scientology & celebrities

I mean, you don't necessarily have to be dumb, just be willing to deny all the bad press in lieu of what they're getting at the entry level -- which could be useful! It's a community, and there are rites and stuff to spend your time doing.

it's that red shirt w/ a volcano and lasers or something and DIANETICS in big ol letters

ok, well i've been talking about the 99% of the people who are involved and believe incredibly stupid shit.

nb i think persuasion and convincing is obv real, but there isn't like something special about the way scientology recruits that is distinguishable from the way numerous other organizations, legit + otherwise, convince ppl to follow their mission and get onboard. whether it's a political party, an environmental organization, an established religious one, a fraternal or communal org, etc.

i've gotten meter tested and chatted with these ppl. if you aren't interested in the material and think it's silly, they won't even bother with you. they recruit ppl looking to be recruited. of course there's abuse going on and it's terrible but that's not the experience of the vast number of ppl involved. and when ppl talk about brainwashing re scientology, i'd say 99% of the time they're talking about brainwashing ppl into believing Xenu is real, not brainwashing ppl into staying in emotionally/sexual/physically abusive relationships.

dudes, dudes, do you remember that story about the guy who called a fast food place on a pay phone and got the manager of the fast food place to do all this insane stuff for HOURS including making a female employee strip in the manager's office and all this other insane stuff? the guy on the pay phone was thousands of miles away! completely manipulated strangers into doing whatever he wanted them to do. one of the freakiest things i had ever heard in my life. and that was just one phone call on one day. imagine what months and years of that kind of manipulation could do to people? just imagine...

Mordy, I think most of the abuses we're talking about are the sea org things. Have you read about all the shit at their compounds in Florida and the like? I think there are some links upthread. Those people are threatened with actual harm, too, but most are true believers in the face of really awful circumstances

that story was so freaky. i think i saw it on dateline or something. the whole thing was on video. it was like out of a horror movie. he pretended to be from fast food headquarters. unbelievable.

scott, I thought he said he was a cop?

I like that one internet thing where the dude prank called a dude then made a soundboard out of the dudes' responses and then called the dude up as the soundboard

dunno if it was actually any good now that I think about it, just liked the idea

you can make people believe anything. its kinda frightening. people just giving con men their life savings in the span of an hour. all kinds of stories like that. complete strangers. some people are really good at putting people in a trance.

i don't know if he was a cop. he pretended to be an authority of some sort? i saw it a while ago. but this was all on the phone! the manager locked the employee in the office for hours and would keep going back and talk some more to the guy on the phone, it was endless!

All right, I'm out.

yeah, maybe he did say he was a cop. was their sex stuff involved too? he made that manager do all this crazy stuff. you just would never believe that people would do all that.

if i ever come to regret a cause that I was involved in or supported - political, religious, social, professional, etc - i hope I have the courage to admit I believed in it and did so with full possession of my mind and not that I was convinced into it

don't get any ideas, scott

i hate tricking people. i never do practical jokes. i just don't like scaring people, in general. i never have.

i don't laugh when people fall down either.

many xps

A person paying for classes and emeterings or w/e the fuck it is the lay Scientologist does isn't really being abused. Maybe they will be, though, if they attempt to stop, I dunno. But some people have been ground into sand by the organization, even though they would have said at the time that they were totally on board.

xp to mordy some time ago: granted, but there IS something different about the lengths to which they will go with some of their adherents. AND at how deeply ingrained in the institution those abuses are---you can snark about the Catholic Church and the military and frats and Earth First! and whoever, but scientology is patently, nakedly, about control. That they are predatory in who they select to abuse only serves to support the fact that what they are engaged in is "brainwashing." ffs the whole thing exists because a guy thought once, ~explicitly~, that the best way to accrue power and wealth was to create an organized religion. points for high-level trolling of institutionalized religion everywhere else, but that idea really does underwrite every fucking aspect of the enterprise.

idk, I was in a pretty abusive relationship and, yeah, I got into it with possession of my mental faculties, but if you had explained my day-to-day actions when I was in the thick of it to me, either a year before or a year after I was in said relationship, there is no way I could say I was in any way in control of my mental state

I think you're believing people are rational beings, Mordy

if i ever come to regret a cause that I was involved in or supported - political, religious, social, professional, etc - i hope I have the courage to admit I believed in it and did so with full possession of my mind and not that I was convinced into it

― Mordy, Monday, July 2, 2012 9:27 PM (21 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not sure there's always a difference there mords

the church has committed abuses of control, power and violence in its history that go far beyond anything Scientology has ever done or is capable of doing. Nakedly.

also if u look at who cults recruit - it's most often intelligent or at least educated ppl - saying its just dumb ppl who believe irrational things is just plain wrong

if i ever come to regret a cause that I was involved in or supported - political, religious, social, professional, etc - i hope I have the courage to admit I believed in it and did so with full possession of my mind and not that I was convinced into it

― Mordy, Monday, July 2, 2012 8:27 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i've read at least a couple articles by/about ex sci people and they were p upfront about all the reasons they stayed with it, and never really made any claims about being brainwashed. but at least some people have left the org because they were party to people being brainwashed. some of those people were susceptible (mentally ill, young, broke), some started off ok and became susceptible (you can give ppl depression btw, Science Fact).

"the church has committed abuses of control, power and violence in its history that go far beyond anything Scientology has ever done or is capable of doing. Nakedly."

ok.

-you can snark about the Catholic Church and the military and frats and Earth First! and whoever, but scientology is patently, nakedly, about control.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition

So? That's not today's Catholic church, although I don't think there are any apologists for that institution here either

So? That's not today's Catholic church

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_sex_abuse_cases

i guess i didn't preempt your expected response there: my point isn't that the church/frats/radicals haven't done bad stuff, just that scientology has built into it, on purpose, and by design, from the get-go, justifications and methods for being manipulative. the catholic church may have bloated into some kind of monstrous controlling thing over the years, but i'm not sure that it, or Psi U, convened at the outset to bilk people out of their money and use them as labor

Catholic church didn't buy an anti-religion phone support hotline and then coach families into accepting Catholicism when they called asking about their kid's weird Catholic interest either

u think that article is really long already and then you realize that it is connected to a dozen other wiki pages about church sex abuse cases divided by countries xxp

What I'm referencing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_Awareness_Network

sneaking suspicion the number of abuses per capita is a bit higher in scientology

I've met Catholic priests and nuns and none of them told my friends I was a subversive person and not to talk to me

what are you trying to argue exactly? scientology is a special historical flower and not another example of known human institutions + trends? good luck w/ that

No? That scientology is bad, it's recent, and we can stamp it out now!

if you give me a time machine I will consider other options

oh cool. what are you doing to stamp out scientology?

man you are normally so good at this sort of thing, mordy, but this is just weak sauce. yes, thank you for reminding an ex catholic that the catholic church isn't great. and that the institution, like many others, will pervert itself in self-defense.

but i'm still pretty sure that it was not initially predicated on eventually being the bad old catholic church that everyone hates; the sex abuse scandals aren't inherent to catholicism (imo), they are a product of its organization. scientology, otoh, has been a cynical enterprise from day one; that it employs abusive psychiatric trauma prescriptively seems like it shouldn't be all that shocking a claim. and no, it isn't unique, but it is distinct.

I meant the societal "we" really

i understand that you're passionate about this gbx, but i'm not really finding anything you're writing compelling and i'm not even sure what you're trying to argue. scientology is worse than the catholic church bc despite committing far less human abuses they were cynical from the beginning? and what's your end game here? that we ban it in the united states? that we pull all the members out and force them to sit in exit counseling? what exactly are you trying to convince me of?

there's a good breakfast spot nearby where the view is the back of a large scientology building and there's all these weird identically dressed scientologists scurrying around wearing black dress pants and gray t-shirts. looks like a really boring ikea or something.

Square One! I love that breakfast spot...

^^

That we keep them from infiltrating the IRS again, make sure local law enforcement in areas where they have a heavy presence treat them without preference, and pursue legal action against the organization when they violate actual laws, which has happened?

if i ever come to regret a cause that I was involved in or supported - political, religious, social, professional, etc - i hope I have the courage to admit I believed in it and did so with full possession of my mind and not that I was convinced into it

― Mordy, Monday, July 2, 2012 6:27 PM (10 minutes ago)

so you don't consider yourself to be particularly manipulable and make a point of taking personal responsibility for all your decisions. that's great; i feel the same way. but we shouldn't allow our sense of self-sufficiency to blind us to the fact that human beings are in certain respects manipulable and are at times manipulated. this doesn't absolve supposedly manipulated individuals of responsibility for their decisions on a personal level, but it does help explain why things happen the way they do on a demographic (impersonal) level. if you A) seek out needy and apparently manipulable people, and B) follow a few relatively simple "brainwashing" procedures in indoctrinating them, then you will probably increase your horde of blindly obedient followers.

it's not unknown in l.a. for scientologists to harass folks, like i've said. probably elsewhere, too, but here it happens a lot. like my neighbors!

mostly people who have left the church or who are kinda anti-church. lots of PI's hired to follow people, drones knocking on doors and hey, not doing anything wrong, just coming by with gentle reminders and leaving notes.

What I'm referencing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_Awareness_Network

Careful with anything that site references. CAN was taken over by Scientology and turned into a propaganda machine in 1997 - http://www.xenu.net/archive/events/60minutes/60min-transcript.html

scientology is worse than the catholic church bc despite committing far less human abuses they were cynical from the beginning?

Didn't realize this was a competition...

tom bergeron hosts "strange sects"