scientology & celebrities

A section of its website relating to the Aum Supreme Truth sect authored by Nick Broadhurst, a New Zealand Scientology Spokesman,[58] stated that the real source of the crimes committed by Aum were drugs and psychiatric treatments the cult administered to its members.[59]

wow wow wow

If they can have an independent scientology spinoff that doesn't use coercion and doesn't have the bad shit, I don't think anyone here would care? It just wouldn't be much like current Scientology, according to our knowledge of it.

when you claim their belief in scientology comes from being brainwashed?

literally no one is claiming this. in saying A) that something like what we call "brainwashing" does exist and is effective in gaining and maintaining control over people, and B) that scientology does seem deliberately constructed to do this, we are not saying that all believers in scientology are "brainwashed".

your only argument to this effect has been that stockholm syndrome and battered spouse syndrome exist

and that the tactics cults use to gain control over needy and desperate people are in fact effective

^ there's plenty of evidence of this out there

we can call it something other than "brainwashing" if you prefer

having been deeply immersed in religion growing up it's funny how much of it lingers with me insofar as having an "effect", though it may have more to do with nostalgia to some degree. but i mean catholic guilt is a "thing" for a lot of people, even some of those who have exited without looking back once.

maybe patty hearst has wistful memories of robbing banks, too.

silver lining of scientology: lots of good jazz fusion records!

as i recall, you said that brainwashing was not a thing, and that ppl or their stupid parents used it to justify bad decisions they made. then, after the points were made that brainwashing basically is a thing, and that scientology is explicitly designed to entrap and manipulate people ("brainwash" them), and that that is bad, you said the catholic church had the spanish inquisition and that priests abused children.

i think that a lot of ppl use brainwashing as a way of explaining why family/friends are involved in things they can't understand. i think they use it to talk about scientology. i think they use it to talk about all kinds of things - religious organizations, fraternal organizations, military organizations. i think they use it to talk about ppl doing all kinds of things that are a lot more understandable than xenu. they do it bc it's an easy shorthand so that you don't have to break down all the nuances of the 'brainwashing.' what makes ppl susceptible to these organizational relationships. why are some ppl prepared to hear this stuff and believe it. i think the festinger book does a much better job of exploring these questions without developing a broad theory of brainwashing.

i'm not invested in defending scientology. i've had first hand conversations with people who got in trouble with them over last few decades, including family friends who were blackmailed by them and a man who they threatened to kill. i've called them evil above on this very thread. i just am making a case that the evil they are is a very familiar evil, and that people's relationships to them aren't so different from various organizations + religions throughout human history. i don't think you need this 'brainwashing' or 'cult' jargon to diagnose what is going on with them. and in fact it obscures from actually understanding what is going on versus sensationalizing it.

Mordy I once read a book called Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids which is about teen death camps for well-to-do concerned parents, but it really convinced me of how malleable the human mind and will can be in certain artificially induced situations ––– like est encounter meetings, extended eye contact, etc. It's a book I think you'd find interesting if nothing else. If you read it, tell me what you think, I know we'd have a nice chatz about it.

I think when you decide you're 100% in control of your mind, your will, etc., you're making yourself more pervious to the subtle and malignant ways our all too fallible minds can be changed without even consciously knowing it.

this conversation is dumb, but abbott's post otm

i'm not invested in defending scientology. i've had first hand conversations with people who got in trouble with them over last few decades, including family friends who were blackmailed by them and a man who they threatened to kill. i've called them evil above on this very thread. i just am making a case that the evil they are is a very familiar evil, and that people's relationships to them aren't so different from various organizations + religions throughout human history. i don't think you need this 'brainwashing' or 'cult' jargon to diagnose what is going on with them. and in fact it obscures from actually understanding what is going on versus sensationalizing it.

― Mordy, Monday, July 2, 2012 10:13 PM (38 seconds ago) Bookmark

i dunno man. it's 'sensationalistic' to talk about the differences between Scientology and other religions? like the differences are totally minor and surface level? i think it's fair game to treat it as a relatively unique phenomenon.

i've personally found, since high school, accounts of cults, cult members, and brainwashing to make really titillating films, novels, true crime accounts, journalist accounts, etc. i think it ties into my interest in psychopathy since often a charismatic psychopath is at the center of these narratives. but i don't think the way we talk about them are very illuminating as to explaining why they exist, what they fulfill for people, etc. i think we pathologize the phenomenon (to use the language of a different discipline) and that it's superficial.

i also think that it completely fails to account for the independent scientology movement and particularly rathbun who seems very sincere + coherent defending hubbard here: http://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/an-open-letter-to-tony-ortega/

anyway, i think that's my entire thing so if u still disagree, forget about it jake it's ilx + whatever

that's valid, but sort of separate from whether or not mechanisms of indoctrination and control exist and actually work. i agree with you, but that doesn't make me any less inclined to believe in the efficacy of "brainwashing".

so many xps but

your only argument to this effect has been that stockholm syndrome and battered spouse syndrome exist

and cults, and frats, and the army: "break you down to build you back up again."

this is very vaguely put and i think indicates a very limited idea about what behavioral science and psychology are about

does it? don't meet vague with vague, dude. but if i'm reading you correctly, you're saying that...denying that systematic psychiatric trauma/manipulation DOESN'T clash with what we know about behavior? because...i've too narrowly defined what psychology entails? what in the heck?

i don't know why your particular narrative is more positive towards ppl 'damaged by scientology and the Church and whoever else' and mine shits all over their experience. do you think the independent scientology movement feels like you're treating their choices w/ respect when you claim their belief in scientology comes from being brainwashed?

your 'narrative,' as i read it, was that people literally could not be psychologically manipulated into believing that the abuse they were suffering was beneficial, and that they could only have entered into such an arrangement willingly. so, yeah, it does shit all over abuse victims, or at least those that at some point would apologize, earnestly, for their abusers. and yes, btw, i do think that "independent scientologists" have been suckered, but i'm not going to go tell them that to their face. that would be rude. also btw who gives a shit, we're talking about the non-independent scientologists.

xp
i just am making a case that the evil they are is a very familiar evil, and that people's relationships to them aren't so different from various organizations + religions throughout human history. i don't think you need this 'brainwashing' or 'cult' jargon to diagnose what is going on with them. and in fact it obscures from actually understanding what is going on versus sensationalizing it.

most of yr post i'd agree with, but i honestly do think that the depth of scientology's embrace of manipulative practice makes them very different from some institutions (loads of major religions), and very similar to others (loads of tiny cultish religions), and unique historically, both in terms of their "success" and as being very much of their time, in doctrine and in how they do things.

[continuing from my last post...]

like, you say you don't believe in brainwashing, but the core of your argument seems to be that people use brainwashing as an excuse, a distraction and as a titillating story header. some discontinuity there.

does it? don't meet vague with vague, dude. but if i'm reading you correctly, you're saying that...denying that systematic psychiatric trauma/manipulation DOESN'T clash with what we know about behavior? because...i've too narrowly defined what psychology entails? what in the heck?

iirc the concept of "cult mind-control" was removed from the DSM-III so what is the psychological authority you're appealing to? some guy u saw on dr. phil?

to say that "cult mind-control" is not a psychological disorder is not to say that people cannot be manipulated and (to some extent) controlled

I would put it this way: outside of scientology and organized crime, how many other people in the life of Mordy have:
family friends who were blackmailed by them and a man who they threatened to kill

Mordy, I don't think anyone is saying that "brainwashing" is a diagnosis, we're specifically using it as shorthand to refer to abusive coercion tactics. I believe I personally have defined that every time, and don't really use the word "brainwashing"

oh man, do you remember that scene in the movie Pi where the hasids are chasing the protagonist around and threatening him? so weird

i don't think the way we talk about them are very illuminating as to explaining why they exist, what they fulfill for people, etc. i think we pathologize the phenomenon (to use the language of a different discipline) and that it's superficial.

― Mordy, Monday, July 2, 2012 9:16 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i suppose we do pathologize "the phenomenon" in that concerns about cultish buying-in could be seen to balloon to the point of including Plain Old Religious People among the ~brainwashed~ but that is, str8 up, love you bro, omega-level concern-trolling.

worrying about governmental abuses isn't the same as believing we shouldn't have government, etc.

cuz tbh i DO think it's interesting that scientology exists, and is fulfilling for people. i also think it's interesting that it has always been hollow, theologically, that people know this, and that people get into it anyway and find peace in it. i think that that is sorta distinct from many other religions; esp when coupled with its newness, its slick marketing, and its insinuation into the lives of not only the rank and file, but some of the most famous and well-known people on the entire planet. that is ~weird~ and novel.

i suppose we do pathologize "the phenomenon" in that concerns about cultish buying-in could be seen to balloon to the point of including Plain Old Religious People among the ~brainwashed~ but that is, str8 up, love you bro, omega-level concern-trolling.

i think u totally misunderstand my position in this but that's okay love u too bro

people can be made to do ANYTHING. anything. believe anything. do anything. you name it. someone has tricked/coerced/hypnotized/whatever you want to call it into doing anything you can think of. making people give all their money and their life to scientology is nothing. child's play. you should meet my friend pol pot.

iirc the concept of "cult mind-control" was removed from the DSM-III so what is the psychological authority you're appealing to? some guy u saw on dr. phil?

― Mordy, Monday, July 2, 2012 9:24 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

years of medical education but w/e

also srsly wtf are you on about: it was removed from the DSM because "cult mind control" isn't a distinct psychiatric diagnosis. nor was hysteria. but not being in the dsm doesn't mean that cult manipulation can't ~produce~ mental illness: PTSD, depression, anxiety. personality disorders in the young. etc. all of these are still moving targets (psychology can be a pretty blunt tool), but we're working on it.

I wanna say that this sidetrack is a bummer because there's genuinely exciting shit goin on with the Katie leaving Tom stuff BUT: Mordy, the stuff that constitutes "brainwashing" is actually pretty well known. Getting people into unfamiliar environments, regulating their free time to think by themselves, denying them contact with their families/relentlessly hammering home the idea that families & friends are either evil or deluded or "wouldn't understand": at any rate attempting to regulate contact with people outside the group, sleep deprivation: buncha little techniques that you basically only have to get somebody to agree to in order to get their mind into a really vulnerable spot, and then you feed 'em the information/comfort they're going to need to feel secure in the absence of their safety net (friends/family), their daily comforts (sleep/time to think & sort things through), etc. It's not a hypnotic state that people end up in, so that aspect of the popular conception is bullshit, but they end up convinced of something not on the merits of the thing itself but because their sense of self has been jarred a little. Shake you loose from your comfort zone, offer you something comforting, boom, wow, isn't my God amazing? See how much better you feel now than you did before you "understood"? By this measure - a basic emotional manipulation within a controlled environment scheme - this cult practices brainwashing at a level that most Christian denominations do not.

Perhaps it would be better to simply couch "brainwashing" as "torture," at least in part as we currently define torture. Coercion by way of depravation, isolation, etc.

Scient really exemplifies the banality of evil principle. For all its nuttiness, for all its shadiness, it almost always seems to boil down to the church shaking people down for money. That's my takeaway from all these pieces, at least. The Haggis piece in the New Yorker? He walks out, iirc, when it becomes too much about money. A lot of the folks defecting now? Claim they were put off by the increased emphasis on money. Reading about Miscaviage, it all seems to be about the cash, not just in a spendthrift sort of way, but also in a class/cachet sort of way, like he needs the money and power to keep up with his pal Cruise, who of course got where he is by way of something Miscaviage can never have. It all seems so venal.

Reconstructing a bit of the past here, was Scient ever a controversy or issue or whatever before they landed the likes of Cruise and Travolta? It seems like it was pretty under the radar before then, or at least not so egregious, just another little cult that people gravitate toward. But then Miscaviage took over in the '80s and things got so amped up and weird it couldn't stay hidden anymore?

xp That was informative. Thanks.

another thread was revived about this stuff today, we could probably just stick to that one to specifically talk about tom & katie & xenu: Tom Cruise is Fuckin' Passionate, Man.

jesus fucking christ aero i had that batsignal on for HOURS

xps always

i think u totally misunderstand my position in this but that's okay love u too bro

― Mordy, Monday, July 2, 2012 9:31 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

maybe, but i took your position to be: pathologizing the behavior of...cults? buying into cults?...is somehow detrimental to investigations of why cults or what we call cults even exist or why they appeal? IF that was your point (and not what i said earlier, about worrying about "cults are bad" coming to include "religion is bad"), then my point still stands: concern-trolling. sure it's a bummer that we're not getting to the bottom of what cults really ~are~ and why do they continue to appeal to people, and why are they always lead by nutters, but pointing out the bad behavior of a particularly successful cult doesn't mean we can't have that discussion. but, you know, at least make that clear. otherwise you're trying to have a discussion about why do people even GET sick in the middle of talking about what hypertension actually is and why its bad for your kidneys. great convo, would love to have it, but keep yr eye on the ball here.

i really need to start punctuating and using proper grammar again.

mea culpa gbx, been resting up all day

this pretty excellent movie doesn't do a lot of telling but the cult in it has some pretty exemplary brainwashing stuff. like most small-scale stuff though the cult in the movie starts with "find people who are super-vulnerable/outcast/mentally ill" so the get-'em-susceptible angle takes less work

as i read it, part of mordy's objection seems to result from an insistence that people decide for themselves what they believe, so the ultimate responsibility for any given individual's beliefs must therefore be personal. he opposes this to a conception of brainwashing that replaces individual autonomy and personal responsibility with outside string-pulling, machine control.

i think this opposition is false. we can easily reconcile individual autonomy with external manipulation. though people are always ultimately responsible for their own decisions and beliefs, if we can effectively control the environment in which decisions are rendered and beliefs chosen, then we may be able to guide susceptible individuals toward a belief-state of our choosing. whether or not we can say for certain why this works, we can easily observe that it does - at least on certain people in certain circumstances some of the time.

i suspect that a big part of being an effective "brainwasher" lies in knowing how to choose your marks, and in sending the kinds of signals that will attract such people in the first place.

love your govt:

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

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

Meanwhile:

http://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2012/06/29/the-tipping-point-for-scientology-inc/

abbott thanks for the book recommendation, my sister was in straight for 3ish years

The situation was exacerbated for Miscavige when Int base staff began to realize that a sure fire means to get ejected from Int base hell was to become pregnant. Several couples intentionally conceived children, and when discovered they were routed off and paid handsome sums to remain complicit in continuing to cover up Miscavige’s abuses by remaining silent on the outside. It became such a widespread solution, that Miscavige, in his inimitably oppressive style, banned the institution of MARRIAGE on the Int base. The institution of marriage is now a BANNED practice at the Int Scientology Headquarters base.

Holy shit!

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?

They made a movie about this case that debuted at Sundance this year. By all accounts, it's pretty intense. Here's the trailer:
http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/magnolia/compliance/

Also -

Is this already in the thread? I suppose the delivery takes some getting used to, but it's pretty fascinating...
(El-Ron's grandson doing spoken word about his grandfather):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciupsqkLLkQ

that was kind of fantastic.

could do without the moody music at the beginning and end but whatevs.

The Realist on Scientology in 1973, prob worth sticking here

L Ron Hubbard Jr's interview with Penthouse magazine as well (don't believe this has been posted)

http://www.rickross.com/reference/scientology/scien240.html

Wow its suprising me that I never really knew about the Crowley/Satanist angle to Hubbard before now. How have they not been decried globally as a cult with stuff like that being in the media? I mean they have effing tax exempt status in my country!

they kinda have been decried globally as a cult tbf, they just tend to reply by decrying libelly as a plaintiff

tru dat

Penthouse: Didn't your father have any interest in helping people?

Hubbard: No.

Penthouse: Never?

Hubbard: My father started out as a broke science-fiction writer. He was always broke in the late 1940s. He told me and a lot of other people that the way to make a million was to start a religion. Then he wrote the book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health while he was in Bayhead, New Jersey. When we later visited Bayhead, in about 1953, we were walking around and reminiscing --he told me that he had written the book in one month.

man what a great building:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/07/08/fashion/08SCIENTOLOGY_SPAN/08SCIENTOLOGY_SPAN-articleLarge.jpg

This fall is perfect timing for the Paul Thomas Anderson movie, too.

Seriously, new and interesting developments every day--like a potential quick collapse:
No Memorial for Scientology President's Son
Scientology center in Haifa goes indie