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When you were in The Way, did you ever feel like you were a character in some sort of stage production? By that I mean, during the PFAL class (as a grad) there were specific cues you played off of to laugh or feign excitement. It was like acting in a play......"and the sign said,'millions now smoking'..... Hahahahahaha"

Is this making any sense?

OK, I'll try this....

Suppose I tell you a joke about a guy who walks into a bar and sees a midget on a barstool...You think it's funny...You laugh...Now I tell you the exact same joke, with the exact same delivery, 53 more times...Is it still funny? So, then, if laughter is not a required part of the script, why do you laugh?

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Yes I understand where you're going with this. From time to time I was coached at crew meetings before the class actually ran to laugh at the jokes and sigh or feign excitement at other times. It was for the benefit if the students. Some of them thought the class was so "religious" that they were reluctant to react in those manners and we were told that by our example we could show them how religious we were NOT.

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Religion (including Wierwille's) is and was all about people. God was incidental.

We were staging social manipulation... because we were "true believers" in the TWI religion. At least for a while (about 12 years in my case).

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I had people tell me they thought Kit Sober was a made up name. I know that wasn't what you meant, but only Holy Spirit could make up a name like that. Now looking back. It was like a game show script, without the required-for-success real life skills.

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Never underestimate the power of self-delusion.

I'm not sure who first said that, but I heard it from an investigative journalist just a few minutes ago.

Self delusion...yeah...I think that's it.

When you act in a stage play, you practice delusion. But you're only deluding the audience, not yourself. Oh, sure, with method acting you temporarily delude yourself but, deep inside there is still some sort of line of demarcation. With self delusion, you cross that line. And sometimes when you are behaving under self delusion, you have moments of awareness, even if only briefly, that you look back across that line and wonder if you are really "you". I had one of those moments in FellowLaborers. One day I looked in the mirror and wondered how on earth I went from being a young man with a guitar, busking in a public park, to this person who had forsaken his dreams and went to live a completely different lifestyle in a far-away commune. Like looking into the mirror and seeing someone else look back at me. How did I get here? Who have I become? That's what I'm talking about.

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When you were in The Way, did you ever feel like you were a character in some sort of stage production? By that I mean, during the PFAL class (as a grad) there were specific cues you played off of to laugh or feign excitement. It was like acting in a play......"and the sign said,'millions now smoking'..... Hahahahahaha"

Is this making any sense?

OK, I'll try this....

Suppose I tell you a joke about a guy who walks into a bar and sees a midget on a barstool...You think it's funny...You laugh...Now I tell you the exact same joke, with the exact same delivery, 53 more times...Is it still funny? So, then, if laughter is not a required part of the script, why do you laugh?

To a degree, it WAS scripted.

Whenever pfal was mentioned to new people, if you didn't join in on how

fantastic it was and how it would answer EVERY question,

you were seen to have missed your cue.

Every single joke, no matter how lame, was supposed to be laughed at (or at least groaned at.)

Lines from pfal here and there were used later in all sorts of contexts and approved-of

if introduced. And grads sitting in on a pfal class acted like it was a watershed experience

and a positive life-transformer.

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Scripted. For sure. What I'm looking for here are those moments when you may have had a sudden realization you were part of a scripted event. Remember a movie called The Truman Show? It (The TV show within the movie) wasn't really entirely scripted but the idea is similar.

Here's a brief overview:

"In this movie, Truman is a man whose life is a fake one... The place he lives is in fact a big studio with hidden cameras everywhere, and all his friends and people around him, are actors who play their roles in the most popular TV-series in the world: The Truman Show. Truman thinks that he is an ordinary man with an ordinary life and has no idea about how he is exploited. Until one day... he finds out everything. Will he react?" (SOURCE)

The other day, there was talk on another thread about Jesus Freaks and The Jesus Movement. I looked at a few things on YouTube that caused me to reflect on my own distant past.

WARNING!

If you look at any of it closely enough, it's almost certain to evoke some type of reaction.

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my old cranky grandfather (RIP) was always talking and b*tching about phony people - "awwwww they're all a bunch of phonies"

my brother asked him shortly before he died if he had any advice for living life....

poppy said, "yeah, don't be a sucker"

ha !

This is where I would press the "like" button if we had one.

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When you were in The Way, did you ever feel like you were a character in some sort of stage production? By that I mean, during the PFAL class (as a grad) there were specific cues you played off of to laugh or feign excitement. It was like acting in a play......"and the sign said,'millions now smoking'..... Hahahahahaha"

Is this making any sense?

OK, I'll try this....

Suppose I tell you a joke about a guy who walks into a bar and sees a midget on a barstool...You think it's funny...You laugh...Now I tell you the exact same joke, with the exact same delivery, 53 more times...Is it still funny? So, then, if laughter is not a required part of the script, why do you laugh?

Dude I will tell you what makes complete sense about what you are saying. When we were in college, Friday nights would be Rocky Horror Picture Show once a month at the college campus theater. There was the movie, and there was also an interactive dialogue with the movie, and the audience would play an extended part in the show including needing raingear for a portion of the acted out part.

I felt a lot like the extended character in the audience interacting with an automated film when we were in TWI.

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And then there was me. I believed every word. I thought it was all real, and pfal was the greatest thing since post toasters I even had my colaterals leather bound.if LCMs hadn't kicked me out, I would still be there probably. If anyone said anything derogatory about anything twi, I wuss sure they were nuts. Only a slew of miracles got me out.

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And then there was me. I believed every word. I thought it was all real, and pfal was the greatest thing since post toasters

You weren't alone in that respect, I can assure you.

Were there ever times when you might have doubted it's veracity, if even for a brief, glancing moment?

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I believed the truth-you know, search and research, ts peak the truth and don't back down. . . Therefore when I saw something not right I spoke up. IAt ROA 1995that guy LCMs was hot about sneaking into the ROA to attend twig was my friend and he was at my twig and I told him I couldn't see anything wrong with him coming to twig, which was an open fellowship and he was always welcome. He was an old man I had met many years ago. A gem in my opinion. Anyway. I think that was the straw that broke the camels back so to speak and got me kicked out.. Ii always wanted to ask LCMs why he kicked me out. I always prayed for him and supported him, although I did say that a shepherd never gathered sheep by yelling at them. Yelling only scattered sheep as I saw it.

I did not believe twi was flawed until trashchat (groucho's words of wisdom) and then waydale and greasespot cafe that I was able to see I had been lured into a cult (and what a cult was).

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Regarding LCM:

... a shepherd never gathered sheep by yelling at them. Yelling only scattered sheep as I saw it.

That's pretty much a Greasespot Gem, Kit.
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By then they weren't sheep anymore they were 'athletes'. LCM once said that when he was a pass receiver in college he got knocked down and his coach yelled at him "GET UP, MARTINDALE, YOU CAN SLEEP LATER!" So if yelling helps an athlete...you see where I'm going.

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By then they weren't sheep anymore they were 'athletes'. LCM once said that when he was a pass receiver in college he got knocked down and his coach yelled at him "GET UP, MARTINDALE, YOU CAN SLEEP LATER!" So if yelling helps an athlete...you see where I'm going.

Yeah, I see where you are going. You're saying we were athletes and thereby should have profited from yelling.

There are several problems with that. The first, and not the least of which, is that the whole "athletes" metaphor being substituted for the warfare metaphor is not scripturally sound. Secondly, you are drawing a comparison between modern day sports culture and whatever it was they were doing in ancient Rome. Do I need to elaborate beyond this?

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1404062398[/url]' post='560357']

so kit, did you say the shepherd yelling thing to his face?

I was not among those who spoke to leadership, but I always said what was on my mind. Regarding the ROA 1995 incident: They did not take Dr Harbord from our RV, but found him afterwards, and then went bragging about their [wicked] deed.

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By then they weren't sheep anymore they were 'athletes'. LCM once said that when he was a pass receiver in college he got knocked down and his coach yelled at him "GET UP, MARTINDALE, YOU CAN SLEEP LATER!" So if yelling helps an athlete...you see where I'm going.

And you phrased it correctly.

IF-> THEN

IF yelling helps an athlete, THEN...

But yelling doesn't help athletes in general.

It is common for coaches to yell at athletes, but that doesn't mean it

actually HELPS the athletes.

The coaches were yelled at when they were athletes, so they yell because

that's what was done for them.

But we know better now.

It would be like doctors only doing the medical procedures that were

popular when they were studying and never advancing medicine..and

teaching the next generation of doctors to do the same.

I'm thankful doctors don't do that, even though coaches operate that way

in general.

BTW, not every coach yells, and it's not common in EVERY sport. It is

common in US college football.

And before you say it, I'm not suggesting the opposite extreme is any

better- New Age-y cuddles for teams where athletes learn NOT to compete

are as bad in a different dimension. A stern coach doesn't have to yell

and scream, and doesn't have to blow off athletes getting injured.

Then there's the separate issue of vpw and lcm inventing the whole

"we're athletes now" thing out of maybe 1/2 a dozen verses isolated from

their contexts. So, we're not athletes in the first place.

All lcm taught was what he'd learned- and all he'd really retained was

what he'd learned on the football field, and what he'd learned from

vpw- who felt free to yell at people with neither preamble nor provocation.

So, he wasn't yelling for any Christian reasons, he did it because it was

all he knew.

As we've already discussed before, yelling and especially screaming isn't

about good management, it's about poor impulse control in the screamer.

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... it's about poor impulse control in the screamer.

I don't think "impulse control" comes into it. The yelling by LCM was entirely deliberate, preplanned, an intimidation tactic. A bully, shouting loudly, because that's what he knows. He knew when to scream, when to have a hissy fit - and when to speak quietly or act sorrowfully at the waywardness of the Corps. It was manipulation. Not impulsive at all.

From what I've learned here, that's what VPW was like as well.

I have also seen this in other leadership - eg, J0hn R3yn0lds, who I've seen angry and shouting at people down the phone. End of conversation, then a pause for breath and to refocus on someone else - and he was gentle and sweet again.

I think they could all do it, when they were "spiritually riled up" about where someone had not been "spiritually obedient." It was showmanship.

But as for the rank and file, which is what this thread started out as - yeah, we were expected to be enthusiastic and passionate, at all the right moments. And I do believe some people genuinely were.

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.

I think they could all do it, when they were "spiritually riled up" about where someone had not been "spiritually obedient." It was showmanship.

Staged. And they KNEW it.

With us, though, (rank and file) it's only in retrospect that we begin to comprehend how widespread the staging was.

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I really looked stupid when I tried to yell and be a bad a**. A lot of people did. I think those who yelled a lot were covering up for their own sense of inadequacy. Martindale's bark was worse than his bite. From what I heard, if it was just you and him, he tended to whimper out. He was real brave behind a mike and if he had his cronies. That's what I heard, anyway.

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