On 2005-10-06 07:59:00, GregFL wrote:
"Really? I missed it?
Thank God then, I'm one of the lucky ones!
::cheers::
Me too!
You can't credit or blame the Program
entirely for either good or bad outcomes.
Some people just didn't get the promised help and may have lost family support, vital time at a critical developmental phase in their lives, educational oportunities, etc. Others lost years or even decades in devotion to the cult. Some, like my dear brother, have dedicated their lives to the stepcult, even rejecting blood family over it, despite a lifetime of serious issues not present prior to the first round of intense indoctrination.
Some people DID get just that fucked up and remained so. Or made permanent, serious mistakes as a direct result of their involvement w/ a cult. I just talked to a lady the other night who lost a friend around 15 years ago. He was a Program graduate who, it was rumored, had stepped over the line and used forbidden drugs. As a result, his family kicked him out, all the friends he had had (Program grads) abandoned him, wouldn't even talk to him. Within a week or two, he closed himself into a garage, started the car and sucked on the tailpipe till he died.
People who knew him attibute that entirely to the total shunning mandated by the Program (all for his own good, of course). And now those people who knew and loved him and who helped completely demoralize him have to live w/ the question of how much their fidelity to the program over him contributed to his despair.
Myself? I can't imagine a scenareo where I would have landed up pregnant by the jackass I did wind up with, except that I was completely untethered and alone, looking for anything to hang onto. But I can't really complain; the baby is now a beautifal and baudacious young woman of whom I'm very proud and some of the losers relatives have become some of my best friends. All in all, not knowing what may have been behind door #1 or #2, I wouldn't change a thing.
Now, any of this can be overcome. I'm living proof. But that doesn't mean that the Program influence is benign, far less that it's usually helpful. As far as I can tell based on the people who have weighed in on the issue over the years, it's been a destructive force in
most people's lives, though most have proven themselves resilient enough to overcome it.
Somebody, who often likes to pretend nobody knows his name, keeps calling me vindictive, even jealous (LOL) for my persistant criticizm.
It would be nice, and I don't deny it, to see some vindicatin; to have my college fund and inheritence and my childhood home back, to have my family not so divided and all the rest. I don't deny that. Who among us is really that far above it all? But it's not a realistic expectation. I never thought it was. What I'm after is much more practical. What I'm after is as simple as getting the truth out about these methods of "treatment". If you guys will kindly quit selling this toxic snake oil, I'll thank you for that. But I don't expect it. So do expect for me to refute your wild claims and to give support and assistance to anyone else who's willing to do so.
in 1966, C.S. Lewis wrote:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of it's victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busy-bodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those that torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
In no instance have . . . the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.
--James Madison, U.S. President
