Tragedies happen, people, die and unfortunately it's a price i believe we have to pay to live in a free society.
It's this sort of remark that reminds me that you remain in a black and white stinking thinking frame of mind. What if that is how I responded to the story of your friend who was raped- that you and your friend couldn't handle free society- so you deserved to be raped?
Well. That's what I'm asking you. Are you saying they put themselves in that position so they are responsible for what happened? It's like saying a girl in a miniskirt was asking to get raped.
You might not take that concept to that extreme but I've seen it taken *there. The program I was in combined Lifespring and EST with Synanon (which is based on AA). Why I attack AA is partially because it's a (mostly) compatible belief structure
Your logic is flawed
You should know you're lecturing a computer programmer on logic. But ok. Let's have a little fun and dissect your next statement (isn't this fun).
to punish people
You are of the opinion that punishment is letting somebody have free will? That is wrong. Taking away the rights of another person is always wrong. It's a matter of having to break free will to gain compliance. "Rock bottom" is a euphemism for slamming a person into a wall until they say "uncle". I can't emphasize enough that forced treatment is re-education.
What you believe is that drugs take away the free will to the point where he cannot make his own decisions. This is your belief and not everybody agrees with it... You however (of course) warn your kids early about this and express these beliefs as fact to those around you, spreading the dogma. You create a self fulfilling prophecy unwittingly. Since people say "oh.. he's an addict" or "ooh.. he's a treatment professional*1" and take what is said as truth, especially since what you're saying you're saying with such charisma since you really believe you are saving lives. What you are, albeit unwittingly, is a deployable agent of the cult. You're a missionary, bring the truth to the unsaved destined for hell/dead/insane/in jail etc... These ideas are heresy to you. Isn't free speech a bitch.
*1 (they just assume that entails a whole lot, which it doens't in most states)
who need help
And who makes this decision and is there any due process?
because your parents pressured you into unnecessary treatment
No... They sent me to a boarding school. Have you not read their website to see how they market themselves? Oh.. I'l love to see them claim to be a treatment centre. It would be really easy to shut em down then...
and you chose to accept it.
Yes. It was a boarding school that made a lot of promises and delivered very little of what they said. Ask my parents.
Your position confuses me for this reason. In argument against treatment you claim we live in a free society and those addicted to substances deserve a death sentence.
Well... there you go again saying that everybody who uses substances is sentenced to death. You are saying that people never quit on their own which IS NOT TRUE. In FACT if you had actually read the orangepapers link on effectiveness, you would know that AA actally does more harm than good (and by their own studies too).
If you teach a person they are powerless over something they will be and AA members have a 5 TIMES HIGHER rate of binge drinking than those with no treatment (3 groups were studied). Again. That's on the orange papers under effectiveness. You can find the source to that original study and many many more there.
Then you tell us when presented with life in that free society as an adult, you were so frightened by it
I was never frightened before Benchmark. I ran away (because they were going to send me to this creepy boarding school), moved in with a friend, and was working and all that in Ireland. It was the happiest, and perhaps only fully free time of my life. I was Not afraid. I was also very sociable, I was also much more confident around groups of people. I also had a much better self image.
I wasn't frightened until I was told by everybody who were supposed to be professionals that I couldn't make it without working the program. I wasn't frightened until that was drilled into my head. I wasn't frightened until I saw every single "AWOL" who left come back broken. Redlands is the program, it's an extention of Benchmark and that's what you just don't get.
Maybe with a map, some money, a phone, identicfication... something you might have a chance, but with nothing, and the local cops and program nepotism, etc. And they CAN and DO pick you up and arbitrarily send you to jail because you're homeless. And make damn sure to clean up before a NATSAP tour. And there is information I can't talk about publicly but will come out in time. The fucking point is that I really did have no decent option to leave (and believe me I tried).
you chose to remain in a treatment center you claim mistreated you.
People make choices based on information and beliefs they have. If you provide them with false information you can change their behavior by using their beliefs (you trick them). I had never been on the streets alone, especially at night, especially in a strange town I knew to be dangerous at night. Based on the information that the staff was pushing* plus my fear, yes I admit I was afraid, plus my lack of any resources of identification...
*("you're here because you need this place. If you didn't need this place you wouldn't be here")(despite the fact we knew the program was misrepresented to us as a fact... but dogma trumps fact) YOU TELL ME WHAT CHOICE I HAD!
They ROBBED ME and got away with it and you seem to think it's somehow
justified - or that it was somehow
my fault - or that I should ignore the fact that this is continuing to happen and hurt people just like I was. This is not a school of menaces. A large percentage while I was there had never done drugs, alcohol, cigarettes or anything like that (but most of em did by the time they left, or soon after). CHECK THEIR MARKETING! They treated everything as an addiction. Most staff didn't have any sort of psychological licenses or official training outside of psychological cults such as EST and Lifespring. Mel Wasserman incorporated them into his
CEDU model along with
Charles E Dederich's Synanon.*
The point is that these things are not psychology, they are harmful cults and the public should be educated on the effects. I also believe that locked away long term treatment should be out of the hands of the parents since they are often too naive to make good decisions on the matter. They far too often get conned and then sucked into a cult with seminars. Soon they become deployable recruitment agents for the cult (research how WWASP operates) Ultimately I believe the child his or herself should have the right to decide whether or not he wants treatment for a problem and should be fully and honestly informed on what that entails. I DO NOT BELIEVE that a person who has attained the reason to ask for freedom should be denied it. EVER. There should also be as much transparency as possible (letters to parents and all of his friends) and absolutely no monitoring of communication with the parents (basically i'm saying give the kid a cell phone and free access to the internet). Why? Because it's a safety precaution. There is also a matter of free speech and there is also a matter that the kid will be going back to his hometown and will eventually see his friends. If they can say "hey man... don't tempt me... please don't do that around me. If you're my friend you'll understand"
There are so many things that programs are NOT but should be (but will never be of their own volition, since it's not nearly as profitable). You don't seem to understand how this works. Research it! Research things like LGAT technologies. Google Margaret Singer. Buy Cults in Our Midst... If you really want to make an informed decision, what's wrong with examining all the information.
Read orange-papers but please don't fucking patronize me and tell me i'm crazy... It's insulting. And please don't or pretend to pity me. If you actually pity me, do me a favor and picture me pointing at you, laughing, and saying this to your face, because that is exactly what goes on in program if you don't agree with what they have to say... but this is text on a screen and I am in no position of authority over you, unlike a program. Don't act like this site is "stinking thinking". What you're arguing is called "sacred science" by Robert Lifton (PhD):
(Read it s l o w l y if you don't understand it. I don't normally say that but you don't exactly seem to be a rocket scientist with your dogma where your logic should be... and, in my opinion, - you're also a judgemental asshole who really deserves to be told the fuck off.)[and these are comments]The "Sacred Science"
The totalist milieu maintains an aura of sacredness around its basic dogma, holding it out as an ultimate moral vision for the ordering of human existence. This sacredness is evident in the prohibition (whether or not explicit) against the questioning of basic assumptions [you believe that we are sick because we believe an idea that itself is somehow evil or will kill us based on an assumed truth you would not be able to back up if asked (go ahead)], and in the reverence which is demanded for the originators of the Word, the present bearers of the Word [you], and the Word itself["stinkin thinkin"]. While thus transcending ordinary concerns of logic[You need to take a logic class, or learn programming or something.], however, the milieu at the same time makes an exaggerated claim of airtight logic, of absolute "scientific" precision. Thus the ultimate moral vision becomes an ultimate science; and the man who dares to criticize it, or to harbor even unspoken alternative ideas, becomes not only immoral and irreverent, but also "unscientific." [that would be many of us at fornits] In this way, the philosopher kings of modern ideological totalism reinforce their authority by claiming to share in the rich and respected heritage of natural science. [ever researched Bill Wilson's life much.. go to Orange Papers. I'll stop commenting here. You should be able to figure out what I'm implying. I recommend you read that whole thing] The assumption here is not so much that man can be God, but rather that man's ideas can be God: that an absolute science of ideas (and implicitly, an absolute science of man) exists, or is at least very close to being attained; that this science can be combined with an equally absolute body of moral principles; and that the resulting doctrine is true for all men at all times. Although no ideology goes quite this far in overt statement, such assumptions are implicit in totalist practice.
At the level of the individual, the totalist sacred science can offer much comfort and security. Its appeal lies in its seeming unification of the mystical and the logical modes of experience (in psychoanalytic terms, of the primary and secondary thought processes). For within the framework of the sacred science, and sweeping, non-rational "insights." Since the distinction between the logical and the mystical is, to begin with, artificial and man-made, an opportunity for transcending it can create an extremely intense feeling of truth. But the posture of unquestioning faith - both rationally and non-rationally derived - is not easy to sustain, especially if one discovers that the world of experience is not nearly as absolute as the sacred science claims it to be.
Yet so strong a hold can the sacred science achieve over his mental processes that if one begins to feel himself attracted to ideas which either contradict or ignore it, he may become guilty and afraid. His quest for knowledge is consequently hampered, since in the name of science he is prevented from engaging in the receptive search for truth which characterizes the genuinely scientific approach. And his position is made more difficult by the absence, in a totalist environment, of any distinction between the sacred and the profane: there is no thought or action which cannot be related to the sacred science. To be sure, one can usually find areas of experience outside its immediate authority; but during periods of maximum totalist activity (like thought reform) any such areas are cut off, and there is virtually no escape from the milieu's ever-pressing edicts and demands. Whatever combination of continued adherence, inner resistance, or compromise co-existence the individual person adopts toward this blend of counterfeit science and back-door religion, it represents another continuous pressure toward personal closure, toward avoiding, rather than grappling with, the kinds of knowledge and experience necessary for genuine self-expression and for creative development.
"Stinking Thinking" is also an example of loading the language:
Loading the Language
The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis. In [Chinese Communist] thought reform, for instance, the phrase "bourgeois mentality" is used to encompass and critically dismiss ordinarily troublesome concerns like the quest for individual expression, the exploration of alternative ideas, and the search for perspective and balance in political judgments. And in addition to their function as interpretive shortcuts, these cliches become what Richard Weaver has called "ultimate terms" : either "god terms," representative of ultimate good; or "devil terms," representative of ultimate evil. In [Chinese Communist] thought reform, "progress," "progressive," "liberation," "proletarian standpoints" and "the dialectic of history" fall into the former category; "capitalist," "imperialist," "exploiting classes," and "bourgeois" (mentality, liberalism, morality, superstition, greed) of course fall into the latter. Totalist language then, is repetitiously centered on all-encompassing jargon, prematurely abstract, highly categorical, relentlessly judging, and to anyone but its most devoted advocate, deadly dull: in Lionel Trilling's phrase, "the language of nonthought."
To be sure, this kind of language exists to some degree within any cultural or organizational group, and all systems of belief depend upon it. It is in part an expression of unity and exclusiveness: as Edward Sapir put it, "'He talks like us' is equivalent to saying 'He is one of us.'" The loading is much more extreme in ideological totalism, however, since the jargon expresses the claimed certitudes of the sacred science. Also involved is an underlying assumption that language - like all other human products - can be owned and operated by the Movement. No compunctions are felt about manipulating or loading it in any fashion; the only consideration is its usefulness to the cause.
For an individual person, the effect of the language of ideological totalism can be summed up in one word: constriction. He is, so to speak, linguistically deprived; and since language is so central to all human experience, his capacities for thinking and feeling are immensely narrowed. This is what Hu meant when he said, "using the same pattern of words for so long…you feel chained." Actually, not everyone exposed feels chained, but in effect everyone is profoundly confined by these verbal fetters. As in other aspects of totalism, this loading may provide an initial sense of insight and security, eventually followed by uneasiness. This uneasiness may result in a retreat into a rigid orthodoxy in which an individual shouts the ideological jargon all the louder in order to demonstrate his conformity, hide his own dilemma and his despair, and protect himself from the fear and guilt he would feel should he attempt to use words and phrases other than the correct ones. Or else he may adapt a complex pattern of inner division, and dutifully produce the expected cliché's in public performances while in his private moments he searches for more meaningful avenues of expression. Either way, his imagination becomes increasingly dissociated from his actual life experiences and may tend to atrophy from disuse.
It just doesn't make any sense Psy.
They maybe you don't understand. All you have to do is buy Cults In Our Midst and read the thing and it will answer 3/4 of your questions here and far more. Or ask me for some links if you're interested. I've already heard your side a thousand fucking times and it's fucked up. If you give me time, I can explain why.
And thank you for bringing "Stinking Thinking" to this here rap. I'm beginning to like being fully armed in this here rap* (i'm speaking metaphorically).
* A.K.A. "group therapy" to the parents
I'm not going to respond to you until you at least do some homework and research. You want to play program with me, i'll do it to you. If you don't consider all information you are choosing to be blind. Read.
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