scientology & celebrities

yeah i think at first its more like amway/dale carnegie how to be a better you dianetics be fabulous and get what you want out of life (like EST) and then whammo! before you know it ten hour grillings and alien lore.

if it weren't for the fact that they're legit just evil fucking scumbags, i'd have nothing but affection for a group of cultists who believe that exorcising alien thetans from your body is the way to achieve success in the world. it's the super-evil, even by contemporary religious standards, that makes me root for their utter collapse.

Vicisti, Seaorgaee

yeah i said that upthread. i am totally for a sci-fi religion. i would even go their churches if it were just cosmik majik and cool imagery and aliens. sadly, its just a con. and a nasty one at that.

i kinda think scientology is gonna be over within the next 50 years

wow, you are being generous. i'm not sure i can even give it five

I can't even tell you how many dvds and books Scientology sends the library every year that I end up throwing away. They must have money to burn.

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.

you're right but at the same time i do think there's something unique about "brainwashing"--obviously any ideology or belief system is gonna try to immunize itself against others but "brainwashing" is like an extra level of paranoia and isolation. so it's not "look how dumb and evil those Others are" but "dont even speak to or think about those Others." for that reason it's probably especially fragile too.

like it's less about convincing and persuasion as removing itself from those domains entirely.

are republicans brainwashed? like, where do you draw the line between being convinced of your opinion and unwilling to listen to alternatives and being brainwashed? i'm just skeptical of the term 'brainwashed' in general bc it assumes certain things about malleability of human mind, and mind control, and power + stuff that i think is a) not scientifically proven, b) kinda philosophically mindless, and c) better explained by other terms we already use all the time to describe the same thing. it's just that brainwashed has a special cache bc i think parents who have kids in cults like to believe that there's some kind of mind control at work, as opposed to normal human stupidity, vapidness, already existing susceptibility to terrible things, etc.

Well I don’t know if it’s brainwashing but in reality tv for example there’s something to the notion of the reality bubble, people who are cut off from everyone they know and everything else and they lose a proper perspective on things, which is why you get a dozen people freaking out over and investing a lot into some dude on ‘the bachelor’ or some girl on ‘the bachelorette’ after knowing them for two weeks. It definitely occurs and it seems scientology uses similar “tactics” for lack of a better term. It seems like it might be something they intentionally do rather than collateral damage from the very manner in which people enter into the church.

most churches brainwash people, don't they? or most religions.

well... no

i agree with you Mordy, i guess i just want to keep the term around as the extreme end of things. it's an especially powerful hermetic and self-confirming logic. Like, even rush limbaugh will play clips of an Obama speech to filter it through his worldview but i dont know if a brainwashed person even bothers to do that much. scientology doesn't seem to go out and defend itself so much as want to keep everything secret and "apart" from that media environment. maybe im talking in circles here, though.

they do if the word brainwash just means allowing yourself to be convinced of things you may have previously not believed. if you take the word at face value tho - that your brain is being washed by a second party - then no. no one has ever been brainwashed imho ever (except maybe through the use of drugs, torture, idk, but certainly not otherwise w/out participation of the washed). xxp

i guess i mean that rather than try to go out and convince and persuade the wider world, the cultish "brainwashing" stuff seeks to separate off from the wider world.

but agreed the word taken literally in the pod-people sense is silly.

how does that differ from the echo chamber critique tho? the density of the seal?

The active and enforced separation for non-believing family members.

from, that is.

^^

arent you even introduced to the doctrines of scientology gradually? it's not like you start going to church and then a year later find out about Jesus dying for your sins. They tell you right off!

i suspect that something like "brainwashing" does exist, but it isn't just the tendency of some people to cling to seemingly irrational belief. cult-like organizations often prey on emotionally fragile people in desperate circumstances. i'd say that ordinary indoctrination begins to cross over into something like "brainwashing" when such individuals are deliberately isolated from friends, family, work, familiar environments and routines, and are thus rendered completely dependent. it continues when the dependent subject is subjected to a sustained program of conditioning techniques, including: sleep deprivation, regimentation of activity, the strategic granting and withdrawl of affection and basic needs, intense and constant group pressure to conform, extremely prolonged ritual observance, deliberate infliction of "cleansing" psychological trauma, punishment for doctrinal deviance, etc.

"cult-like organizations often prey on emotionally fragile people in desperate circumstances."

yeah, they are called churches!

but okay i won't use the word brainwash when talking about most religions. mass psychosis? mass delusion?

Not only is there an element of imposed isolation to Scient - sometimes on boats out at sea, even! - but also an element of blackmail as well; extensive confession is a precept, apparently, and the church is reportedly not afraid to use it as leverage. Also, leaving or disparaging the church typically invites a vindictive reaction, and some in church can be particularly petty, as people in positions of power are wont to me. This stuff is all beyond the pale for a so-called religion, with tax exempt status, no less. The horror stories from escapees -blowers? - are predictably, well, horrific.

"sleep deprivation, regimentation of activity, the strategic granting and withdrawl of affection and basic needs, intense and constant group pressure to conform, extremely prolonged ritual observance, deliberate infliction of "cleansing" psychological trauma, punishment for doctrinal deviance, etc."

church bake sales can be brutal!

Like, imagine the Catholic church requiring confession, but then compiling that info to use against you at a later date. That's awful.

i mean that list could easily describe some regular old religions. hardcore buddhist sects, hardcore xian and islamic sects, etc.

Operative word being "hardcore," which is to say, quite rarified, which is also to say, very cult-like.

as an outsider, most churches and religions seem cult-like to me. they just do. i wish them well. i'm not anti exactly. but they scare me.

Oh, totally. Be afraid. But some are more insidious and/or conniving than others. Like, for example, profit-driven religions such as the so-called religion in question.

Bush and Gore, what's the difference?

scott seward: scared of religion, curious about ghosts

*files away for future reference*

ha! well, scientology is scary, but it also has about another 1000+ years of damage to do before it can compare to some of the old fogeys out there.

In its defense, it's got a pretty small footprint, and as much as I don't like the idea of religions praying on the weak, at a certain point you have to take responsibility for falling for a scheme as baldfaced as this one! Suckers gonna get suckered. I mean, there's a paper record behind this! Most religions require some degree of faith, but this one requires faith that transcends fact.

who hooked Cruise into scientology, anyway?

Mimi Rogers.

oh right. I think I knew that

i do love mimi. i loved the rapture so much. go figure!

Has anyone seen "Tabloid"? Certainly made me look at Mormonism even more cautiously than Scientology. At least nobody takes Scientologists seriously.

i've known people with jehovah's witness family members who were totally cut off from them and/or shunned/ostracized because they weren't witnesses.

Re: Mormonism, once again, beware the contemporary paper trail!

Mormon converts baffle me

tom's lauer interview is like a screen test.

maria's great aunt would have big family dinners on sunday and the witness family members would eat outside. they wouldn't go in her aunt's house. but they would eat her chicken! talk about outside chicken!

Mordy maybe I'm misunderstanding you but it sure seems like you're pretending away the whole field of psychology in yr dismissal of "brainwashing". Which, you know, has some notes of irony to it.

what does the field of psychology have to do with brainwashing?

...

i have no idea what that ellipse means. one can question the validity of brainwashing/deprogramming/exit counseling, etc without repudiating field of psychology.

To my understanding, what people refer to as brainwashing is usually the use of coercive tactics, often subtle, to manipulate someone into passively accepting what you tell them as truth or impel them to do something. The entire thing upthread with eye contact, but with the supervisor of the exercise being able to butt in and say "no, you're doing it wrong, I'm starting over" has shit-all to do with the staring and everything to do with the fact that you are setting pleasing the "instructor" so that they will pass you. Same basis of where the ideas of Stockholm syndrome and the like come from.