DAYTOP Did Me Great Harm in the Long Run

[Ursus]

"All of what I wrote is true and accurate to the best of my recollection, my sources are some of my best friends and I trust them implicitly. This stuff I've written is not gossip; it's fact. I was there. Billy was there. Inculcated was there"

What a crock of Shit. How dare you continue to blame others for your life problems. If you want to balme someone blame yourself.

I am curious, Honesty, whether you could venture to answer a question for me that your friend or colleague Magnificent seemed to overlook... The question had to do with how he, or you, or anyone that is a fan -- or even just a student -- of TCs views the appropriateness of the TC modality for people who are very introverted. Or even non-neurotypical, for that matter.

Given that the primary arena of a person's evolution or change in a TC is what happens in Group, wouldn't people who are less than comfortable with, or who feel stigmatized by, that particular modality be less than optimally helped? Perhaps even harmed?

Just how "honest" can the observations that are shared in Group really be, if not everyone is equipped with the same type of communication and information processing abilities, not to mention the predilection for -- or belief in -- doing so?

[Anonymous]

Also, I recall that the kid who came back from NY (I think he was at Millbrook too) and told me of DAYTOP's supposed mob connections was a goofy redheaded guy John HOPKINS, if memory serves.  Whoa! Another H.

A coorection: my bad.  There was a Henry C., not a Henry H.  

But a Cole H. Renee H. and a Bobby H. also Bobby's brother was there for a while; his name was Chris H.  Their cousin too, Jeremy H.

Also John HOPKINS, the redheaded guy who was in Millbrook.

           I'm not sure if I would know if I knew you. As Roethke put it "I take my waking slow" My awareness likes to nap.
             I wandered over to this site while key word searching for DayTop's philosophy. My 'ologist croons a lot of empathetic understanding my way, but I'm not sure he really does, on this topic.
            Jeremiah N. and a Chris H. were the first two. Liz (who did not stay long )was the third. Jeremiah became a counselor.
            I remember Michael Gorman for his wry humor. He seemed to get a kick out of the Tatum O'Neil effect (affectation) of me bumming his Pal Mal non-filters. Rueben is the only Cuban staff member that I recall.
            I don't remember the name of the short term facility upstate. I was sent to Millbrook for the long term sentence and served the rest of my time at  another long term residential, Foxrun? (Also, right when that location was first opened).
            While I was in NY. the only kids from Texas (3, I think) were girls

[Anonymous]

Oh, and to Maginficent who wrote that "physical learning experiences were off limits..."  'Seems like your awareness gets sleepy to. Chair time FOR ENTIRE DAYS!, props, signs worn around the neck... role playing in extended groups (interminable nightmares). Were you always in the other room ?

[SEKTO]

Yep, now I know for sure that you were there.  Long stretches of time on The Chair for malefactors, props, signs, all that stuff, you know.

If memory serves, Ruben is Dominican, not Cuban or Puerto Rican.  

I remember Jeremiah NEAL.  He had a sister at DAYTOP too, if I am not mistaken, but I cannot remember her name right now.  Though I want to say it is Heather?  Jeremiah was the DAYTOP golden boy at the time.  He became a counselor, yes.  

And Chris H., Bobby's older brother.  One of the girls that went to NY was named Renee H.

Personally, I don't pay much mind to Magnificent and Honetsy.  Neither one of them was there with us, and this goon Honetsy probably does not understand big words like "neurotypical," "modality," "predilection," or "introversion"anyway.  I mean, Honetsy does not even know how to use spell check or the quote feature.  Honetsy is as articulate as some low-level street thug whose favorite phrase seems to be "what a crock of shit."

That kind of talk is simply over this person's head.  So why do they not answer Ursus' question about the effects of the group-therapy model on introverted persons?  Because they CAN'T.  The group is always right, the individual always wrong.  Classic cultic groupthink stuff.

It never ceases to amaze me, the denial that these people are in, how callous and judgmental they can be.  Talk about cognitive dissonance.  Honetsy needs a check-up from the neck up.

"Lah dee dahh dahh dumm...DAYTOP good, critics bad, DAYTOP good, critics bad...look at all the pretty bubbles...whee......lalala...DAYTOP good, critics bad..."

And again, have you ever heard of spell-check, buddy?  Your spelling is atrocious and frankly it does not help you to look very bright. You spelling is like that of an eight year old.  You come across and crude and hostile, and like a mindless, flaming idiot.

Maybe Honetsy is non-neurotypical too.  Perhaps after Honetsy's time in program, he/she got a lobotomy to boot.  Honetsy is obviously not the sharpest tack in the box, but he probably cannot help being so naive, obviously being a simple-minded, trusting soul.

I don't remember DAYTOP as being much big on empathy or compassionate care.  I don't see much empathy or compassion in Honetsy's posts.  The Monsignor sure teaches his students well.

Again, it's like trying to reason with the waking dead, attempting a dialog with these people.

[SEKTO]

Phillip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment showed how easily people lose themselves in authoritative group situations.

His experiments record educated volunteers needing psychological counseling to recover from the trauma of a SIX DAY simulation/experiment.

Imagine how much longer it takes for people who do this in real-life scenarios and are part of such groups for years!

The whole lesson to be learned is that good people can be compelled, if under the proper conditions, to do bad things; we should not underestimate the power of the situation and of group pressure when evaluating these kinds of cultic groups (like DAYTOP) and what comes out of them.  And always be aware of unwittingly committing the "fundamental attribution error" when evaluating the character of the individuals who make up the group.

Of course, I doubt that the DAYTOPians will have any use for this stuff.  "Who needs all that fancy academic mumbo-jombo?" They'll say, "What a crock of shit.  We don't like the way you're behaving, or what you're saying, so stop it.  Behave the way we want you to behave and say what we want you to say OR ELSE."

Cognitive dissonance, black and white thinking, ad hominem attacks.   It's all there.  When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

* 11 April 2007
* NewScientist.com news service
* by Michael Bond

From issue 2599 of New Scientist magazine, 11 April 2007, page 42-45

As an iconic image of human rights abuse, it is hard to equal: a hooded man with electrodes attached to his fingers stands precariously on a small box. One slip and he risks a numbing electric shock. In April 2004 this picture and others showing American soldiers mistreating Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad cast a pall over the US military's conduct in Iraq that has never lifted. The electrode stunt was dreamed up by a group of US army reservists working as military policemen at the prison. Staff Sergeant Ivan "Chip" Frederick was one of them. It was not the only abuse he perpetrated at Abu Ghraib. Among other things, he admitted making three prisoners masturbate while his colleagues looked on, and thumping another so hard in the chest that he had to be resuscitated. Most people would label Frederick as morally corrupt, a classic "bad apple". The judge at his trial certainly did. He sentenced him to eight years in jail, handed down a dishonourable discharge, and removed his salary and pension. Frederick deserved severe punishment, the judge argued, because he was exercising free will when he committed the acts. But was he?

Psychologist Philip Zimbardo from Stanford University in California thinks not. He believes the judge was guilty of the "fundamental attribution error" - overestimating the effects of someone's temperament on their behaviour and underestimating the effects of the environment in which they were acting. Zimbardo was an expert witness on Frederick's defence team. He interviewed him at length before the trial and carried out extensive psychological tests. He found no hint of mental illness or sadistic tendencies in Frederick. "In many ways this soldier was an American icon: a good husband, father and worker, patriotic, religious, with many friends and a history of having lived a most normal, moral small town life," says Zimbardo. Then he went to Abu Ghraib and turned into a monster.

This may be an extreme case, but such transformations are surprisingly common. You find them in just about any environment in which an individual is subsumed into a group or is reacting to what others are doing: rioting mobs, football crowds, committees, social networks, even panels of judges. In such situations a group mentality can easily take over, leading people to act out of character or adopt extreme or risky positions. In an analysis that considered 25,000 social psychology studies, published a few months after the Abu Ghraib abuses emerged, Susan Fiske at Princeton University concluded that almost everyone is capable of torture and other evil acts if placed in the wrong social context (Science, vol 306, p 1482). "Our society tends to focus on individual psychology," says Zimbardo. "All our institutions - in war, law, religion, medicine - are based on this concept." Yet if we don't understand the power of group psychology we can never hope to combat evils such as torture, suicide bombings and genocide, or indeed avoid making bad decisions or committing despicable acts of our own.
“Almost everyone is capable of evil acts if placed in the wrong social context”

Zimbardo has famously shown how easy it is to turn peaceful people abusive and hostile. In an experiment at Stanford University in 1971, he recruited students to imitate prison guards and inmates. After six days the experiment had to be stopped because the guards - ordinary summer-school students selected for their healthy psychological state - had pushed many of the prisoners to the point of emotional breakdown. In a similar experiment published in 1974, Stanley Milgram from Yale University persuaded ordinary people to administer electric shocks to a "victim" sitting behind a screen. Without much trouble Milgram had all of them increasing the voltage until the victim was screaming (it was an act but they didn't know that). Two-thirds of them carried on until the victim was apparently unconscious.

"If you can diffuse responsibility so people don't feel accountable, they will probably do things they normally never would," says Zimbardo. Milgram did this by telling the participants that he was in charge, and that he himself would take responsibility for anything that happened. Zimbardo gave his "prison guards" all the symbols of power of real guards - uniforms, whistles, handcuffs, sunglasses - effectively giving the volunteers permission to behave like them. He also ensured that prisoners were known only by numbers, not by their names. Many studies have found such anonymity to be an effective tool for changing the way someone is treated, or how they treat others. You find the same effect outside the lab. In 1971, anthropologist John Watson from Harvard University found that tribal cultures renowned for their barbaric treatment of enemies usually wear masks or paint their faces when going into battle, while those who go to war unadorned tend to be far less brutal. Likewise, many commentators have observed that people perpetrating crimes such as torture and genocide often dehumanise their victims by thinking of them as animals. Following on from Milgram's experiment, Albert Bandura from Stanford University found that people would administer more severe electric shocks if he told them that the recipients (whom they could not see) seemed "like animals".
Personal allegiance

Groups can create environments that diminish individual responsibility, but they can also exert their hold in another way. "There is a significant difference between mob behaviour, in which anonymity and imitation are the important factors, and the direct influence of a group, which involves personal allegiance to leaders and comrades," says Ariel Merari, a psychologist at Tel Aviv University in Israel and an expert on Middle Eastern terrorism. Groups that recruit suicide bombers are among those that use the latter approach, building a sense of community and encouraging feelings of responsibility towards other group members: the "brotherhood mentality". Here, individuals take responsibility for their own actions within a culture where suicide bombing is seen as glorious. Then, by recording farewell messages to family and friends either on videotape or in writing, they make a commitment to their own martyrdom that they cannot renege on without losing face (New Scientist, 15 May 2004, p 34).

All of this is a long way from the situations that most of us face. Yet many of the decisions we make every day are heavily influenced by what others are doing. In a study published last year, for example, Duncan Watts and colleagues at Columbia University in New York showed that the reason chart-topping pop songs are so much more popular than average is not because they are significantly better but because consumers are influenced by the buying habits of others (Science, vol 311, p 854). This is known as the social cascade effect, a phenomenon in which large numbers of people end up doing or thinking something on the basis of what others have done.

There are two mechanisms at work here, says Watts. "The first is social learning. The world is too complicated for each individual to solve problems on their own, so we rely on the information that is encoded in our social environment - we assume other people know things we don't." Then there is social coordination, where you want to do the same thing as other people not because you think it is better but because what matters is doing things together. "Liking the same song, movies, sports and books not only gives us something to talk about, but makes us feel like we're part of something larger than ourselves." As well as directing consumers' buying habits, these two forces can influence financial markets, protest movements, and even - through opinion polls - how we vote.

It is not surprising that people should be so susceptible to the dynamics of their social environment. After all, we evolved as social animals in environments where cooperation and group cohesion were key survival tools. Our reasons for being influenced by others are often valid, but if we are not careful this tendency can get us into trouble. In a classic study carried out in the 1950s, for example, social psychologist Solomon Asch revealed how the peer pressure associated with being part of a group can lead people to deny the evidence of their own senses. When asked simply to match the length of a line on a card with one of three reference lines, 70 per cent of his subjects ignored their own judgement and sided with the rest of their group who, unbeknown to them, had been primed to make a blatantly wrong choice.

When any group of like-minded people get together, the result can be equally alarming. One common effect is that the group ends up taking a more extreme position than the one its members started with - it becomes polarised. For example, a group of people who begin a discussion believing George Bush's policies on Iraq are merely ill-advised may finish convinced that his policies are insane. Cass Sunstein, professor of law and political science at the University of Chicago has identified two reasons. First, in like-minded groups you tend to hear only arguments that support your own viewpoint, which is bound to reinforce it. In addition, people are always comparing themselves with others and will shift their position so as not to appear out of line. The same kind of thinking is behind the phenomenon known as "risky shift" in which adolescents, already prone to risky behaviour, are even more inclined to throw caution to the wind when they are with their peers.

Polarisation is related to another form of group psychology known as groupthink, where members strive for cohesion at the expense of all else. Maintaining cohesion can give a group a sense of power and bolster the self-esteem of its members, but it can also lead them to make bad and dangerous decisions. "When group cohesion is based on congeniality, criticising ideas means attacking the source of group cohesion," says Clark McCauley, director of the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. As with social cascades and polarisation, problems often arise when people rely on what they think others know and fail to share useful information they might have. This mistake can be compounded by the influence of a manipulative leader. Groupthink has been blamed for the CIA's flawed plan to invade Cuba in 1961 - the infamous Bay of Pigs debacle - and also for NASA's failure in 2003 to recognise that the damage done to the wing of the space shuttle Columbia by a piece of foam during take-off was potentially fatal. Irving Janis, the psychologist who coined the term groupthink in 1972, believed no one was immune. "Probably every member of every policy-making group is susceptible," he wrote in a landmark paper.

Another situation in which we are all prone to assuming a strong group mentality is at times of crisis. This explains why support for national leaders increases in wartime - and why George Bush achieved almost unanimous backing for his "war on terror" after 9/11. It is understandable that people look to their own group when they feel threatened, but the result can be an escalation of tension. In a study published last year, for example, a team led by Tom Pyszczynski from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, found that Iranian college students who were prompted to think about their own death showed greater support for suicide attacks against the US than they would have otherwise (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, vol 32, p 1).

Knowing what we do about group psychology, what are the lessons to be learned? For a start, we should discourage isolated cliques of like-minded people and encourage people with opposing views to speak out - and that applies whether you are trying to prevent terrorism or elect a new school head. The flip side of this is that we should recognise that extremist groups are usually remarkably homogenous in terms of the interests, political affiliations, age and socioeconomic status of their members. "If I were an intelligence agent trying to break a terrorist cell, if I caught one member I'd find out what food he eats and what clothing he wears," says Scott Atran at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The chances are his fellow terrorists would have very similar preferences. Accordingly, Atran and forensic psychiatrist Marc Sageman are building a database of members of jihadi terrorist networks in Europe and Asia, recording information such as family background and friends.

Another lesson is that the wider social environment influences the decisions made by groups. Pyszczynski found that he could change the attitudes of his Iranian students by convincing them that public opinion in their country was opposed to suicide attacks. What's more, in similar studies with US students he first increased their appetite for conflict with Arabs by getting them to think of their own death, and then found he could reduce it simply by showing them photos of family life from many different cultures or reminding them of their own group values, such as compassion, and of what they have in common with others. "This is particularly encouraging as it shows a way of reversing a process that otherwise can increase public support for terrorism," he says.

The behaviour of football hooligans can also be influenced by their social environment, according to Clifford Stott, a social psychologist at the University of Liverpool, UK. Working as a consultant to the police for the European championships in Portugal in 2004, he found that the aggressiveness of football crowds is heavily influenced by how the police treat them. Although violence has been part of the group identity of a significant section of England fans, low-profile policing at certain matches during Euro2004 encouraged them to adopt an uncharacteristically orderly attitude which they then maintained through self-policing (European Journal of Social Psychology, DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.338).

The idea of group psychology is rather unsettling. We like to think that we are in control of our own decisions and behaviour, not at the mercy of our social environment. It is also deeply disturbing to contemplate that any of us might have done what Frederick and the other Abu Ghraib reservists did. Yet Zimbardo also points to a positive side. His latest research looks at what makes a hero, and he has found that our universal capacity to perform evil acts under the influence of the group is matched by a universal capacity to resist peer pressure and do the right thing. "There is nothing special in the backgrounds of heroes - they choose to act on the moment. There are no predictive psychological factors," says Zimbardo. Ordinary heroes, like ordinary monsters, are everywhere.

Joseph Darby is a perfect example. He was an army reservist in the same company as Frederick, and the person responsible for stopping the torture and human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib. Darby passed a CD of the photographs to his superior officer. He did this despite the severe potential costs to himself and his family, who are now in hiding for fear of retaliation from members of his unit. Zimbardo looked into Darby's background. "Ordinary," he says. "He never did anything like it before."

There's this article too, called Bad Apples and Bad Barrels: Lessons in Evil from Stanford to Abu Ghraib

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=bad ... ad-barrels

The photographs of prisoner abuse from Abu Ghraib shocked most Americans. But social psychologist Philip Zimbardo had seen it all 30 years before in the basement of the psychology building at Stanford University, where he randomly assigned college students to be “guards” or “prisoners” in a mock prison environment. The experiment was to last two weeks but was terminated after just six days, when these intelligent and moral young men were transformed into cruel and sadistic guards or emotionally shattered prisoners.

As he watched the parade of politicians proclaim that Abu Ghraib was the result of a few bad apples, Zimbardo penned a response he calls the Lucifer Effect (also the title of his new book from Random House), namely, the transformation of character that leads ordinarily good people to do extraordinarily evil things. “Social psychologists like myself have been trying to correct the belief that evil is located only in the disposition of the individual and that the problem is in the few bad apples,” he says. But, I rejoin, there are bad apples, no? Yes, of course, Zimbardo concedes, but most of the evil in the world is not committed by them: “Before we blame individuals, the charitable thing to do is to first find out what situations they were in that might have provoked this evil behavior. Why not assume that these are good apples in a bad barrel, rather than bad apples in a good barrel?”

How can we tell the difference? Compare behavior before, during and after the evil event in question. “When I launched my experiment at Stanford, we knew these students were good apples because we gave them a battery of tests and every one of them checked out normal,” Zimbardo explains. “So, on day one they were all good apples. Yet within days the guards were transformed into sadistic thugs and the prisoners were emotionally broken.” Likewise at Abu Ghraib. Zimbardo notes that before going to Iraq, Staff Sergeant Ivan “Chip” Frederick—the military police officer in charge of the night shift on Tiers 1A and 1B, the most abusive cell blocks at Abu Ghraib—“was an all-American patriot, a regular churchgoing kind of guy who raises the American flag in front of his home, gets goose bumps and tears up when he listens to our national anthem, believes in American values of democracy and freedom, and joined the army to defend those values.”
The guards were transformed into sadistic thugs, and the prisoners were emotionally broken.

Before Abu Ghraib, Frederick was a model soldier, earning numerous awards for merit and bravery. After the story broke and Frederick was charged in the abuses, Zimbardo arranged for a military clinical psychologist to conduct a full psychological assessment of Frederick, which revealed him to be average in intelligence, average in personality, with “no sadistic or pathological tendencies.” To Zimbardo, this result “strongly suggests that the ‘bad apple’ dispositional attribution of blame made against him by military and administration apologists has no basis in fact.” Even after he was shipped off to Fort Leavenworth to serve his eight-year sentence, Frederick wrote Zimbardo: “I am proud to say that I served most of my adult life for my country. I was very prepared to die for my country, my family and friends. I wanted to be the one to make a difference.”

Two conclusions come to mind. First, it is the exceedingly patriotic model soldier—not a rebellious dissenter—who is most likely to obey authorities who encourage such evil acts and to get caught up in believing that the ends justify the means. Second, in The Science of Good and Evil (Owl Books, 2004), I argued for a dual dispositional theory of morality—by disposition we have the capacity for good and evil, with the behavioral expression of them dependent on the situation and whether we choose to act. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who knew a few things about the capacity for evil inside all of our hearts of darkness, explained it trenchantly in The Gulag Archipelago: “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

Also there's a short film called The Wave.  

I viewed it and was quite taken aback.

This is a "must see" short film. A real blowout. I strongly urge all interested parties to view it.

A bit of background here:

http://www.ronjoneswriter.com/wave.html

[SEKTO]

In conclusion:

Honesty:

You seem to have shut down your critical thinking, at least where DAYTOP is concerned.

Your response to the question about what is wrong, or has been wrong with DAYTOP illustrates this point.

You find little if anything meaningful to address that is wrong with DAYTOP, despite its deeply troubled history, continued complaints and the simple fact that it is after all a human-run organization.

Please understand that there are many ex-DAYTOPians who feel quite differently than you do and have very negative feelings about their experiences with DAYTOP.

You are rude and have been rude repeatedly on this thread.

It seems to me that you have attempted repeatedly to incite arguments and/or pull this thread off topic.

You are trying to change the subject and twist this forum into a personal attack on me.

It appears that your only purpose here is as an apologist for DAYTOP.

Your comments are essentially attempts to rationalize the kind of control DAYTOP often exercises over the lives of its charges.

If all you have to offer here is the same personal attacks over and over again perhaps you should move on.

Frankly, IMO you are actually an embarrassment to that organization.

Here's the link to the must-see film The Wave that I mentioned earlier.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 7890475769

[Anonymous]

Sekto,

I must say that your emotions seem to have gotten the better of you. I have been attacking you. For the lies that you say. If you have noticed, which I am confidant you have not. My issue is with your attacks on individuals. Whom you claim, you heard things about. You have, (on many occasions) said things on this site that are not facts but lies. The people you try and slander do not deserve it. Yes, I have attacked you and I will continue too, as long as you keep up the lies. I have never once said that Daytop is for everyone. In fact, I am sure many people have valid issues to pick with various things about the program. You on the other hand want to blame the program and some of the Good people associated with it. In particular, the ones who have since passed on. This is another sign of your weakness and unresolved bullshit. What if I do have a 5th grade education? Does this make me or anyone else less then you? By your previous post, I gather you think it does.
I suggest you begin to come to terms with your failures and begin to take responsibility for your own shit. You treated people poorly and you have to live with that. Do not blame Daytop because you failed, Blame yourself. Do you think all the people who Daytop has helped or who tried to help, all conspired against you? Do you think they want to see people fail?  If you’re Honest and I question whether you can be, then you know that they didn't. The fact is the program didn't help you. Deal with it. Stop blaming everyone for your own shit. What about all the people who have been helped. What about all the success people have had? Does this matter? According to you, it does not. I know as many who have read your lies know, that Daytop is successful and has been around so long because it does work and it does help people. So deal with it. Perhaps you should move on and find a better way to deal with your shit.  
 :cheers:

[SEKTO]

Please tell me, what are these lies of mine that you write of?

[Anonymous]

Sekto:
Thank you for citing The Lucifer Effect.  I had read it late last spring. While reading, I had not then reflected on its content in the same light. Following your post, I revisited the last section (Chapter 16 -conclusion) of the book with renewed interest.
 I found the hypotheses of a substitute paradigm  “For a slow assent to goodness”  called to mind the cultivation process that some like Marcy, maybe Honesty etc. might have experienced on their way to achieving their counselor status.  Zimbardo speculates transformation via the Virtuous Authority experiment that he describes, might cause some to “doing ever more extreme “good” actions.  The extremes of virtue push him or her all the way to engaging in actions that at first seemed unimaginable.” (p.449)
I savored his apt wording. I then considered how a person who has come to accept taught (not intuited) beliefs about what their idea of good is (and that that is The Good) may deflect anything contrary to their beliefs. Maybe there is some “Altruism effect” compelling not only the actions of some, but also the ardency with which others defend them.  Denying the veracity of those who do not “share in their purpose”   seems to be of that same cause and effect…so to speak.

[SEKTO]

You are welcome for the citation.

In all truth, I have never read The Lucifer Effect in its entirety, just excerpts of it as well as certain online abstracts and such.  My therapist has a copy that I'll borrow and read when I get the chance.  I have, however, seen Quiet Rage and other documentary footage from the original experiment, and thought it pertinent to bring the examples and lessons learned from Stanford and Abu Ghraib into our discussion.

Have you ever seen Quiet Rage, Inculcated?  And did you get a chance to watch The Wave yet?  If so, what did you think?

 :feedtrolls:

[Anonymous]

Sekto:
   I did view “The Wave”. I liked it. I like it more for that it was based on a real teacher’s unique approach to offering students the chance to understand (rather than just absorb information). I had seen a PBS airing that included some footage of the Stanford Prison Experiment, a while back. I’m not sure if that was Quiet Rage or something else.

[SEKTO]

Please PM or email me, won't you Inculcated?

[Anonymous]

Zombies  
Zombies could be considered innocent bystanders, just the guy or gal next door -- until someone in the villages of yore decided they had done something wrong. "They then would go to a trial by ordeal," says James D. Adams, PhD, associate professor of pharmacology and pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Southern California School of Pharmacy, Los Angeles, and an expert in zombie history.  
Another expert, Daniel Lapin, PhD, a clinical psychologist, sees the medical mystery of zombies differently. In Haiti in the 1700 and 1800s, the bokor, or priest, selected a victim and laced his drink with curare, a preparation of plant poisons that knocks out the motor nerves but keeps the sensory system untouched. "As total paralysis sets in, the bokor pretends to be magically inducing the paralysis," Lapin says. "The bokor next officiates at the victim's burial. The victim thinks he or she is being buried alive." And the victim is right.
Two or three days later, the bokor digs up the victim. "The victim bonds subserviently and forever with the person who digs them up," Lapin says. Sometimes, however, Lapin says the victim would "go crazy during the ordeal," The victim would then be likely to wander from village to village, Lapin tells, earning the reputation as the village idiot.
         Off Topic?   This excerpted article was shared with me by someone attempting to illustrate an entirely different point.  I may have totally misinterpreted this. My supposition is…  Maybe the “trial by ordeal” followed by their sense of being rescued would explain not just the bond of the Daytopian believer, but also the clearly lacking erudition.

[SEKTO]

Sekto,

I must say that your emotions seem to have gotten the better of you. I have been attacking you. For the lies that you say. If you have noticed, which I am confidant you have not. My issue is with your attacks on individuals. Whom you claim, you heard things about. You have, (on many occasions) said things on this site that are not facts but lies. The people you try and slander do not deserve it. Yes, I have attacked you and I will continue too, as long as you keep up the lies. I have never once said that Daytop is for everyone. In fact, I am sure many people have valid issues to pick with various things about the program. You on the other hand want to blame the program and some of the Good people associated with it. In particular, the ones who have since passed on. This is another sign of your weakness and unresolved bullshit. What if I do have a 5th grade education? Does this make me or anyone else less then you? By your previous post, I gather you think it does.
I suggest you begin to come to terms with your failures and begin to take responsibility for your own shit. You treated people poorly and you have to live with that. Do not blame Daytop because you failed, Blame yourself. Do you think all the people who Daytop has helped or who tried to help, all conspired against you? Do you think they want to see people fail?  If you’re Honest and I question whether you can be, then you know that they didn't. The fact is the program didn't help you. Deal with it. Stop blaming everyone for your own shit. What about all the people who have been helped. What about all the success people have had? Does this matter? According to you, it does not. I know as many who have read your lies know, that Daytop is successful and has been around so long because it does work and it does help people. So deal with it. Perhaps you should move on and find a better way to deal with your shit.  
 :cheers:

What on earth does all this mean?  This says nothing, really.  Most of the time Honesty seems to do a lot of typing, calls me liar, says it's my fault, calls me a failure, but actually says noting other than that.  Honesty refuses to answer the questions put to him/her (naming whatever it is that I am supposedly lying about, explaining the effects of the tradiotional TC modality on the introverted and/or non-neurotypical) and instead goes for the tired old ad hominem routine.  Honesty types a lot, but says nothing other than "DAYTOP good, critics bad, DAYTOP good, critics bad,what a crick of shit, DAYTOP good, critics bad, DAYTOP good, critics bad, it's your fault..."  Basically honesty is saying that anybody who questions the program or feels hard done by DAYTOP hasn't yet dealt with their issues.  What does that mean, anyway?  Arrogant and condescending is what it is, crude and hostile too.  DAYTOP didn't teach this person much in the way of compassion or empathy.

You and me were there.  We know what happened.  Honesty was not, and does not.  Very simple.

[Anonymous]

SETKO:
It seems that if a person’s sense of self is tied in to something other than themselves, then that person would perceive anything spoken against that something as a personal attack. “Honesty” may be internalizing the grievances of those who speak against the program. Such a personalization could incite responses that are based more on emotion than due consideration.
That said, my own emotional response based on my experiences, is that most of the DAYTOP Villagers I’ve encountered appeared to be limited to a narrow perspective and others… um, stupefied.