Rocky

Aunt Lydia drew a clear distinction, women outside of the "household" were sluts. You girls are special. Does that ring any bells? Vic's subculture emphasized that we were "called out," we were special. People outside of the "household" wouldn't be protected by God. Besides cementing the specialness of the way corpse (and others not as "high" in his hierarchy... yet), that was also the basis for blaming anyone who had anything bad happen to them. Psychological and spiritual abuse.

Aunt Lydia was easily one of the most dreadful characters in The Handmaid's Tale. Thankfully, it was only pretending (and doing so exquisitely well).

My most vivid memory is the pervasive odor of, let's say, the aftermath of digestion. And the need to light candles to dissipate said odor.

Both brainwashing and religious conversion rely on strong group pressure. They target people who are exhausted and dejected from extensive self-criticism, doubt, fear, and guilt. When potential converts abandon their old ways of thinking, they feel relief, gratitude, and zeal. They sense a new beginning with a cleansed life. These aspects of conversion are the same whether one is converting to a common established belief or to an uncommon new one. Churches grow and morph; today's traditional or "heritage" church probably was revolutionary generations ago. Dimsdale, Page 7 Note: American Christianity: the Continuing Revolution

In addition to its origins in torture, brainwashing can trace its roots to traditions in religious conversion. It may seem peculiar that a book on brainwashing discusses religious conversion, but conversions come in many sizes and flavors--sudden or gradual, grounded in belief or convenience, brought about by individual decisions or by acts of State. Conversions are heterogeneous, and some conversions are in fact accompanied by varying amounts of coercion. [...] When conversions are made by personal choice, they are still shaped by social factors, and here we start to recognize some features shared with brainwashing. -- Dark Persuasion, Dimsdale, Page 6.

Dark Persuasion [It] is through this material brain that emissaries of God or of the Devil—dictators, policemen, politicians, priests, physicians and psychotherapists of various sorts— … try to work their will on man. William Sargant, 1957 “Brainwashing was “born” in Pavlov's dog labs in the early days of the Soviet Union, but it didn't appear out of thin air. While Pavlov brought in scientific experimentation to intensify persuasion, brainwashing's roots can be traced to traditional practices in torture and religious conversion.” So begins Dimsdale's exposition of Dark Persuasion. His Table 1 (Common features of torture and coercive persuasion), on page 6 includes eight items. Having spent a year in residence with the 9th corpse, I witnessed and/or experienced several of these items. I can still detail first hand, terror, sleep deprivation, diaries and confessions, isolation from family and friends, secrecy and other such tactics. This book as well as Peter A Olsson's on the Malignant Pied Pipers of Our Time summarize histories of more stark cult experiences than ours. However benign in comparison ours may seem on book/internet forum pages, when taken as told by individuals, ours are still the stuff of cults. And whether any one of us considers the long-lasting effects serious is a very personal and real consequence of having endured life in a cult. I have also noted before (probably on GSC) that every human is subject to getting conned. Having been successfully recruited into TWI or other cults is one of many ways humans are vulnerable to dark persuasion. About William Sargant: “Sargant co-authored a textbook on physical treatment in psychiatry that ran to 5 editions. He wrote numerous articles in the medical and lay press, an autobiography, The Unquiet Mind, and a book titled Battle for the Mind in which he discusses the nature of the process by which our minds are subject to influence by others.” Notes: Dark Persuasion: A History of Brainwashing from Pavlov to Social Media - Kindle edition by Dimsdale, Joel E.. Health, Fitness & Dieting Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com. https://archive.org/details/BattleForTheMind-Sargant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sargant

The self-righteous scream judgments against others to hide the noise of skeletons dancing in their own closets. -- John Mark Green, poet (as quoted on p238 of Atlas of the Heart) Hmmm... According to researchers, "Self-righteousness is the conviction that one's beliefs and behaviors are the most correct." -- ibid, p239 Wierwille's cult was based on the premise that HIS (VPs) private interpretation of EVERYTHING was THE WAY, the only way that was most correct. That perspective made it impossible build a life and an organization on the greatest of commandments that's why they had to hold it together with spiritual and psychological abuse. Mark 12: 30-31 (NIV) 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’[a] 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] There is no commandment greater than these.”

YIKES! and thankfully, lived to tell about it.

Glad for the good news.

; many cults stumbled upon its use as well. ----- We've been describing these things by sharing our own stories here on GSC for two decades. Now, a retired psychiatrist has spent time studying the phenomenon and its history. Ultimately, my point is that this book, Dark Persuasion, seems to codify and validate our experiences as such. Notably, the Foundational or Power for Abundant Living class: for example refusing to answer people's questions or even allow the questions to be articulated until the end of session 12... but did anyone remember the questions by then? The WOW Ambassador program, coercing people who had never met to live together for a year and enforcing that commitment with SHAME. Then the ultimate indoctrination program, the Way Corps subjecting people to prolonged sleep deprivation and either being targeted for or witnessing horrific verbal abuse sessions any time a person made even the tiniest mistake or dared to challenge program leaders. These were among... as Skyrider so eloquently spelled out at the top of this thread, the reasons he wrote his story: 1) to send a warning to all those involved in twi and others considering taking classes from this cult, 2) an attempt to differentiate between Scripture-based Christians and twi's lockstep loyalty of servitude, and 3) to expose twi's incremental steps to overthrow one's will and consent. There are no fences with concertina wire to hold them prisoners, but there are very-real doctrines of fear and deception interlocking to prevent escape. Thankfully, tens of thousands HAVE succeeded in their personal journeys of escape from this insanity. Those who remain in it, perhaps cling to the emotional need to belong, wrapping themselves in rationalizations to justify their continued subjection to the cult.

Speaking of Insanity on Steroids, and I hope this isn't too far off of the topic, but I found another book while perusing my local public library's website. I've reserved a copy of the book but thought that an excerpt of this non-fiction title, newly available, might be pertinent to those of us trying to figure out how and why we had become vulnerable to Wierwille's message, his subculture, his (what we now know as) dark persuasion. Some have called it brainwashing. I tried to get that excerpt by way of copy/paste but because I was looking at an Amazon preview, that didn't work. I took pics of the two pages and posted them to Twitter and then tried to insert them using the Other Media button. That also didn't work. But I was able to copy a blurb from the Amazon page where one can buy the book. A harrowing account of brainwashing’s pervasive role in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries This gripping book traces the evolution of brainwashing from its beginnings in torture and religious conversion into the age of neuroscience and social media. When Pavlov introduced scientific approaches, his research was enthusiastically supported by Lenin and Stalin, setting the stage for major breakthroughs in tools for social, political, and religious control. Tracing these developments through many of the past century’s major conflagrations, Dimsdale narrates how when World War II erupted, governments secretly raced to develop drugs for interrogation. Brainwashing returned to the spotlight during the Cold War in the hands of the North Koreans and Chinese. In response, a huge Manhattan Project of the Mind was established to study memory obliteration, indoctrination during sleep, and hallucinogens. Cults used the techniques as well. Nobel laureates, university academics, intelligence operatives, criminals, and clerics all populate this shattering and dark story—one that hasn’t yet ended. ----- and very briefly, the preview states: Brainwashing, coercive persuasion, thought control, dark persuasion--all these terms refer to the fact certain techniques render individuals shockingly vulnerable to indoctrination. [...] But it wasn't just the military and intelligence agencies that employed the technique (continued below)

Thanks...

A representative contradiction of twi is that people in the cult DO benefit from the sense of belonging. But they limit both themselves and God when they (when I used to) are (be) unable to tolerate realization of that need for belonging together with the very important and very human deep curiosity that comes with being human. Why can they not cope with that paradox/contradiction? Perhaps because of the fact that, as Skyrider said in the OP for this thread, Btw, what was it that Wierwille told us about fear? Who was he quoting when he taught us that "fear is sand in the machinery of life?"

Part of the cult mentality I recall, is Johnny Townsend's admonition to twi followers about simplicity and keeping one's life and mental activity simple. Perhaps it sticks with me because life really IS full of complexity. With Wierwille's brainwashing directives to not read anything outside of his private interpretation of The Word (how's that for a contradictory bit of insanity?), I didn't record (journal) when I first realized the importance of paradox. But the true joy of my retired life these days (besides doting on grandchildren) is reading and learning more of what I could not have done had I remained in the cult. One of the books I have open in front of me right now is Brene Brown's Atlas of the Heart. It's a masterpiece. Here's a poignant excerpt: Can two seemingly contradictory thoughts both be true? Competing emotions and contradictory thoughts are messy and can feel uncomfortable, vulnerable, even irritating. But it's important to remember that this push-pull is a reflection of our complexity, and if we're willing to stay with it and stay curious, complexity is one of our greatest teachers. The problem starts when we don't have the skills or experience to tolerate the uncertainty and ambiguity and we give in to the cravings for neat, mutually exclusive categories. There's nothing more limiting than tapping out of tension and oversimplifying the thoughts and feelings that have the power to help us understand , who we are and what we need. -- Brene Brown, p70, Atlas of the Heart, 2021.

This reminds me of Amber Scorah Scorah's story about escaping JWs. Obviously, TWI isn't so unique, but cults (including twi) aren't benign.

But if your job depended on a multi-million dollar nonprofit organization that employs who knows how many people these days, and the revenue was sharply/rapidly declining... you might be tempted to try.

Brene Brown's latest book, released this week, Atlas of the Heart, has a good bit (actually, a lot) of insight on emotional intelligence

Historian Yuval Noah Harari on skills related to emotional intelligence.

Yes, EQ as opposed to IQ. But more literally, EI.

Sure, it would be nice. But experience has shown that what you're doing so far to get there with him has not, does not, and because we (humans) can use that information to reasonably predict the future, will not get the job done.

Sounds like fun. My first theatrical performance/experience was the main role in my 4th grade Christmas play, The Smallest Star in the Sky. Changing the subject back, I've been thinking about your feedback from yesterday. While I'm not going so far as to contradict (either you or) the researchers behind the shortened assessment, it occurs to me that another way to characterize (at least part of) what they describe as a trait is as emotional intelligence, EQ. I've read about EQ before and believe it's important.

Let your light shine! Btw, Socks, I didn't read Skyrider's comments as critical of yours. Also, (not to or about Socks) the bickering betwixt Bolshevik and Mike is noise easily scrolled past.

As Emiril Lagassi would say, "BAM!" ... but don't expect TWI to "Kick it up a notch."