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Offline Oz girl

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was there a religious influence?
« on: October 02, 2006, 06:06:26 AM »
I am aware cedu schools came from synanon, but was there a religious or "spiritual" element to them?
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Offline Anonymous

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was there a religious influence?
« Reply #1 on: October 03, 2006, 01:57:47 AM »
If anything, Cascade always seemed like it was quite the opposite.  Some of the elements of typical Abrahamic morality were reinforced, but they were given humanistic justifications.  I.E. Jessica shouldn't have done the entire football team because it cheapened her, not because it made Baby Jesus cry.  The personal was put to the fore while the divine was entirely ignored.

A few staff members were into some new age crap, but that was their own deal and it wasn't part of the curriculum.  The closest any of that stuff got to being incorporated into the program was when Art Tilles would lead his World Religions class in meditation once a semester or when Perk got going on any of his whack hippie shit.

Every so often the Jewish kids got to do down the hill and attend rituals with Art, but I can't recall a similar privilege being extended to Christian students.  Not surprising, though, when you consider the ethnic make-up of the big-wigs at CEDU and Cascade.
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Offline Anonymous

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Mormonism
« Reply #2 on: October 21, 2006, 01:31:51 AM »
I actually heard a Mormon student tell a history teacher that he felt that the class offended his religion. We were studying Native Americans in North & Central/South America. The teachers jaw dropped when this guy said that a lost tribe of Israel composed of white people had settled the Americas and were who built the mounds and pyramids. The teacher, who was actually a nice guy, just looked at all of us and said that we were free to believe what we wanted but that he was going to teach history based on scientific facts and historical evidence, not religion. He said this in a nice way and this was an interesting class. I will never forget the shocked look on his face though. I couldn't believe that Mormans believe this either. I wonder now how much their religion infects the public schools in Utah and Idaho. Overall CEDU staff and teachers were respectful of everyones religion. They didn't encourage or discourage it, but I never knew of anyone being allowed to go to church or temple....while many were spiritual, most of us weren't very religous. Very understandable in my opinion.
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Offline Anonymous

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Re: was there a religious influence?
« Reply #3 on: November 20, 2006, 11:21:13 PM »
Quote from: ""Oz girl""
I am aware cedu schools came from synanon, but was there a religious or "spiritual" element to them?


I think that the prophet, along with synanon (which stands for sins anonymous, and considered itself a church) count as a "spiritual" influence of sorts.  I do think that they took pains to avoid sounding too much like a religion however.  This was supposed to be "therapy" after all...
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Offline Psianide

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was there a religious influence?
« Reply #4 on: November 20, 2006, 11:34:57 PM »
Quote from: ""Cascade Vet""
If anything, Cascade always seemed like it was quite the opposite.  Some of the elements of typical Abrahamic morality were reinforced, but they were given humanistic justifications.  I.E. Jessica shouldn't have done the entire football team because it cheapened her, not because it made Baby Jesus cry.  The personal was put to the fore while the divine was entirely ignored.

A few staff members were into some new age crap, but that was their own deal and it wasn't part of the curriculum.  The closest any of that stuff got to being incorporated into the program was when Art Tilles would lead his World Religions class in meditation once a semester or when Perk got going on any of his whack hippie shit.

Every so often the Jewish kids got to do down the hill and attend rituals with Art, but I can't recall a similar privilege being extended to Christian students.  Not surprising, though, when you consider the ethnic make-up of the big-wigs at CEDU and Cascade.


We had new age crap at NWA when I was there. Jewish and Christian students were also allowed to attend certain worship/celebratory religious events. These things were the pet projects of staff members there though, and I know for a fact that they were only allowed because most of the staff were supportive or ambivalent toward this stuff.  When it came out that a number of us considered ourselves pagan, we had the closest thing to a literal "witch hunt" that I'll probably ever see. Very humorous in a sad sort of way...
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Offline Anonymous

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was there a religious influence?
« Reply #5 on: November 28, 2006, 05:45:38 PM »
No religion was allowed at RMA in the mid 80's for the most part.

I came from a Christian background prior to RMA. When I got there I asked about having a bible and going to services but was told that it was "Nothing but a crutch"...and told in such a demeaning way that I dared not ever breach that subject again.
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Offline Oz girl

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was there a religious influence?
« Reply #6 on: November 28, 2006, 09:46:59 PM »
Did your parents find out about this?
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n case you\'re worried about what\'s going to become of the younger generation, it\'s going to grow up and start worrying about the younger generation.-Roger Allen

Offline Anonymous

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was there a religious influence?
« Reply #7 on: November 29, 2006, 01:00:08 AM »
Quote from: ""Oz girl""
Did your parents find out about this?


not at the time of course.  They know all about RMA now and after hearing what it was REALLY all about and how we REALLY spent our time...they were pretty shocked...and admitted that they had the wool pulled over their eyes by the school with regards to the program.  It was the educational qualities that the program pushed towards my parents (even though it was complete BS)  They really didn't seem so interested in learning about all the "nuances" of all the other aspects of the program prior to my admission.

But...it was 2 decades ago...so now...all we do is shake our heads in shame when we speak of the industry.
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Offline Anonymous

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was there a religious influence?
« Reply #8 on: December 24, 2006, 03:14:50 AM »
Given the really lack in training of instructors at RMA and NWA regarding "resistant" students, it explains the riots at NWA, the runaways and the heavyhanded retaking of students from whoever helped the kids get away from a dysfunctional environment.

As well Synanon was supposed to rehab drug addicts.

Thus CEDU may have hired a lot of supposed rehabilitated addicts whose dysfunctions may have never been resolved.

Hence the violence.

Then again these schools were supported by upper middle class parents.

If I rebels I just got beat by my mom. None of this let the experts "fix" me BS.
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Offline OMGimaDONKEY

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was there a religious influence?
« Reply #9 on: December 27, 2006, 02:11:26 PM »
Quote from: ""Sageb1""
If I rebels I just got beat by my mom. None of this let the experts "fix" me BS.


i think here are many rma/cedu survivors that would have gladly taken the beatings in preferance to the fulltime or raps
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Offline try another castle

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was there a religious influence?
« Reply #10 on: December 27, 2006, 07:51:29 PM »
Quote from: ""OMGimaDONKEY""
Quote from: ""Sageb1""
If I rebels I just got beat by my mom. None of this let the experts "fix" me BS.

i think here are many rma/cedu survivors that would have gladly taken the beatings in preferance to the fulltime or raps


I think there might be some people who went to some of the other TBS facilities (such as vision quest) who will disagree with you on that. Abuse is abuse. Who's to say which is worse? We all went through different kinds of hell. In the end, it all sucks.


As to the topic at hand... CEDU was strictly new-age, hippie, cult bullshit. It was its own religion. Like psianide said, we had the holidays like Christmas and jewish celebrations for those of us who were, but the ideology was "its own animal", which fed into the mythos that it was unique, special and revolutionary. i.e. that it was devoid of reference. (Ultimately, that turned out to be false, but as students, we were made to believe that it was, as if it had sprung fully formed out of the brow of Mel Wasserman, and that the man was a genius.)
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Offline blownawaytheidahoway

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zeus of tbs
« Reply #11 on: December 28, 2006, 07:17:00 AM »
"...smoking a bowl is a hell of a lot easier to get the same effect, but these people were in the NA mindset so whatever floats your boat I guess. When they come out of it they stumble around in a haze, like a completely drunk person, with a weird smirk on their face and unfocused eyes, competely out of it."

someone at the benchmark pages wrote that and it, and while they were talking about electroshock therapy, I thought of a description of getting out of the workshops and propheets. --blownaway

Quote from: "try another castle"
Quote from: ""OMGimaDONKEY""
Quote from: ""Sageb1""
If I rebels I just got beat by my mom. None of this let the experts "fix" me BS.

As to the topic at hand... CEDU was strictly new-age, hippie, cult bullshit. It was its own religion. Like psianide said, we had the holidays like Christmas and jewish celebrations for those of us who were, but the ideology was "its own animal", which fed into the mythos that it was unique, special and revolutionary. i.e. that it was devoid of reference. (Ultimately, that turned out to be false, but as students, we were made to believe that it was, as if it had sprung fully formed out of the brow of Mel Wasserman, and that the man was a genius.)


That is very true.
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Life is a very wonderful thing.\' said Dr. Branom... \'The processes of life, the make- up of the human organism, who can fully understand these miracles?... What is happening to you now is what should happen to any normal healthy human organism...You are being made sane, you are being made healthy.
     \'That I will not have, \' I said, \'nor can understand at all. What you\'ve been doing is to make me feel very very ill.\'
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Offline dishdutyfugitive

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JESUS CAMP
« Reply #12 on: December 31, 2007, 01:08:45 PM »
No. CEDU wasn't religious in the traditional biblical / church-going sense.

However, I find it fascinating that the original cult is Religion. CEDU and christianity (and most every organized religon) have much in common in that they employ very similiar behaviour/thought control methods.

I saw "jesus camp" on A&E last night and almost shit my pants.
It's scary. It reminds you of RMA. It makes you wonder why people who run cult programs are so fucked in the head.
The trailer doesn't do it justice. They could have torn these evangelicals apart. It took me 30 minutes to figure out it was a completely unbiased documentary. Watch out for the little kid with the power mullet.

Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_EKHK1C2IE

Website
http://www.jesuscampthemovie.com/

It's on today. Tivo it
http://www.aetv.com/listings/episode_de ... gid=260639
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