Seed Psychology

[cleveland]

Yes, sorry I was typing fast. I mean, make most drugs legal, as is alcohol. This keeps the price down and removes the incentive for drug dealers - today's bootleggers. Monitor use means - make users aware of risks and provide treatment for addiction. Try to limit access to youth.

Reduce sprawl means - instead of abandoning the city, and leaving drug sales as one of the few options for employment, limit the sprawl of suburbs through reducing incentives like city subsidy of water and other essential services, or charge a development fee to build on green pastures instead of redeveloping land in the inner city. It all fits together.

I know none of these options is perfect, but hypocritically banning drug use and limiting treatment in prisons, hospitals and public health facilities while pushing AA as the only option, mostly because it's low cost (but not very effective, according to statistics although I've had family members who swear by it!)

What other options do we have?

_________________
Wally Gator[ This Message was edited by: cleveland on 2004-10-11 10:02 ]

[Anonymous]

Elect Kerry & hope for the best...you got me ::

[GregFL]

On 2004-10-09 15:13:00, rjfro22 wrote:

"I agree with you 100%  The Seed help set me on the road with tools I still use to this day. I know there are some people on this site that want to see only the bad.  If the Seed was such a cult, What was it's intentions? I believe the Seed's intentions were to help save lives, and with the good and bad I am honored to have been a part of it."

That you are proud to have been a member does not negate the fact you were in a cult.

Perhaps you should read up on cults...the intent behind the personality group is almost always religious or self help with a hidden agenda to  recruite, build a financial empire, garner a loyal and unquestioning following, expand and control. Exclusive language and an us or them mentality is always evident. The seed contains almost every element of a destructive mind cult which incidentially always has followers that claim to have been saved by the group such as yourself. This is repeated over and over in such groups as scientology, Moonies, Hari Krisna and other cults that have come and gone and still exist.


 The Seed could be used in textbooks as a case study on the rise and fall of an american cult.

[Anonymous]

Greg- would you call the Cathloic Church & every other religion a cult? Is everything organized a cult.  Does anything help people that isn,t a cult in group form?

[Antigen]

When's the last time you heard anyone say they'd have been deadinsaneorinjail if they hadn't converted to Catholocism?

If you think yourself too wise to involve
yourself in government, you will be governed
by those too foolish to govern.  
--Plato

[GregFL]

On 2004-10-11 13:43:00, Anonymous wrote:

"Greg- would you call the Cathloic Church & every other religion a cult? Is everything organized a cult.  Does anything help people that isn,t a cult in group form?"

No. Cults have very distinct traits.

[Anonymous]

Absolutely.  I've heard of recovering Catholics and now, its great - Recovering Seedlings.  What a long, strange trip it's been.

[Anonymous]

I would go as far as to say that most religions have many, many cult characteristics.  I am NOT saying that all religions ARE cults, just very cult-like.  They're like politics.  Based on fear.  They get you to do what they want or behave the way they want through fear.  If you don't believe you won't have an afterlife.  Sorry, just can't buy into it.

History does not record anywhere or at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unkonwn without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.
-Robert A. Heinlen, American science-ficiton author

All who doubted or denied would be lost. To live a moral and honest life -- to keep your contracts, to take care of wife and child -- to make a happy home -- to be a good citizen, a patriot, a just and thoughtful man, was simply a respectable way of going to hell.
 
God did not reward men for being honest, generous and brave, but for the act of faith. Without faith, all the so-called virtues were sins. and the men who practiced these virtues, without faith, deserved to suffer eternal pain.
 
All of these comforting and reasonable things were taught by the ministers in their pulpits -- by teachers in Sunday schools and by parents at home. The children were victims. They were assaulted in the cradle -- in their mother's arms. Then, the schoolmaster carried on the war against their natural sense, and all the books they read were filled with the same impossible truths. The poor children were helpless. The atmosphere they breathed was filled with lies -- lies that mingled with their blood.
-Robert G. Ingersoll, American politician and lecturer

[GregFL]

Well, whether you support organized religion or not (I am not a believer) you must admit there are substantial differences between cults and legimate religions, in fact much more differences than similarities.

[Anonymous]

definite differences yes, but more than the similarities....don't know.  All the fear, hellfire and damnation just seems to me a way to control people.

[Antigen]

Technically, a religion is a cult. The term cult only picked up a negative connotation in the past hundred years or so, I think.

The modern definition of the term 'cult' is probably something like 'high demand, destructive cult'.

And that's the difference, at least in my mind, between legitimate, benign or benevolent religion and a destructive cult. As regards public policy and public service, I think it's important to draw a distinction. I don't mind if our public servants attend church and pray for guidance. But when they cop out on solving real problems, especially those that fall under their job description by saying Jesus will handle it or the Rapture will come so we don't have to worry about it, that should be grounds for immediate removal from office on grounds of mental illness.

Never trust anyone with your future who doesn't believe there will be one!

 

Sacred cows make the best hamburger.  
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/external-search?tag=circlofmiamithem&keyword=mark+twain&mode=books' target='_new'> Mark Twain

[Somejoker]

When people say "cults" today, it really means coercisive cults. Sure the term came from religion but it really does mean something different now.  However, religions somtimes take on personality cult behavior and then they are very similar. Take christianity and then look at the rattle Snake people in the deep south, Or take The Hindu faith and compare that to The american Hari Krisna movement. Christianity and Jim Jones....

So yes, religions can become  destructive cults. It just isn't always so or even usually so. Lumping Religion at large in with coercsive cults is a mistake.

Religion as a legitimate social force is another topic for another forum.

[NOT12NOW]

On 2004-10-11 13:43:00, Anonymous wrote:

"Greg- would you call the Cathloic Church & every other religion a cult? Is everything organized a cult.  

I know my grandmother believed her children would not go to heaven because they left the church.  

I was protected because I was never offered the true church I would go to like Limbo or something.

_________________
Cleveland chick 76-77[ This Message was edited by: NOT12NOW on 2005-10-28 07:17 ]

[Anonymous]

If you need the external structure of the church to be a decent person, something is wrong with you.

Also: Jesus Saves, transubstantiation, the mythologization of saints, arbitrary moral values,  and the implication that rituals cleanse your soul (simply through confession or baptism and other rites) are all hokey crapola. I have never understood how intelligent people buy into this shit. It's archaic.  I mean, you really believe that you are going to limbo just for lack of a head rinse? Is God really so petty to pay attention to the sex lives of billions of people to determine your moral purity?

[Antigen]

I think rituals and taboos have their place. But people get crazy about it, imbuing these things w/ more power than they're actually worth.

"The FARC is part of the history of Colombia and a historical phenomenon", (President Pastrana) says, "and they must be treated as Colombians". ... They come and ask for bread [aid from Washington], and you give them stones.

Robert White is a former American ambassador to Paraguay and El Salvador, and former No. 2 man with the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, is president of the Centre for International Policy in Washington D.C.
http://narconews.com/' target='_new'>Robert White