Dear Art,

[GregFL]

Thanks Thom!


I get the grift of what you are implying, and I appreciate it immensely.

[ChrisL]

" An odd coincidence here was that Sandi's parents ran the restaurant / tackle store out there at about that time. We didn't meet til probably 6-7 years later."

Thom - I don't believe there are any coincidences, just events we may not percieve as important or relevant at the time...

[marshall]

Great thread everyone. Lots of thoughtful posts.

-------quote-----
"The seed did change alot for the better as time went on it moved on. Maybe you shoud too."
--Ft lauderdale
-----------------

Interesting. You and John U. are in direct disagreement on this point it seems. It is not so simple as getting worse or getting better, imo. It depends, as always, upon your pov and what you consider as being better or worse. Like Greg, John and others I wasn't actually there in the later years so I can only go on what I've read here from those such as yourself that were. From my own pov, the Seed indeed got better in some ways and worse in others. The biggest improvement to me is the voluntary nature of the later program. No more forcing kids against their will into the program. You also mentioned that hardly anyone got yelled at in group anymore...plus the lack of smoking. I have 0 problem with a bunch of adults getting together and deciding to form a new religion or follow anyone they so choose. This goes for the latter day Seed as well as for such fringe groups as the heaven's gate. As long as no coercion is used...the courts aren't ordering anyone to join up and wear black tennis shoes...then it's their own business. That's a big plus. It's just not my cup of kool-aid and I'd run from such a group as fast as possible.

On the other hand, (again from my own pov) most of the other changes were for the worse in that the Seed became more overtly cultic (elevating Art to near faultless divine status it would seem), status oriented and self-enclosed. If you or others do not regard Lybbi or Art determining who can and can't have a relationship or get married or what sort of career you can have or whether you should have kids or requiring everyone to always be on their program or...well the list is long....as being cultic, then there are (to you) no such things as cults, period. To me, there's something distinctly sick and neurotic about the latter Seed program. At least when I graduated, you were expected to go out and live your own life and make your own decisions. Kudos to John for that at least.

[ This Message was edited by: marshall on 2005-10-06 21:08 ]

[marshall]

Your post made me think that people could also say similar things about the Marine Corps. If you were growing up in a bad neighborhood surrounded by hard drugs, gangs and frequent shootings...then either voluntarily joined or were drafted (the bad old days!) into the Marines, you could easily make the claim that joining the Marines saved your life...that you'd be dead or in jail if not for joining.

On the other hand, if you were a kid in a middle-class suburb worried more about getting a high SAT score than drive-by shootings or shooting drugs...& then you joined the Marines (or were drafted)..it would be equally as plausable to claim that joining ruined your life...especially if you found yourself being shot-at...or had little if any effect upon your life. If you were KIA, it would not only have not saved your life, it would be the cause of your death.
Neither person would be lying.

The problem is the 'one size fits all' philosophy. What's good for one might be harmful to another and irrelevant to yet another depending upon our life circumstances. And as Walter pointed out in his post, it is really impossible to know what caused what or whether the Seed saved your life or made it worse. My own life circumstances were such that the Seed at least saved me from serving 5 years in a Georgia prison...and if you'd ever met JJ, you'd know how grateful I am for that!

(JJ was a cock-eyed black guy about 6 1/2 feet tall serving a life sentence for murder and was especially....uh...fond of young white boys that he often attempted to 'seduce' with a butcher knife stolen from the prison kitchen. I narrowly escaped his affections, but given longer time, he might be my life-partner by now. :cry2: )

[cleveland]

In my era the Seed was a relatively benign place in terms of the 'bad stuff' and had some real benefits for people - the 'good stuff.' So depending upon where you were coming from as a kid, and where you were going, the Seed either had some benefit to you, or a possible down side, if you lost the opportunity to go to college or get married or other good things that might have been coming to you. It is all relative. It seems to me that in the Seed during a rapid growth period (the early 70s) things got a little crazier, and also in later Straight or other offshoot programs (man, kids are getting abused - and I am not talking about eating PB&J sandwiches - I mean rape, physical abuse,etc.)

See, I think the heart of the debate here revolves around human nature. We need to belong! To the degree that we make compromises to belong, we are acting 'cult' like. Almost every human activity, when viewed from the outside, looks ridiculous. So if you dropped down from Mars, and observed a High School marching band, a middle school lunch table, a corporate meeting, a Marine Corp. bootcamp, a married couple arguing, whatever - it would all look absurd. Remember your first day of school? Remember seeing all the cliques, jocks and nerds, cheerleader and freaks, greasers, whatever it was when you were there? Or the first day of a new job? Maybe you are more social than I am, but to me it takes me a while to warm up to new social situations - to decide what parts of me don't 'fit in' and to choose to display them or not.

So whatever cult you choose - be it AA, Baptist religion, the Green Party, NORML, Jews for Jesus - or maybe it's just the cult of your family - to some degree we ALL make compromises. We HAVE to. Don't tell me you don't bite your tongue sometimes with your spouse or your kids to keep the peace or to avoid embarrasmet. Well, when I was a Seedling, avoiding conflict with staff or protecting Art's aura of invincibility was just as important to me.

Now, if we can all agree that our human activity is all a bit cult-like, than we can drop the argument about is the Seed a 'cult.' What we have left is the degree of COERCION. To the degree that I am coerced to follow the dictates of my family, religion, job or friends (and there will almost always be some coercion - even if it's just subtle pressure to conform) I will come to a point where I will sacrifice my humanity. But that will be different for each of us. Joining a street gang or becoming a cop or a Marine has a different standard and intensity than having lunch with my aunt, but it's really just a matter of degree, isn't it?

WE can still debate the value of the Seed or similar programs, but I think it's important that we recognise that both good and bad can come out of this human need to belong.

[Ft. Lauderdale]

Walt- thank you for your post.  Thank you for putting it into a perspective I can understand and relate too.  (I tried to use another word other than "relate" but its the right word to use)
 :grin:


You see I was a little more pushy than you were or a little more abrupt & abrasive.  I may have gotten knocked down a few times but I guess I basically always got what I wanted to a certain degree.  

One question, didn't you go to college to become a Respiratory Therapist ( I bet you have an  Heimlich Maneuver story or two to tell)

Walter you are the best my friend.

[Antigen]

Yup, I think we all can agree, Walter rocks!. The Program works on the same basic principles as any other social group. It relies on natural social reflexes to effect control. And It's the coercion, primarily, that makes it awful. That and an (often extreme) imbalance of power.

As a mother, I had near total power of my kids when they were little. They needed me for every little need. The difference is that I needed them just as much; no other kid would do, my kid had to be happy and healthy in order for me to be happy and healthy.

TOUGHLOVE directly contradicts that. According to that doctrine, parents are supposed to pretend (fake it till ya make it) that they don't give a flip how the kid is feeling, their happiness is not tied to the kid's happiness. And any dissent from the Program dogma is to be harshly condemned as manipulation.

The trouble I have w/ the troubled parent industry (of which the Seed was just one tiny little componant) is that it's dogma has been broadly adopted as public policy.

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves

--Ronald Reagan

[cleveland]

Ginger,

You are so right about power. Some of it is how you perceive the situation; some of it is force or violence, or the threat of those things.

I think the problem is when you have one group (the 'in' group) lording it over the 'out' group. That sure happened in Jr. High and also at the Seed, and happens to me sometimes today. It's complicated by my self-perception too. If I am feeling 'out' I will be less assertive, more subservient, shyer, whatever. If I am feeling 'in' I will be louder, funnier, more charming, and maybe mean. It certainly plays a role in family dynamics, race relations, politics, and social status.

Everybody probably remembers the famous experiment where volunteers thought they were shocking other people as part of an experiment? Nice middle class people would turn up the voltage because a man with a clipboard and a white jacket told them they should do it. 90% percent of more did it. (I think it was the Stanley Milgram experiment. They weren't really shocking people, but they thought they were.) Anyway, this has been used to show how nice, ordinary people can oppress others if the social dynamics are right.

I think we all need to keep in mind that everyone is susceptible to oppressing others, given the right circumstances. And we might even feel that it is the 'right' thing to do, or that we are 'only trying to help', or that 'this is for your own good.' And because our self-esteem is tied up in thinking we are right, it can be really hard to see ourselves as oppressors. But, we all do it, to some degree or another.

So, if you take the approach, 'the ends justifies the means,' all kinds of terrible things can happen. And very nice people can justify doing these things too (Hello Betty Sembler?)

Walter

Oh and PS Lauderdale; I went to a temporary trade school, sponsored by Broward General, to get certified in Respiratory Therapy. I think it only lasted for two years before they closed it down. It wasn't college, but it was authorized to issue certificates.

[Antigen]

On 2005-10-07 10:10:00, cleveland wrote:

Anyway, this has been used to show how nice, ordinary people can oppress others if the social dynamics are right.

Yes! Exactly that. Stop me if you've read this, I know I've told this story before. I'll never forget where I was and what I was doing the moment ATF started firing on the Waco compound. I was in an office full of mostly very young, hopefully up-and-coming communications professionals. My desk was right next to the break room. I started noticing an unusually large number of them all fixated on the tv. Then they started cheering like the home team just scored a winning touchdown in the Super Bowl. So I stopped working (it was useless, the whole department.... whole company, I think, had sort of wandered off the job) and asked what was going on.

I just couldn't fucking believe it! Not that our federal government had started fire bombing a little cult compound, that was sort of predictable given the circumstances. But these people's reaction to it! These were, as I've said, mostly young middle class people. Lot of college students; mostly intelligent, ambitious, nice people who pitched in for office birthday parties and such. These were genuinely nice people cheering over little kids getting torched for the entertainment of the viewing audience.

I think I spent all of my political currency (I had been supervisor of the transcription department) by opening my mouth. I couldn't help it, though, and I don't really regret it. I think I did make a couple of dozen people think that day.

That is the nature of group mentality. But it only can get really out of hand and destructive if no one opens their mouths or their minds and questions the direction the mob is headed.

Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die
-- Malachy McCourt

[Ft. Lauderdale]

Exactly-
Believe me I never thought I would agree with you but here we go.  I did always have a big mouth probably my Aries birth right. Anyway for whatever reason, I always basicly  did what I wanted and I did right by others at the same time.  I never really stepped on two many toes but did butt quite a few heads.  I remember Lybbi commenting to someone and saying "I know he (meaning me) always somehow comes out smelling like a rose.  She did not like me at all for the last 2 or 3 years.  Thats because I was always at some odds with her husband.  Thats besides the point.  I really did through out the years say what I thought about whatever I wanted.  I don't mean that in a cocky selfish way.  I really said how I  felt about anything.  Sometimes I had alot of people Peering at me and it may have been uncomfortable at times but I did what I thought was right. But you see I was practicing what I learned and It did work.  You see I really am grateful for the opportunities that I had, and I really did try to put my heart into them.  That is why I can defend what I defend.  I loved the Seed it loved me back.

[jgar]

Could not agree with you more Ft. Lauderdale Things were not perfect but I thought they were dam good.

[Antigen]

Lauderdale, maybe our buddies here are right about us. I sort of played it the same way on my program to the extent that I thought prudent. I never overtly broke a rule or dissented or disrupted things in any way. My mission and strategy was to prove that I was quite straight enough, thank you, and could take anything they had to dish out w/o flinching. But when it came down to things like food restrictions and other nasty deeds in the host home to enforce compliance in group, I'd take my chances and throw down the gauntlet w/ old staffisms like "leave group in the building". I don't remember ever having been called down on things like that, either.

Here's freedom to him who would read;
 
Here's freedom to him who would write;

None ever feared that the truth should be heard,

But them that the truth would indict.


--author unknown (circa 1914)

[Ft. Lauderdale]

Antigen,
Life in the apt's was a blast.  There was no shortage of food fun or laughter.  This is where there was no comparison to straight.  There was alot of love and camaraderie.  Alot of Tennis golf vollyball and ping pong.  They never made much of a  golfer out of me but the rest I lived for.  We all got to be quite good cooks also.  When I was married I really missed all of it.( If you knew my X you would understand(just kidding).

I really never bought into the save the world thing(believe it or not)but I loved the camaraderie and the friendships that developed.

[Antigen]

Oh, no doubt. I remember some good times in our house and other settings in the early daze too. But it was a tense, fragile sort of good humor; contingent on one's total devotion to the whole game. And it really and truely was disturbing seeing the changes in my family members. Brainwashed is right on the mark; it's no surprise to me that so many independent observers struck on the same descriptive term.

It may be hard for you to grasp this coming from your point of view. You loved it and were willing to support all aspects of the culture for what you got out of it. For me it was deeply disturbing to see my brothers and their friends just acting... not themselves. I didn't buy that they actually, suddenly, no longer liked Black Sabath and rock concerts.

And I didn't understand. But the tension over it was palpable. Our whole lifestyle changed; people dissapeared from the scene, showed up on front row at open meeting then reemerged w/ a blithe, vacant smile and it was absolutely verboten to express anything but sheer joy over these spooky changes.

Busy, curious, thirsty fly, Drink with me, and drink as I.
-- William Oldys (1696-1761): On a Fly drinking out of a Cup of Ale.

[Thom]

:em: