Author Topic: insane concept.  (Read 4236 times)

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Offline GregFL

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insane concept.
« on: May 02, 2006, 12:17:00 PM »
I was just thinking of something.  I remember while in the seed, if someone 'related' and started analzying something in any way other than how he was expected to think about something, he would be chastised, sometimes severely, for "rationalizing".

Man o man, only in a cult do you get in trouble for using the power of rational thought.





_________________
"I think they're very dangerous and destructive. I don't think that anyone should think for you. And that's exactly what cults do. All cults, including Scientology, say, 'I am your mind, I am your brain. I've done all the work for you, I've laid the path open for you. All you have to do is turn your mind off and walk down the path I have created.'" - L. Ron Hubbard, Jr., 1983 Penthouse interview


http://www.lermanet.com/scientologynews ... w-1983.htm

[ This Message was edited by: GregFL on 2006-05-02 09:23 ][ This Message was edited by: GregFL on 2006-05-02 09:24 ]
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Offline Magpie

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insane concept.
« Reply #1 on: May 02, 2006, 12:56:00 PM »
I am curious as to what you would prescribe to someone who needed help in getting off drugs?  Is there a solution or should everyone just try and quit on their own--take a chance on it?  I saw a 16 year old girl overdose this weekend at church and I was trying to think of what to do for her.  You seem to be so down on everything out there that has helped a lot of people and in your case hurt a lot of people.  So since this wasn't the solution what would be?
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Offline GregFL

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insane concept.
« Reply #2 on: May 02, 2006, 01:12:00 PM »
Maggie that is a good question, and I will start by saying I don't have all the answers.

Drug use really isn't a problem, per se (in my opinion).  the system that we were subjected to was based on a reactionary myth, and that was that any drug use was a one way street to death, insanity or jail.  This is just false.  I know adults who have smoked the occasional joint since they were 13, and they are successfull business people with sucessfull families.  Some of these people even snort the occasional line.  Let me say I am not one of them, but I certainly know plenty that fit that mold.

Drug abuse is problematic but usually goes away on its own as people mature and realize that it is causing them more problems than solutions.

Then there is the issue of addiction, which doesn't respond on any statistical level at all to treatment.  Usually those that improve (before anyone snaps I said usually) do so because they were  'ready' and looking for something to focus their energy on, whether it was AA, scientology's treatment program or the seed.  In this instance, the methodology seems to be almost irrelevant.

So my question is right back at you.  If statistically 12 step programs don't work (and they don't), then why should we force people into treatment?  Is it moral to lock a young kid up and subject them to methodology that is untested, considered torture if applied to adult prisoners...just on the odd chance that they may grow up an addict?  Do you believe the seed was sucessfull (statistically, not individually)?

While you are answering, remember all our fallen seed graduates that died of drug overdoses and suicides.  Why didn't it work for them?  Also keep in mind the many many people who have logged on here with their stories of post seed pain and anguish.

Also understand that I support voluntary treatment, as long as full disclosure is made to the person volunteering to treatment the methodology and full contact with the family, as well as full right to change their mind and get up and leave without being tackled to the floor, restrained, denied the right to council  or physcologically coerced.

It is when people are forced into treatment and mislead about the modality and their rights are violated that I take exception.  This is the rule with children, not the exception when we are talking about drug rehabilitation.  If someone walked into a treatment center and said "i Need help, and I don't care that the congress has indicated you use brainwashing methods, please just admit me", well then the seed indeed.  But that wasn't the situation with the vast majority of the many thousands of kids that went thru treatment.

[ This Message was edited by: GregFL on 2006-05-02 10:18 ]
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Offline GregFL

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insane concept.
« Reply #3 on: May 02, 2006, 01:21:00 PM »
while we are conversing in this thread Maggie, maybe as a former staff member you can explain why using rational thought was something that could even get you started over.  Why also was deep thought considered a seed crime  and given a special name? (getting into your head).

Is this normal anywhere else in society?  Does this promote or negate individuality or groupthink?  Do other groups we consider cults embrace these same techniques?

Thanks for rationally thinking about it...er I mean "getting into your head" about it.  On second thought, maybe I meant "rationalizing" it.

 :grin:  :grin:








[ This Message was edited by: GregFL on 2006-05-02 10:22 ]
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Offline Ft. Lauderdale

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insane concept.
« Reply #4 on: May 02, 2006, 04:30:00 PM »
Are teen's as a whole really that capable of much rational thinking.

I remember when I was 15.  I hitch hiked from Ft. Lauderdale to NY.  I ran away from home.

Upon returning via "Greyhound Bus".  I remember my parents picking my up at the bus station.  It was a very somber time.  My father asked , why I ran away from home. I was sitting by myself in the back seat and felt like I was in a tunnel when he asked.  I answered with the only thought my brain could supply.  "I dunno".  There were reasons thinking back but I couldn't explain them.  I don't think I really knew how to.
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Offline Ft. Lauderdale

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insane concept.
« Reply #5 on: May 02, 2006, 04:41:00 PM »
Greg I'm sure most of your thought patterns went something like.  I wonder if Maggie thinks I'm cool.  Maybe if I pop a wheely then she would really think I'm cool.  

Hey lets face it, for most of the shit we did.  We all wern't that bright.  At least I wasn't.  

I needed some discipline wooped on me.  (NO NOT BEAT INTO ME BUT I NEEDED DISCIPLINE)I was not getting it anywhere else.  

My parents could have sent me to my room to think about it.  :lol:  I never came up with the right answer. Never did.  Maybe some kids do.  Not me...
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Offline Johnny G

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insane concept.
« Reply #6 on: May 02, 2006, 05:07:00 PM »
I think it comes down to "being ready" - ie ready to let someone else drive for a bit cause whatever I was doing wasn't working.  

For anyone not there, it might be possible to get some to that point on the front row, but others will fight it because they don't feel they need the help - and may not.  My brother and sister did as many drugs and crimes as I did, but never got as out of control as I did, never spent any time in any rehab and both are very successful in their chosen fields - I don't think it would have worked out that way for me, and I felt theat way then, so I was open to another way.  

I agree with Greg that the drug use, per se, is not the problem, just a symptom.
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Offline GregFL

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insane concept.
« Reply #7 on: May 02, 2006, 07:58:00 PM »
But Ft Lauderdale, as the father of a 16 year old I am acutely aware of the lack of rationality that flows from her. I also know kids her age that can and do analyze situations in very adult ways.

That really isn't the question proffered here.  The question is why was rational discourse not only disallowed but severely dealt with? Why was deep thought given a special name and also a subject of punishment and often ridicule and belittlement if you were caught 'in your head'.

You guys must know the answer...you were staff.  Or maybe you were just taught to deal with these things and never really gave it much thought?

Perhaps you we so thorougly indoctrinated that you couldn't imagine anything wrong with the perfect seed society you were promoting...or just maybe you were scared to challenge the notion that something might be wrong with not permitting a 15 year old girl/boy to think about the situation she/he was in with an individual idea or to challenge authority?  I think we all know what would have happened if you would have challenged the notion that something might be amiss here.  

Don't we?
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Offline GregFL

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insane concept.
« Reply #8 on: May 02, 2006, 08:06:00 PM »
Quote
On 2006-05-02 14:07:00, Johnny G wrote:
 My brother and sister did as many drugs and crimes as I did, but never got as out of control as I did, never spent any time in any rehab and both are very successful in their chosen fields - I don't think it would have worked out that way for me, and I felt theat way then, so I was open to another way.  



Are you aware Johnny that virtually every seed graduate that thinks the seed helped them views themselves in this pre-seed dismal failure way...no way to pull themselves out..no way to survive without the extreme intervention of the Seed?  Do you know even kids that smoked a joint or two that have logged on insist the same thing for themselves some 30 years later?

Isn't it kind of ironic that the notion of non survival without the seed was drilled into you head every single day...and in fact was a precursor to move from one level to another?  You know you would never have gotten off your '14' days if you didn't acknowledge this "fact"?

What makes you so different than your siblings?  Are you an addict?  Are you not so bright?  

What exactly seperates you from all those other teenage drug users that escaped the seed that are now lawyers, doctors, congressman, business leaders...and president of the USA?

Just what would have happened to you without the seed?  And BTW, ever do drugs after the seed? Get drunk?
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Offline GregFL

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insane concept.
« Reply #9 on: May 02, 2006, 08:15:00 PM »
Quote
On 2006-05-02 14:07:00, Johnny G wrote:





I agree with Greg that the drug use, per se, is not the problem, just a symptom."


that was mostly true of Seedlings.  Addicts were statistically almost non existent, and then they were given special status and bumped thru the ranks, called on constantly, etc.  usually they left pretty quick.  

Johnny, I agree that drug abuse is usually a symptom of self medicating other problems.  Fear, anxiety, family problems, whatever.  However, when a person starts behaving compulsively and irrationally around drug use, then drugs become the 'problem'. Sometimes people need something to focus their attention away from this new problem so they can resolve the underlying issues.  At the seed we were told the drugs were the problem..period and we were all given the same cookie cutter 'treatment' for our 'problem' that was going to cause us death, insanity or jail.  Do you see a problem with that?

We can now observe that the vast majority of those kids that did't go had a much different result than the certain doom predicted by Art Barker. Yet, many of us still proclaim that WE would personally have fit that mold.  Why, and why are so many of us convinced we were doomed without the seed?  

Further, the bigger question here is forced treatment and indoctrination into a closed society by threat and coercion.  Is that moral?  Would you like, for instance, to have been sent to the moonie camp for your drug usage and become a 10 year moonie as a result?
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Offline Seth

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insane concept.
« Reply #10 on: May 02, 2006, 10:33:00 PM »
I think that the reason that folks were asked not to "analize" things was another way of merely saying that you should follow your gut feelings.  Sometimes the heart can offer the correct choice when the mind cannot.
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Offline GregFL

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insane concept.
« Reply #11 on: May 02, 2006, 11:38:00 PM »
But Seth, if that was true, we would have a room full of people with varying "gut feelings" all giving their opinions.  If you got up and gave an opinion that varied from the seed line, you would face certain consequences.

No, sorry but you are just not right on this one.
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Offline Antigen

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insane concept.
« Reply #12 on: May 02, 2006, 11:55:00 PM »
Quote
On 2006-05-02 16:58:00, GregFL wrote:

 I think we all know what would have happened if you would have challenged the notion that something might be amiss here.

Don't we?



John Underwood does

The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submission, humility, in a word all the qualities of the canaille.
--Karl Marx, German economist and political philosopher

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Offline Seth

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insane concept.
« Reply #13 on: May 03, 2006, 12:08:00 AM »
No, sorry but you are just not right on this one."
[/quote]

   Well maybe so or maybe no Greg, Im no expert here.

   Ill just follow my gut feeling on this one  .
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Offline Stripe

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insane concept.
« Reply #14 on: May 03, 2006, 03:39:00 AM »
Quote
On 2006-05-02 16:58:00, GregFL wrote:

br>That really isn't the question proffered here.  The question is why was rational discourse not only disallowed but severely dealt with? Why was deep thought given a special name and also a subject of punishment and often ridicule and belittlement if you were caught 'in your head'.


Maybe the persons who took to the indoctrination and thrived on it were never taught to think critically about any information before they ever got to the seed.  Certainly no one was ever encouraged to think independently once they were there.

Thirty years out it's my opinion that the rejection/segregation tools we were taught created a great sense of inner-strenght as well as huge false sense intellectual superiority. But in reality, it was nothing more than turning away from anything that challeneged us or was beyond program boundaries.  How not to think in 7 easy steps.

And what follows from that blind acceptance or desire to not be responsible for your own mind any more (i.e. giving up control) is the rejection and condemnation of critical thought processes, the rejection of all that is not exaclty like what you are, the rejection and condemnation of anything that threatens the fragile new non-thinking self.  

We know that's why people got their asses handed to them for thinking and being in their heads.  
Heck, I bought into it for a while, but I knew deep inside that I was lying - to and about myself and that I was lying to and about others.
But eventually, it got pretty lonely and I had to look beyond the simplton rules of the seed.

I don't think the staff members had any thing over the rest of us peons there at all.  In fact, they were probably not even relatively thoughtful thinkers - which is why they were PREFECT for the job. Could it be that they were more easily manipulated than the rest of us, and thus much more valuable because they didn't think ?

How contrary to the real world, where your ass gets handed to you everyday if you don't think about what you are doing.

It's just a thought.... :grin:
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