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The Way's Way


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Although this may appear to be more psychological psychobabble, it is but it isn't.

I just have yet another reason to kick myself for having gone astray in the way. Back in the way I was still going to college. My major was psychology, which I never finished. But I remember a weird experiment, that didn't click but described what happen in TWI.

In 1971 Dr. Philip Zimbardo did a prison experiment that had a reverse and violent end to what was being studied. They had to call it off before time because people were having or on the verge of breaking down.

These people underwent both psychological and physical testing before they were excepted to the experiment. Once the site downloads click on the Prison Experiment, and see what is offered.

Also in Currently Hot, click on #6 in recent articles. It will come up in Adobe, btw.http://www.zimbardo.com/zimbardo.html

Very enlightening. And to be personally filed under 'Should Have Known' but it proves that even if it stares you in the face, I still was blind!

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What clearly stands out is that both groups readily "morphed" into the roles they were given. Just like many of us did in twi...

"You are Corps-- this means God called you, you answered, you are special, and you are responsible to oversee, control, and get the best performance out of the people under you."

"You other people... you are NOT CORPS -- this means you are God's chosen, but not His Special people. You have SOME privileges, but most of them have to be awarded or at least approved by the "spiritual perception" (aka whim) of your leadership. You are not bad, but you are not necessarily good, either."

"Finally, we have everyone outside the household. These people are bad. Bad for not hearing God's call to twi. Bad for not heeding God's call. Or worse, BAD for walking away from twi."

And we all played our roles out to scary detail.

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Part of human nature is to "wear" the "hat" that is given you.

At first the "hat" might not be comfortable, and we might not even like the "hat", yet we wear it and grow into it.

At some point in time, we might either take a look at that "hat" and get rid of it or exchange it for a different "hat". And sometimes, a "hat" is taken from us.

A "hat" can be many different things and we can wear many "hats" at one time. Some hats are permanent while others are temporary.

Permanent hats include (but not limited to)

child

parent

sibling

Temporary hats include (but not limited to)

spouse (could also be permanent)

jobs

different aspects of our jobs

friend

religion

politics

student

etc...

And at one point in time we wore the "hat" of being involved with twi. And many of us have no longer have or want that "hat" again.

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Very interesting Signals.

I haven't had time to read all of the #6 link, but this really stood out to me as being all too familiar because of my experience and observations of the wc in TWI:

Ten Ingredients in the Situationist’s Recipe for Behavioral Transformations.

Among the influence principles to be extracted from Milgram’s paradigm for getting

ordinary people to do things they originally believe they would not are the following ten:

a) Presenting an acceptable justification, or rationale, for engaging in the undesirable action, such as wanting to help people improve their memory by judicious use of punishment strategies. In experiments it is known as the “cover story” because it is a cover-up for the procedures that follow which might not make sense on their own. The real world equivalent is known as an “ideology,” such as “national security,” that often provides the nice big lie for instituting a host of bad, illegal, immoral policies.

b) Arranging some form of contractual obligation, verbal or written, to enact the behavior. such as the loyalty oath, the salt covenant of wc, loyalty to the group that taught you the word

c) Giving participants meaningful roles to play (teacher, student) that carry with them previously learned positive values and response scripts.

d) Presenting basic rules to be followed, that seem to make sense prior to their actual use, but then can be arbitrarily used to justify mindless compliance. “Failure to respond must be treated as an error,” was a Milgram rule for shocking omissions the same as false commissions. But then what happens when the learner complains of a heart condition, wants to quit and later screams out followed by a thud and silence? The learner’s inability to respond to the teacher’s testing because of death or being unconscious must be continually shocked since omission equals commission. It does not make sense at all since how could the teacher be helping improve the memory of the learner who is incapacitated or dead? But all too many participants stopped engaging in such primitive, obvious critical thinking exercises as their stress mounted.

e) Altering the semantics of the act and action, from hurting victims to helping learners by punishing them. I yell because I care….confronting the world with the word….Iron sharpeneth iron….keeping the household clean

f) Creating opportunities for diffusion of responsibility for negative outcomes; others will be responsible, or it won’t be evident that the actor will be held liable. You weren’t believing God big enough…..I’m being attacked because I’m standing in the gap for you….revelation changes….

g) Starting the path toward the ultimate evil act with a small, insignificant first step (only 15 volts).

h) Increasing each level of aggression in gradual steps, that do not seem like noticeable differences (only 30 volts).

i) Gradually changing the nature of the Influence Authority from “Just” to “Unjust,” from reasonable and rational to unreasonable and irrational.

j) Making the "exit costs" high, and the process of exiting difficult by not permitting usual forms of verbal dissent to qualify as behavioral disobedience.

Such procedures are utilized across varied influence situations where those in authority

want others to do their bidding, but know that few would engage in the "end game" final solution without first being properly prepared psychologically to do the “unthinkable."

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Thanks for the comments guys! Maybe I haven't read it yet, but nowhere does this guy mention 'cults'. He wanted to find out what is evil(not in the spiritual sense). What he found in all his experiments is that good people can do evil things.

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Been watching WW 2 on the history channel and this fits with much of what was shown, ordinary people doing bad things under the influence of a charismatic leader. It looked like several of the Axis leaders had mood disorders and the ducumentary did bring that up, seems to fit imo.

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