Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > The Seed Discussion Forum
Group Think
Johnny G:
I think we all saw people with "balls" and how that worked out (didn't they have their hands up too?)
Antigen:
--- Quote ---On 2005-12-20 12:06:00, Johnny G wrote:
I think what makes stepcraft survivors different is that we have participated in the Asch experiment writ large, and know what we (and others)are capable of in that situation.
--- End quote ---
:nworthy:
Dude! I've been trying for close to ten years to write just that.
--- Quote ---After a while on the program, the ideals of loyalty, honesty, integrity, and character start to seem pretty hollow as you realize what you are and are not capable of while sitting in the group watching someone you thought was your friend get humiliated in front of the world - and you look like you want join in (you have your hand up, don't you?)
The sad thing is how many of us felt the same, but were afraid to express it.
--- End quote ---
Yeah. And I just got done reading about exactly this happening in Nazi Germany. A popular joke at the time was "Oh yes, the master race, blond like Hitler, tall like Goebbels, slim like Goering!" This originated in Germany among Nazi party members. Now, these party members, interviewed at length 8 years into the American occupation, did not at all approve of many of the things the Nazis did. The burning of the synagogs, for example, got under a lot of people's skin. But, of course, the Jewish problem. They were out to destroy and enslave the Germanic peoples, right? And the concentration camps. No good German approved of such things. So, instead, they dismissed the rumors as enemy propaganda.
Now, is it paranoia or prescience to be sooooo sensitive to such things?
Men had better be without education than be educated by their rulers.
--Thomas Hodgskin
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Antigen:
--- Quote ---On 2005-12-20 12:57:00, cleveland wrote:
It doesn't take 'balls' to be yourself - it takes having empathy for others and realizing that we're all human. I suppose that is maturity.
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Yeah that, or true and complete resignation. lol
Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.
--Napoleon Bonaparte, French emperor
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jgar:
The Seed for me was a little more complicated than this. When I realized that it was time for me to be on my way was when I saw how I had replaced my dependency on drugs to a unnatural dependency on the Seed. The Seed had become too much of a crutch and when I realized this I saw how unnatural and debilitating things had become.
It is easy now so many years later to be able to say this but, when this happened it seemed to me to be the hardest decision in my life. It seemed to me that I was questioning the very essence and foundation of who I was and at the very least I was eliminating my only safety net. I felt like I was questioning my loyalty, my resolve as a person to be able out last any adversity. I wondered if all I had professed to be would be negated by my leaving and I would be nothing more than just another hypocrite.
In truth the hypocrisy was in the overbearing dependence and control the program held over it?s own. This only served to mechanize and control and in essence destroy any progress that was actually made by anyone who was involved and was actually trying to move forward. I can remember old friends accusing me of being brainwashed and how I took pride in being able to shut them out from my life taking comfort in the thought that I knew the truth and the only valid truth.
Time and life have taught me some tough and humbling lessons and through this I have been able to sift through those years and determine what was valid and what was hurtful and destructive, I guess this will be a life long chore. The Seed being that of this world reflected this world in its flaws and its politics and it?s inner complexities but, by no means did this negate it?s truth and it?s sound philosophies. In the end I was able to exercise what scared us the most which; was my own freewill.
The Seed in my opinion through my experience as life can be was both a blessing and a curse . I thank God that I found the Seed and than when the time came I had the ability to walk away. What surprised me the most was in the end what opened the door for me was my overwhelming desire to make my own decisions and live as I choose to live my life.
cleveland:
Jgar, well said.
I think that is why it is difficult for me to be all one way or the other when it comes to the Seed. I did feel idealistic, a part of something, connected to other people in a way I had never been before. The ideal of honesty was one that is very important to me. Being able to stand up for myself, or go against the flow of society, was also very important. But there was the flipside - the ideals that got applied differently to different people, the hierarchy or control, the expectations of conformity to the group - and for me the loneliness of not really being able to be myself, open and free. So, I learned lessons, but I really learned them after I left. Not that I am some paragon of virtue or anything.
Leaving the Seed was like leaving a marriage, or a family, or any total ripping away of the past. It reminds me of the person who said something like life only consists of two actions - saying hello, and saying goodbye.
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