Rocky

1) I affirmatively do not expect you to either dance or change your belief/understanding of the issue. 2) My intent was absolutely not justifying anything. Nevertheless, beliefs are real cultural phenomena whether you believe them or not. If you're not curious, you're not curious. No doubt there are millions, if not billions of people just like you on that point.

Why would I want to explain hypocrisy in the bible? It wouldn't change either your mind or the content of the bible, right? Are you trying to get me to tell you that you are right and everyone who believe what's in the bible is wrong? That's not how I look at it. But I AM confident that you already believe you're right and everyone who believes in what's in the bible is wrong. What more is there to say about it? Believe it or not, there are people who believe there are more possibilities than that. But if you don't believe what's in the bible, why do you frame your question in terms of what you believe is in the bible? Frankly, I don't think it matters to anyone other than you or me what you believe or what I believe.

Okay, so all you really wanted to do with this thread was to rant. I suppose that's acceptable in this particular (sub) culture.

I was of the impression that it was ALL a psychological hoax.

Cultural literacy I don't know this author's politics or religion, just that he coined the expression cultural literacy more than three decades ago.

That's a HUGE hope. My understanding is that you may have unrealistic expectations. May I suggest pursuing cultural knowledge and understanding to grasp how our culture came to believe and incorporate stories of Santa Claus and God into it. STL, what CMAN may be trying to say is that much of what we do in our mind is use our imagination. In doing so, perhaps we each can decide what we want to try to understand in this life and pursue things in that direction. Btw, CMAN's follow up citing Scrooge is an example thereof. Scrooge IS a character in a story. In that regard, Scrooge is real, even though the story is fictional and was a product of the imagination of Charles Dickens documented in Dickens' novella, A Christmas Carol. Fiction is often something untrue used to communicate things that are actually true. There is no way humanity will ever give up on stories. Stories ARE humanity and the way humanity communicates most efficaciously.

More from Bittersweet by Susan Cain: In her TED talk, Susan David states: The conventional view of emotions as good or bad, positive or negative, is rigid. What does it take for us to thrive in an increasingly complex and fraught world? Rigidity in the face of complexity is TOXIC. We need greater levels of emotional agility for true resilience and thriving. In that talk, she also says that Life's beauty is inseparable from its fragility. She provides insight on HOW WE WERE actually brainwashed. We (willingly) allowed ourselves to indoctrinated (PFLAP and its successor classes) and willingly, as we continued to subject ourselves to fellowships and "undershepherding." In such processes we allowed a whitewashed mindset to be inculcated into our minds/brains as a way to live according to the private and severely limited interpretation and view of a culture and a religion.

Remarkably remarkable remarks... and no doubt, divinely inspired.

Santa Claus is REAL. Not a real person at this time, but a real cultural entity. Culture is real. Culture is an important aspect of humanity. He's the central figure in a cultural story. So is God.

I can't tell you have thankful I am... for you and Bolshevik and T-Bone and WordWolf and, well plenty of others who contribute their life experience and insight here on GSC. And for people who have been living their lives outside of fundamentalist religious cults, who think and ponder life and/or who do scientific research into lots of things around us and regarding human lives and culture. We obviously can't quantify how much we know or did know about much of anything at other points in our lives, but the rapid growth in knowledge available to know has been truly awe-inspiring. I doubt Victor had the imagination to envision what the 35 years after he passed would be like.

From Bright-sided: How the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America (2009) page 44, the last paragraph of the chapter in which Ehrenreich details her breast cancer diagnosis. Her next chapter is about years of magical thinking. Both chapters reveal much insight against which the culture/subculture of The Way can be measured and is most definitely found wanting. Wierwille's cult morphed from American culture into a very sadistic organism in which misfortune, to which everyone is ultimately subject, is blamed for their/our fate by reimagining the myth of blame as a violation of the cult's standards. IOW, you didn't effing believe enough to overcome. That leaves people who do not rightfully own said blame, taking it upon themselves anyway.

Indeed.

Probably not misremembering. Once upon a time, GSC had an archive of some (maybe all) of the content from Waydale. Old Skool (fifth comment on this thread) faithfully and fairly characterizes Waydale. The most significant aspect of it from my perspective is that it was the precursor to GSC and was started by P*** A**** as an online place to document the experience he and his wife went through at the hands of Loy C Martindale in the wake of Loy's predatory sexual attack and assault on and of his wife... and the foregoing civil litigation. It had massive impact because it primarily contained first hand documentation of the perverse sexual culture endemic in TWI. It appears, and I hope Bolshevik clarifies, that Waydale had substantial unforeseen (perhaps largely indirect) ramifications in the life of teenagers, including himself, who perhaps were coming of age around the time Loy's crimes were being exposed.

For anyone to document any evil(s) rightfully attributed to Waydale or its authors/administrators, such a person would have to show/demonstrate how the words ON the website harmed them. NOT how someone reacted to what was written on Waydale and therefore committed harmful actions against anyone.

Perhaps I should clarify. Was your anguish causing experience directly aimed at you intentionally on the part of the website Waydale or its authors or admins? IOW, were you, to your knowledge named on Waydale for any act you may have committed or were thought by someone responsible for Waydale for having committed? Or was your experience caused by the fear and anger of people who at the time were loyal to The Way who then, out of that loyalty and fear for their families lashed out irrationally at you (and likely others)?

Because you, at the time, apparently had enough life experience against which to measure Rosalie's words and recognize them as Bull$hit. Hallelujah! Praise God! Amen! Old Skool, what a Righteous post, from my perspective! To Bolshevik I say that I can recognize the anguish you experienced because of what you described Waydale meaning in your life as a teenager. I am so sorry that you had to go through it. However, was your anguish caused by the exposure of The Way Corporation's evil acts and how people in the subculture at the time lashed out at you... or was your anguished caused by Waydale and P.A. having exposed what he did about what Martindale and corporate powers in The Way Corporation did? I can't answer that for you. But I hope you will be able to work through the issue and find resolution and peace somehow.

And for Victor and the Spinoffs (a lovely name for a mock rock group), it was (and for some still is) a MASSIVE con game. WE were/are the mark. Sure Victor made his case from scripture (in his pamphlet Christians Should Be Prosperous) But that was presented through the filter of contemporary culture, as opposed to exploration of the culture in the Book of Acts. The collegial culture among the believers at the time contrasts dramatically with the emphatic hierarchical culture of The Way, The Way Corporation, and The (counter-biblical) Way Tree. The two cultures are diametrically opposite. In the Book of Acts, did the apostles hoard the riches like The Way Corporation has in the 20th and 21st Century? Or did they assist the rank and file as a matter of course (rather than as a special act to make the apostles look heroic)?

I consider Harry Frankfurt a good friend who I got to know, at least a little bit, from reading On Bull$hit.

Right there Wierwille, for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, connected the dots to his "abundant sharing" mantra. This shows that is was all, or at least primarily, about HIM making a living by conning followers into believing God would "open the floodgates" to them IF they tithed and then some (to him). By all accounts, including records previously shared on GSC, it worked. Millions of dollars, it worked. Quite a scheme, wouldn't you say? Then there's the mere subsistence level wages The Way Corporation paid its employees... Btw, taking the PFLAP class at age 20 (on an island in the Atlantic Ocean), having had minimal life experience or college education by that point in my life, I did NOT, at that time, have eyes to see or ears to hear the reality of that economic scheme.

I would now add inappropriate cultural appropriation to the list of sins of Victor Wierwille."Cultural appropriation is the inappropriate or unacknowledged adoption of an element or elements of one culture or identity by members of another culture or identity." The dilettante Victor Wierwille claimed to believe and teach the importance of Orientalisms, oriental culture and meanings of original biblical texts. But the doctrine and practice of blaming tragedy on a person's "lack of believing" or in the alternative, the person being outside of the protection of the "household of God" is nothing more than cultural appropriation of certain 19th and 20th century American concepts and phraseology. More from Susan Cain's book, Bittersweet. Chapter five explores Calvinism and transformation of that set of beliefs on "abundance" to more modern cultural frameworks of winners and losers. "How did a nation founded on so much heartache turn into a culture of normative smiles?" Of course, people my age or thereabouts would likely be familiar with Norman Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking. I digress... and probably should start a new thread on this subject.

Of course, but I'd ask that you don't derail this thread.

Direct connection to the thread topic? It doesn't seem so. If you want to start a different thread with that recollection, okay.

We're talking about "were we taught to be jerks in twi." Not about the specifics you mentioned (as quoted). Please don't derail the thread/topic.

Totally agree w/T-Bone, dear Twinky.

It happens. No problem, figured you'd want to be clear in retrospect.