Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > The Seed Discussion Forum

Dear Art,

<< < (31/45) > >>

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.

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