, I believe fear, just like love, was and probably still is central to the dogma around which Victor Wierwille built his subculture. Which is why I include it here. In PFLAP, Victor taught "fear in the heart of that woman killed her child." I wholeheartedly now believe that to be false doctrine. Without fear -- and facing it head on -- there is no courage, according to SJ Rachman. Intuitively, that makes far more sense to me than anything I ever learned from Victor. Frankly, it was a mindset influenced, if not directly inculcated from Victor Wierwille, that set my emotional and economic growth and progress back probably 30 years or more. That is, even though I began my journey to eradicate my waybrain 30 years ago and less than 20 years after I was tragically mis-programmed with fundamentalist CRAP. I believe now that Victor Wierwille was completely off the mark from the very beginning.

Reiterating the OP for this discussion thread, with minor edits. I chose to not employ the quote function of this text editing software because it cuts all but a few lines of the quoted text, and to me, it's awkward. One of my current books (that I'm reading) brought up the topic of fear. I believe that topic is salient, to discussion of the twi trap, similarly to how Charity's thread on Love draws salient contrast with Victor Wierwille's subculture. By Skyrider Oftentimes, we hear when twi-followers finally decide to exit TWI..... they seek out a splinter group. Seemingly, deep down they must still cling to the twi-mantra that victor wierwille was chosen by God to lead them to the "rightly-divided Word" or some equivalent of the same. Clearly, the "truth of pfal" is sound [they think].... it's just that LCM, Rosalie and Donna screwed it all up. Pick any one of them as the *fall guy*...... but NOT wierwille. So, off they go to a splinter group... lulled into another loop around the block. How long will they stay in this cycle? Depends. Does it touch all the right buttons of nostalgia for those "good ole days?" Do they feel accepted and needed? Are they again (cough, cough) an intricate part of moving God's Word [pfal] to others? For some.... do they keep questioning and looking diligently for answers? Or, do they settle into a "cozy" splinter group that, at first, welcomes them with open arms and doesn't ask for donations [yet]? If they keep asking the hard questions.... this splinter group, too, will not be filling their need. But if they settle in and stop questioning the deeper questions like, "Why did twi collapse so quickly? Why was lcm such an ego-driven maniac.... the one whom wierwille chose to be the 2nd president of twi? Why did wierwille teach that cancer is a devil spirit and later.... die of cancer? Why didn't wierwille get healed if he was "God's chosen" who taught solid principles of health and prosperity? Why did the trustees lie saying 'wierwille died of a broken heart?' Etc. etc. ??" When the door to questioning begins.....THEN can one find answers. GreaseSpot Cafe offers the first, clear vision that twi-followers are caught in a trap. No other group offers this direct approach. Even though back in the 80's, Lynn's group, CES/STFI, offered up its list that diverged from twi.... it only went so far. At no time, did it delve into wierwille's questionable claims and mystique of "the man of God." And, of course.... Geer offered NOTHING but a posthumous accounting of wierwille's "greatness" and took it to levels of franchising classes. A legion of other splinters, too, chose to hang onto wierwille's coattails and ride the rails to the bank. But GSC, the successor of Waydale, offers another way for twi-followers to GET OUT OF THIS TRAP. With healthy discussions and vigorous debate....GSC allows participants to engage in open discussions. No questions are off-limits [except politics]. Neither twi nor its splinter groups allow for open, full-throated discussions in the public arena. Why the censorship? What are they protecting? We saw ALL OF THIS back in 1986 when the trustees prohibited anyone from reading John Schoenheit's research paper on "Adultery." Many corps leaders were fired and/or shunned for even reading it. Why was twi so afraid of uncovering the biblical truths regarding adultery? Any guesses? LOL Fast forward to 2023.... and the censorship regarding questions about wierwille remain. But not here..... not at GSC.

Asking for clarification: now we are looking to Victor Wierwille's beliefs unrelated to biblical anything as to what's true or even godly? Frankly, at this point, I reject the Wierwille-ist framing of the issue. I believe Victor (who wasn't a winner, IMO) latched onto an entrenched but anachronistic religious concept that served (serves) to foster/highlight the divisive nature of the Wierwille private interpretation cult. IOW, I believe, for the most part, the devil spirit influence/possession framing became (sub-)cultural hegemony which served to enable "leaders" to control everyday believers.

Shhhh... don't tell anyone. j/k Don't want to veer off into the forbidden topic of politics. However, love matters and I believe we are inherently responsible to exercise our citizenship. Hopefully, those sentiments won't offend anyone.

Again, characterizing your imaginations as "Your theory..." is narcissistic nonsense.

Together, these descriptors equate to love. IMO Oh, and critical thinking skills too. Btw, WWJD????????

In the video above, Eagleman goes so far as to say if there is free will at all, it is a bit player in the brain.