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

Day 18 - Moral Inventory - 8/15/75 (Open Meeting)

<< < (2/4) > >>

Withdraw:
I wrote a MI... once.... It was about how I would not comply the next day and how I was proud of not compling the day I wrote it. I wrote it because Staff was really comming down on my oldcommers hard, And they begged me, so they could get some sleep for once. I did feel sorry for ~some~ of my oldcommers. They had it especially tough when I was their newcommer.

Did you all get to keep your MIs? Or were they turned into staff? I have no idea...Was it like a personal journal?

Sorry for busting in on your Seed discussion:P

Anonymous:
Nope, didn't keep mine, tossed them the day after I graduated.  As an oldcomer I pretty much quit writing them after my mother told me she'd been reading them and found them to be very disgusting - she particularly didn't like the language I used.   The last one I wrote was the night before I graduated.  

I have however recently started keeping a journal of my thoughts, anxieties, angers, blah, blah, blah.   Makes for some interesting reading later if you write it from the heart and then put it away.  I've gone back a few times to reread portions and have amazed myself at what I had to say.

NOT12NOW:
yeah you got to keep them as a diary of your early days, in facta as seedlings,we treasured them.  I think it was one of the last things I trashed. I wish I had it now.
I can't imagine having ust refused to write.  You all were so much more creative then me.  You guys are my heros.

NOT12NOW:

--- Quote ---"I wrote a MI... once.... It was about how I would not comply the next day and how I was proud of not compling the day I wrote it.
--- End quote ---


like I said, Hero.

marshall:
...but it's not Me.  :???:

I found one of my moral inventory notebooks while cleaning a closet a few weeks ago. Reading through it, I felt nauseated and ashamed. Ashamed that I could have been so weak minded and easily manipulated. The writings don't even sound like me. They sound like sound-bites from raps...bits and pieces of various staff members personalities.

===quote:------
"my mother told me she'd been reading them and found them to be very disgusting"
---------------

I cursed much more in the seed than I ever did prior to going there. Every other word was 'F*ck', f*cking,' shit, etc. I think staff thought this showed real inner strength..."I was a F*CKING WHIMP!"...the women / girls were especially prone to this macho way of talking.

Maybe I was just unusual, maybe others really expressed their own thoughts and feelings in their MI's. I have trouble finding an original thought or phrase anywhere in mine. It's like someone had given me a personality transplant. And this is what they called learning to 'be yourself'? I was learning to be the person they  (art, staff and group) were molding / conditioning me to be. My m.i.'s  were just the regurgitated words of staff.

Reading through the MI's of my early months there, I'm still amazed that I wasn't completely taken-in. I sure sound brain-washed to me now. It's scarey. I've often wondered what the factors were that allowed me to escape that heavy-handed conditioning. Funny, but I think my family's value system played some part. I was taught as a child to question everything critically..not just to believe or accept because someone said-so. The same  thing that caused me to question and become disillusioned with much of the drug-culture before I went to the program, also caused me to question the Seed ideology. Another factor was probably all the reading I did on my program. Whatever the cause, I'm profoundly grateful that I didn't fully 'get it.'  

Over all the months of my inventories, two themes keep recurring. I chastise myself over and over for listening to 'space music' and fantasizing about chicks. I guess it was just a losing battle. 30 years later, I still love my space music (mainly floyd & the moody blues) and I married a chick!  :lol: I am thankful that I was able to go to the Seed instead of languishing in a Georgia prison, but I'm just as thankful that I didn't get stuck in that seedling mindset.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page