Fornits

Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora
An open discussion about the troubled parent industry

I thought this thread might cast some light.  Synanon's "Game" was the foundation of $tr8.

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=32589

Namaste.  :poison:  :peace:

I am trying to piece it all together...(as always)...and am currently wondering how Chuck Dederich came up with the game.  Was it something he came up with on his own or was he somehow influenced by what the North Koreans were doing to captured U.N. prisoners during the Korean war ?  What is the connection ??  Was Dederich a vet or did he know any returning vets who told him of their experience ??  How did this idea travel from N. Korea to southern CA ??

Thankyou.

I don't know, but I just figured out how hard it is to live in a society without the right social coping mechanisms.  It's taken me all this long while to see the foreign patterns, of my mind, with any clarity.

Hmmm.  "Behavior modification"  ??

The way the program systematically stripped anyone who entered the program of all their defense mechanisms.  Their social coping mechanisms.  Their ways to deal with the harshness of the world.  These SCM are the results of many years of intention, practice, culture and experience by the individual who owns them, or you might say: who is attached to them.  Some SCM are visible and some not.  The program could not tolerate any SCMs and as a matter of course rooted out all SCMs amongst it's group members(stubborn and willful kid).  Only after that, could the otherwise stubborn and willful kid(group member) be made to give up his ground in a forced retreat, such as occurred in $tr8 Inc.  I have seen all kinds of kids have their SCMs mocked, made fun of, and generally brutally demeaned by staff and the group.  But these SCMs are completely natural and necessary social adaptations in a world that can at any time become brutal and cold.  So any 1st phaser or newcomer(stubborn willful kid, group member) exhibiting any SCMs could not advance, and anytime anyone, higher phaser or newcomer was stood up to talk about something, if they showed any sign of bein weak or exhibiting any SCMs they were confronted, and told to change their behavior.  

Say for example,  there's a rap and it's in the present part of the rap, so all the sad, shameful past has already been talked about, and some 3rd phaser gets stood up and asked by staff to talk about whatever(a 5th phaser has a concern about you){LOL!}...ah! but anyway, if the third phaser say hitches his pants a few times while he's talkin, that could lead to another place for the program to grab a hold, another place for the program to put down some roots and get more into you.  I know, cause they would look for any little personal habit you might have as a way in and if you showed any sign of not being completely open and vulnerable you were attacked for it.  The little things that people do, that give them their personality.  You couldn't have your personality in $tr8.  You couldn't have your own ways.  You couldn't socially cope.  And they controlled every aspect of the environment.  They monitored and punished or rewarded each and every group members behavior accordingly and they made every effort to detach us from any way we had to defend ourselves.  They purposefully stripped us of the very skills we would need the most over the course of our whole lives.  It's pretty bad when your 19 years old and you're supposed to be out on your own, keepin a job and payin your rent when you don't even understand how to behave appropriately in those situations.    

And then this is compounded by everyone around you askin you whats wrong and why can't you keep a job, etc.? and you know there is something wrong and it's the program but you can't see anything and you have no way to look at it, let alone tell someone what's wrong.  This leads to a desperate life.

...because when you think about it, it seems like a lack of character to me, if people have the opportunity to try and enrich their perspective, even chemically, but don't take the chance, because they've been pressured to believe it could be bad for them in some way...like make them stupid or delusional or confused or something.  I mean you have to have some discretion in life...that's true, but if you just believe what your told...(I just shake my head in silence then)

If you have the opportunity to get high and be part of any kind of a drum circle don't believe the cops or the judge or any of the "straight"-anti-drug people.  They are all mostly just so far removed from the way of things that they have to pretend or be destroyed.

You can altar the way your senses perceive the world, and when you do what your sense tell you is still true and real.  I think people who insist that things like smoking marijuana can only be bad are just reactionary fools.  Because even if it's not your thing, you should still just be cool and let people live.  Marijuana is a teacher.  People who deny it's value are ignorant.  Peace.

Remember your first days in the program, before you understood what they were talking about, with the feelings and everything  ??  I was in there about 3 weeks when I was called on to talk about my past.  I stood up and began to talk about some incident.  I exaggerated my shame and guilt and even tried to cry(sorry to disappoint, it's not easy to write) for the group, but I was confronted and accused of pushin out feelins or something and the staff told me I better get in touch with my feelings or something and I sat down and felt a ton of pressure and more forsaken and alone than I ever had until then.  

What occurs to me now is the extreme pressure you were kept under in the hope that you would not only conform but also become "aware".  The pressure to correctly analyze and articulate in specific words your deepest thoughts and emotions. If you were inspecific you would be told about it by some group member or staff and encouraged to put your general abstract thoughts into very specific words, which you could then be manipulated with.

There was a time before $tr8 when I was not so "aware" in words or "in my head" in words, as it were.  But since $tr8 I've never left my head for long again.  I mean, I was aware before $tr8 too, I always have been able to feel things; strong intuition.  But I was never very articulate about the feelings, I just knew what they meant.  I can remember when my consciousness shifted and I understood the $tr8 trip.  It was sometime after I was returned from my 1st cop-out.  So maybe I was there 3 months or so when I developed the ability to articulate the program mind back to the group.  And I was good enough at it that from then on I avoided unexpected confrontation from the group.  I became "aware".  remember that ??  Do you remember when your mind changed and you could speak the language sincerely ??


That was a major development in my life.  Most people out in the world don't function in such a conscious state.  It's not practical.  But with the words came beliefs and new illusions to confuse and distract.  I really did turn inward about 3 months in and I've since had to deal with it.  $tr8 turned me inward to "search myself" for what they wanted.  I was under constant duress until I learned to think and speak in the way of the program.  I had to develop the ability to dissect my own most inward beliefs and trace the root of my every conscious thought and know what to call it in order to avoid the group's wrath.  I became adept over time.

What am I gettin at ...??  I'm not sure...but there is something in the way they made you confess your mind to them.  The way they made you put it all into very specific words, they made you aware of yourself.  Even if the program was misguided, the principals they applied were real.  The way they trained you to focus on what you felt and how to articulate it.  That was the transformation.  The essence of the cult.  Some doors of perception, once opened can never be closed again.  Or is that the Chronic PTSD ??  

Do you remember when you became overly obsessed with articulating the inner workings of your own psychology ??  Do you know what I'm talkin about ??  See what I'm sayin ??

Sting sings ..."...With words they try to jail ya..."...  Right on Sting, says I.

Ugh.  Such is life.... ...

...The second you pretended to go along with the program; the minute you decided to "fake it" until you could run, you made yourself open and vulnerable to brainwash.  As soon as you began to just pretend you took the fatal sip.

Why does everything have to be "mine" ??  What's up with the "my" dvr, "my" music, "my"(your state here). "My" this and "my" that.  I'm sick of it.  It just sounds bratty and exclusive and ego-centric.