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How Adopting the Beliefs of the The AntiCult Movement Harms Ex-Scientologists

Alanzo

Bardo Tulpa
The anti cult movement teaches that minority religions harm the mental health of their members.

Hundreds of psychological practices have been built on the idea that Ex members of these minority religions are suffering from some form of mental damage, and that they need to ‘recover’ from it.

Experiencing a loss of faith and leaving your previous religious or spiritual pursuit, whatever it is, can certainly be a time of upheaval in your life. There’s even a phrase for it “Losing My Religion”, and a song for it, too.

Adopting the beliefs of the anti-cult movement dramatically changes the views and attitudes of those who experience a loss of faith in their previous religion. And those changes have a profound effect on how Exes make sense of their own past.

So we must ask: How helpful is the ideology of the anti cult movement in making sense of things?

Is it even true?

A Religion or an Ideology As a Sense-Making Instrument
Sensemaking is the process by which humans give meaning to experience.

A lot of data comes at you from the world during the course of a day and you need to process it to act effectively. A religious belief system can help perform this role for you, giving you time-tested beliefs and solutions that tell you what thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors to adopt.

When you are in a group of people who are all applying the same sensemaking instrument to the world, then you’ve got a shared culture that gives you stability as a human being. It gives you status and all the other good things that we get out of belonging to a tribe.

Ex Members Are in a More Vulnerable State When They Leave a ‘Cult” Than When They Joined One
It’s a stereotype to say that whenever anyone joined a cult, they did so because they were in a vulnerable state of their lives. Some were, some weren’t.

But to say that an Ex-member who has just left a ‘cult’ is in a vulnerable state, that’s much more accurate, and much less of a stereotype. This is because it does not matter whether it was a minority religion or a majority one, or even if your sensemaking ideology was atheism. Your worldview has let you down. You’ve lost faith in it. And you have no idea what or how to process your experience any more.

Since the late 1990’s, Ex-members in this vulnerable state have gone onto the Internet to try to research and figure things out after leaving their minority religion. Since the late 1990’s – almost exclusively – they find the ideas of the anti cult movement to make sense of their previous religious or spiritual pursuit.

A New Sense Making Instrument to Completely Re-Interpret Your Whole Previous Life
As a sense making instrument, the ideology of the Anti-Cult Movement is pretty simple. It’s no BhagaVad Gita, that’s for sure.

It goes like this:

“You were in a CULT and you were BRAINWASHED to believe the way you did. You were made to undergo HYPNOSIS INDUCING TECHNIQUES which made you LOSE YOUR POWER OF CHOICE and to adopt beliefs that created a WHOLE MATRIX OF THOUGHT THAT WAS NOT YOUR OWN“.

That’s basically it. An Ex member adopts this extremely simplistic view to make sense of their past involvement, and who they used to be, what they believed and why they believed it. The AntiCult Movement becomes their new belief system.

Since you’ve adopted this new instrument of sense-making, you begin to re-define and re-interpret every experience you ever had in the ‘cult’. You will use this anti cult movement ideology to radically change everything you ever knew about yourself and your previous life.

What you used to call ‘religion’ you now call ‘cult’

What used to inspire you with sacred ideas is now so profane it makes you feel sick.

What you used to be proud of, you are now ashamed of.

What you used to think was sensible, you now think is delusional.

And you have the best rationalization for the things you are struggling to understand about yourself – you were ‘brainwashed!‘.

This would all be great if the anti cult movement ideology was complex enough to correspond to the complexity of real life. But it’s not. This belief system greatly oversimplifies things in a very gakky and self-destructive way. And, as it turns out, none of its ideas actually hold up to scrutiny.

The anti cult movement’s ideology is too simplistic to be true.

The Anti Cult Movement Harms Ex-Members in 5 Major Ways
I have been writing about this since it first began to dawn on me about 5 years ago. But whenever anyone in the thrall of this anti cult movement ideology hears my screams, they just think I’ve gone back into Scientology.

This is just one example of the stupidity that anti cult movement ideology causes.

Here are 5 ways that I have identified over the last 19 years of being out of Scientology which show how the adoption of the anti cult movement harms ex members.

1. Denies You Your Power of Choice
The concept of brainwashing denies your own power of choice. When you are brainwashed, the choices you make are not your own. So the life you lived was not your own, either.

Look at this idea as sensemaking. This is how you now make sense of your previous life, and who you used to be while you were a member.

Can you see there are other ways of making sense of how you made your decisions, and what you were trying to achieve while in the cult – rather than just “I was brainwashed!”?

Once you begin to investigate those other ways, you’ll find that you were using your own power of choice the whole time.

2. Walls Off and Toxifies Your Previous “Cult” Self
Steven Hassan is one of the primary promulgators of the anti cult movement’s ideology on the Internet. He has a model, based on the great Leon Festinger’s work, which Hassan calls “The BITE Model”. This sensemaking instrument prompts you to split yourself up into a “true self” and a fake “cult self”.

Because I personally bought into this anticult ideology when I left Scientology, it’s hard for me to describe the amount of damage this idea caused me, and how much of my life was derailed by it.

I’m just going to scream this: YOU WERE YOU BEFORE THE CULT, DURING THE CULT, AND AFTER THE CULT.

Try using that as a sensemaking instrument instead.

3. Gives You Nightmarish Narratives of Who You Were & What You Did
I know of Ex-Members who are heavy anti cult movement promoters who have said that Scientology’s RPF was “the worst experience that any human being could ever live through”. That is a direct quote.

Obviously this Ex has not put his experience into perspective with the experiences of other human beings who have been through things like Auschwitz, Darfur, or even modern day Syria. But that is the kind of nightmare fantasy that the Anti cult movement’s ideology regularly instills in Exes.

These types of cognitive distortions have been proven to cause depression and anxiety – and they come straight out of the anti-cult movement’s ideology.

4. Becomes a Huge Source of Guilt & Shame
The biggest evangelists of the anti cult movement regularly say that you were not stupid for giving up your power of choice and becoming a brainwashed zombie. But you believe you were a brainwashed zombie. This is the only conclusion allowed. This is a cartoonish oversimplification of your past, who you were, how you thought, and what you believed. But there is no other possible interpretation for who you were but a brainwashed zombie, as long as you buy into the anti cult movement’s ideology.

5. Prompts You to Nullify & Discard Your Whole Previous Life
If you have ever been to a gathering of Exes who are trapped in the ideas of the anti cult movement, you will see one or two stand up and say that they wasted 30 YEARS of their life while in the cult. Or however long they spent inside.

Yet the person they were when they were in the cult was sometimes the best person they’ve ever been. All of that personal experience got wasted when they adopted the anti cult movement, disowning their past and walling it off.

Not only is this damaging to an ex-member, but it is so false that it literally wastes the value of your own life experience. That is a colossal waste – directly caused by adopting the anti cult movement’s ideology.

___________________________________________

There’s a real liability to allowing your sense-making instrument to fall apart on you. And so I realize the level of discomfort that my ideas here are creating in those who have left a cult and found a new ideology to make sense of it for them.

But I’ve seen the anti cult movement do so much damage to myself and to other very good people that I just can’t shut up about this.

So what should be done instead?
1. Instead of denying your own power of choice – embrace it. Accept that you woke up every day and decided on purpose to be a Scientologist. Find out why. Find out what you were getting out of Scientology (or your previous religion or worldview) and explore how to keep getting that now on the next step in your evolution.

2. Instead of walling off your previous “Cult Self”, recognize that you were you before the cult, during the cult, and after the cult. See if your strengths and weaknesses have changed because of leaving it. Don’t walk around thinking you have two selves inside of you, one with which you are at war.

3. Next time you tell yourself a nightmarish exaggeration about who you were & what you did in the cult – STOP. Examine what you are telling yourself. Ask yourself if that nightmarish story is accurate, or if it is distorted or dysfunctional. Take some of the emotion out of it. Gain some reason on it. Then think up what is the non-exaggerated truth. And practice telling yourself that from now on. This an extremely valuable self discipline for a person who is making their way through any difficult transition in life.

4. Study whether there is any actual science on brainwashing. Ask yourself if you really were “brainwashed” by what you did in your religious or spiritual pursuit. Evaluate the word ‘cult’ as a mental construct. What is the reality which this mental construct is describing? Is it really accurate? Stay cool headed about this. Find factual terms that are backed up by science.

5. Don’t wall off your previous self. Your experiences were valid, and the lessons you learned are too. All that treasure is still there. Why harm yourself by throwing it away? Break down the wall between you and your past – integrate and embrace who you used to be. Practice your own self-acceptance, and keep learning from your experience.

If you can do these things you can see that getting out of a cult is not something you recover from, but something that makes you stronger.
 
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JustSheila

Crusader
tl;dr

Oops, does that count as a comment? :omg:

Seriously, though. We were all gagging on the lOOOONG brainwashing posts. If you're going to go on and on about how those are all so wrong (I liked some bits and pieces, most people kind of gagged and no one agreed on anything) and write just like the other author where we're like, "oh no, here we go again, more sermonizing AGAIN on the SAME subject for another thousand words!" it makes you look just like him.

Sheesh, Alanzo. At the very least, you were once a better writer years ago and who knows? Maybe some day you can write again like that if you try. But please don't use that 'overwhelm others with cut and paste and copying the same words endlessly.' This isn't a blog and it's tedious to even see it on a forum, much less think about reading it.

Just sayin'
 
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I told you I was trouble

Suspended animation
I think there's a lot of truth and common sense in your post @Alanzo but I also see your urge to lecture shining through because you are assuming that we are all thinking the same way and need 'help' (yours) ... and we are not and don't.

Even so, I still agree with a lot some of it.
 

Bill

Gold Meritorious Patron
It goes like this:

“You were in a CULT and you were BRAINWASHED to believe the way you did. You were made to undergo HYPNOSIS INDUCING TECHNIQUES which made you LOSE YOUR POWER OF CHOICE and to adopt beliefs that created a WHOLE MATRIX OF THOUGHT THAT WAS NOT YOUR OWN“.
What is the source of this definition of anti-cult?

If, as I gather, this is your definition, then the whole thing is a strawman argument. You made up what "anti-cult" means and then argue against YOUR own definition. Easy "win".

But not based on reality. You are challenging someone here who believes in YOUR definition of anti-cult? Who, specifically, please?
 

freethinker

Sponsor
The anti cult movement teaches that minority religions harm the mental health of their members.
Hundreds of psychological practices have been built on the idea that Ex members of these minority religions are suffering from some form of mental damage, and that they need to ‘recover’ from it.
Experiencing a loss of faith and leaving your previous religious or spiritual pursuit, whatever it is, can certainly be a time of upheaval in your life. There’s even a phrase for it “Losing My Religion”, and a song for it, too.

Adopting the beliefs of the anti-cult movement dramatically changes the views and attitudes of those who experience a loss of faith in their previous religion. And those changes have a profound effect on how Exes make sense of their own past.

So we must ask: How helpful is the ideology of the anti cult movement in making sense of things?
Is it even true?

A Religion or an Ideology As a Sense-Making Instrument
Sensemaking is the process by which humans give meaning to experience.

A lot of data comes at you from the world during the course of a day and you need to process it to act effectively. A religious belief system can help perform this role for you, giving you time-tested beliefs and solutions that tell you what thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors to adopt.

When you are in a group of people who are all applying the same sensemaking instrument to the world, then you’ve got a shared culture that gives you stability as a human being. It gives you status and all the other good things that we get out of belonging to a tribe.

Ex Members Are in a More Vulnerable State When They Leave a ‘Cult” Than When They Joined One
It’s a stereotype to say that whenever anyone joined a cult, they did so because they were in a vulnerable state of their lives. Some were, some weren’t.

But to say that an Ex-member who has just left a ‘cult’ is in a vulnerable state, that’s much more accurate, and much less of a stereotype. This is because it does not matter whether it was a minority religion or a majority one, or even if your sensemaking ideology was atheism. Your worldview has let you down. You’ve lost faith in it. And you have no idea what or how to process your experience any more.
Since the late 1990’s, Ex-members in this vulnerable state have gone onto the Internet to try to research and figure things out after leaving their minority religion. Since the late 1990’s – almost exclusively – they find the ideas of the anti cult movement to make sense of their previous religious or spiritual pursuit.

A New Sense Making Instrument to Completely Re-Interpret Your Whole Previous Life
As a sense making instrument, the ideology of the Anti-Cult Movement is pretty simple. It’s no BhagaVad Gita, that’s for sure.

It goes like this:

“You were in a CULT and you were BRAINWASHED to believe the way you did. You were made to undergo HYPNOSIS INDUCING TECHNIQUES which made you LOSE YOUR POWER OF CHOICE and to adopt beliefs that created a WHOLE MATRIX OF THOUGHT THAT WAS NOT YOUR OWN“.

That’s basically it. An Ex member adopts this extremely simplistic view to make sense of their past involvement, and who they used to be, what they believed and why they believed it. The AntiCult Movement becomes their new belief system.

Since you’ve adopted this new instrument of sense-making, you begin to re-define and re-interpret every experience you ever had in the ‘cult’. You will use this anti cult movement ideology to radically change everything you ever knew about yourself and your previous life.

What you used to call ‘religion’ you now call ‘cult’

What used to inspire you with sacred ideas is now so profane it makes you feel sick.

What you used to be proud of, you are now ashamed of.

What you used to think was sensible, you now think is delusional.

And you have the best rationalization for the things you are struggling to understand about yourself – you were ‘brainwashed!‘.

This would all be great if the anti cult movement ideology was complex enough to correspond to the complexity of real life. But it’s not. This belief system greatly oversimplifies things in a very gakky and self-destructive way. And, as it turns out, none of its ideas actually hold up to scrutiny.

The anti cult movement’s ideology is too simplistic to be true.

The Anti Cult Movement Harms Ex-Members in 5 Major Ways
I have been writing about this since it first began to dawn on me about 5 years ago. But whenever anyone in the thrall of this anti cult movement ideology hears my screams, they just think I’ve gone back into Scientology.

This is just one example of the stupidity that anti cult movement ideology causes.

Here are 5 ways that I have identified over the last 19 years of being out of Scientology which show how the adoption of the anti cult movement harms ex members.

1. Denies You Your Power of Choice
The concept of brainwashing denies your own power of choice. When you are brainwashed, the choices you make are not your own. So the life you lived was not your own, either.
Look at this idea as sensemaking. This is how you now make sense of your previous life, and who you used to be while you were a member.

Can you see there are other ways of making sense of how you made your decisions, and what you were trying to achieve while in the cult – rather than just “I was brainwashed!”?

Once you begin to investigate those other ways, you’ll find that you were using your own power of choice the whole time.

2. Walls Off and Toxifies Your Previous “Cult” Self
Steven Hassan is one of the primary promulgators of the anti cult movement’s ideology on the Internet. He has a model, based on the great Leon Festinger’s work, which Hassan calls “The BITE Model”. This sensemaking instrument prompts you to split yourself up into a “true self” and a fake “cult self”.

Because I personally bought into this anticult ideology when I left Scientology, it’s hard for me to describe the amount of damage this idea caused me, and how much of my life was derailed by it.
I’m just going to scream this: YOU WERE YOU BEFORE THE CULT, DURING THE CULT, AND AFTER THE CULT.
Try using that as a sensemaking instrument instead.

3. Gives You Nightmarish Narratives of Who You Were & What You Did
I know of Ex-Members who are heavy anti cult movement promoters who have said that Scientology’s RPF was “the worst experience that any human being could ever live through”. That is a direct quote.

Obviously this Ex has not put his experience into perspective with the experiences of other human beings who have been through things like Auschwitz, Darfur, or even modern day Syria. But that is the kind of nightmare fantasy that the Anti cult movement’s ideology regularly instills in Exes.

These types of cognitive distortions have been proven to cause depression and anxiety – and they come straight out of the anti-cult movement’s ideology.

4. Becomes a Huge Source of Guilt & Shame
The biggest evangelists of the anti cult movement regularly say that you were not stupid for giving up your power of choice and becoming a brainwashed zombie. But you believe you were a brainwashed zombie. This is the only conclusion allowed. This is a cartoonish oversimplification of your past, who you were, how you thought, and what you believed. But there is no other possible interpretation for who you were but a brainwashed zombie, as long as you buy into the anti cult movement’s ideology.

5. Prompts You to Nullify & Discard Your Whole Previous Life
If you have ever been to a gathering of Exes who are trapped in the ideas of the anti cult movement, you will see one or two stand up and say that they wasted 30 YEARS of their life while in the cult. Or however long they spent inside.

Yet the person they were when they were in the cult was sometimes the best person they’ve ever been. All of that personal experience got wasted when they adopted the anti cult movement, disowning their past and walling it off.

Not only is this damaging to an ex-member, but it is so false that it literally wastes the value of your own life experience. That is a colossal waste – directly caused by adopting the anti cult movement’s ideology.

___________________________________________

There’s a real liability to allowing your sense-making instrument to fall apart on you. And so I realize the level of discomfort that my ideas here are creating in those who have left a cult and found a new ideology to make sense of it for them.

But I’ve seen the anti cult movement do so much damage to myself and to other very good people that I just can’t shut up about this.

So what should be done instead?
1. Instead of denying your own power of choice – embrace it. Accept that you woke up every day and decided on purpose to be a Scientologist. Find out why. Find out what you were getting out of Scientology (or your previous religion or worldview) and explore how to keep getting that now on the next step in your evolution.

2. Instead of walling off your previous “Cult Self”, recognize that you were you before the cult, during the cult, and after the cult. See if your strengths and weaknesses have changed because of leaving it. Don’t walk around thinking you have two selves inside of you, one with which you are at war.

3. Next time you tell yourself a nightmarish exaggeration about who you were & what you did in the cult – STOP. Examine what you are telling yourself. Ask yourself if that nightmarish story is accurate, or if it is distorted or dysfunctional. Take some of the emotion out of it. Gain some reason on it. Then think up what is the non-exaggerated truth. And practice telling yourself that from now on. This an extremely valuable self discipline for a person who is making their way through any difficult transition in life.

4. Study whether there is any actual science on brainwashing. Ask yourself if you really were “brainwashed” by what you did in your religious or spiritual pursuit. Evaluate the word ‘cult’ as a mental construct. What is the reality which this mental construct is describing? Is it really accurate? Stay cool headed about this. Find factual terms that are backed up by science.

5. Don’t wall off your previous self. Your experiences were valid, and the lessons you learned are too. All that treasure is still there. Why harm yourself by throwing it away? Break down the wall between you and your past – integrate and embrace who you used to be. Practice your own self-acceptance, and keep learning from your experience.

If you can do these things you can see that getting out of a cult is not something you recover from, but something that makes you stronger.
You should really try getting to know your audience, I use that term loosely, before you assume how they think.
 

Veda

Sponsor
The anti cult movement teaches that minority religions harm the mental health of their members.

Hundreds of psychological practices have been built on the idea that Ex members of these minority religions are suffering from some form of mental damage, and that they need to ‘recover’ from it.

-snip-
You're regurgitating content spewed by Scientology Inc.'s, and other cults', hired apologists, modified for ESMB.
 

Veda

Sponsor
Cults, ideally, want to control not only the beliefs of their members, but the beliefs of those who have left and are no longer members.

Primarily they want former members to be quiet about their experiences but, short of that, they want to control the way former members think about the cult they left, and the language former members use.

Cults, for decades, have sought to do this.

Despite the low success rate, it's an obsession for them, and they can't stop.
 

Gib

Crusader
What is the source of this definition of anti-cult?

If, as I gather, this is your definition, then the whole thing is a strawman argument. You made up what "anti-cult" means and then argue against YOUR own definition. Easy "win".

But not based on reality. You are challenging someone here who believes in YOUR definition of anti-cult? Who, specifically, please?
welcome to the new ESMB, Alanzo's blog.
 

JustSheila

Crusader
welcome to the new ESMB, Alanzo's blog.
@Alanzo

If you want to not do the mutual ignore with me, that's fine. I'm not being mean. I'm chill. How about you?

I was just wondering if by any chance you might just be making a simple mistake of overwhelming the Board with your personal posts so much that other members' posts are drowned out and you don't realize it and it may be causing some friction?

I did that when I first arrived to ESMB. It did not go well. :no: Dumbass mistake on my part. I try not to do that anymore, but at the time, like I told Emma, I WAS EXCITED! OMG, when I first found ESMB, I literally did not sleep for three days, and I type 90 wpm, too! :omg: It's happened to a few others, too. It's a real shocker when you're an exSO who has been out of the loop for years to get all that off your chest.

So it looks like you've got a whole lot of things to say and you just can't post your opinions often enough or fast enough.

It is possible that other members may feel their voices are getting drowned out by your numerous posts and long threads you started that were copy-pasted from your blog. So the irony of this is, you may be creating the very situation that you write about being so wrong... drowning out others' opinions with your own as THE opinion and preaching it as THE ONLY ACCEPTABLE OPINION.

Please give this some thought. You're a good writer. I hate to see it wasted. Slow down. Cheers.
 

Infinite

Troublesome Internet Fringe Dweller
If Scientology was a minority religion you might have a point. Contrast and compare your position on Scientology here with that of Mann who you cite in another post and with the practise of "cherry picking" and you might discern why your comments gain so little traction. Handy hint: it has to do with coherency.
 

Type4_PTS

Diamond Invictus SP
I think there's a lot of truth and common sense in your post @Alanzo but I also see your urge to lecture shining through because you are assuming that we are all thinking the same way and need 'help' (yours) ... and we are not and don't.

Even so, I still agree with a lot some of it.
There may well be some truth and common sense in Alanzo's post. Then again, there was some truth and common sense in Hubbard's writings as well, which was a contributing factor in gaining our trust.

It became clear to me days ago though that Alanzo has zero intention of engaging in an honest discussion. He'll ignore questions asked of him, utilize logical fallacies to bolster his position, fire off a paragraph of ad hom at you, argue against claims that you didn't even make (Strawman argument) etc. So I don't see the point of attempting to engage him in a discussion. He claims that his intention is to help those reading here, but those with a true intention to help would not behave in that way.
 

Alanzo

Bardo Tulpa
This is why I think it's good to present ideas that challenge the anticult movement belief system. Exes need alternatives to that superstitious, false, and nightmare minded crap.

I'll be presenting those alternatives here on Esmb.

May the best ideas win.
 

I told you I was trouble

Suspended animation
There may well be some truth and common sense in Alanzo's post. Then again, there was some truth and common sense in Hubbard's writings as well, which was a contributing factor in gaining our trust.

It became clear to me days ago though that Alanzo has zero intention of engaging in an honest discussion. He'll ignore questions asked of him, utilize logical fallacies to bolster his position, fire off a paragraph of ad hom at you, argue against claims that you didn't even make (Strawman argument) etc. So I don't see the point of attempting to engage him in a discussion. He claims that his intention is to help those reading here, but those with a true intention to help would not behave in that way.

I've never understood the mindset of a person who, without being asked for their opinion, decides that they have 'the solutions' to another person's real or imagined state of mind. It seems incredibly arrogant to me and even more so when it's laid down as an essay/lecture.

Some people do not seem to understand the concept of simply chatting (with each other) ... they want to inform and 'educate' the rest of us based on whatever is currently going on in their own heads.


:scratch:
 

Type4_PTS

Diamond Invictus SP
I've never understood the mindset of a person who, without being asked for their opinion, decides that they have 'the solutions' to another person's real or imagined state of mind. It seems incredibly arrogant to me and even more so when it's laid down as an essay/lecture.

Some people do not seem to understand the concept of simply chatting (with each other) ... they want to inform and 'educate' the rest of us based on whatever is currently going on in their own heads.


:scratch:
ITYIWT, I can help you with that!

Please check your PM for instructions & a lecture on how you are wrong. Clearly you've joined the wrong tribe and bought into their belief system, but no worries, help is on the way.

You're welcome!



:hide:
 

Bill

Gold Meritorious Patron
I've never understood the mindset of a person who, without being asked for their opinion, decides that they have 'the solutions' to another person's real or imagined state of mind. It seems incredibly arrogant to me and even more so when it's laid down as an essay/lecture.

Some people do not seem to understand the concept of simply chatting (with each other) ... they want to inform and 'educate' the rest of us based on whatever is currently going on in their own heads.


:scratch:
From what I've observed, Alanzo is "still fighting a battle from long ago". Almost nobody here was part of that battle but this is the battleground and he's still fighting.

That's why is makes no sense today.
 

Type4_PTS

Diamond Invictus SP
From what I've observed, Alanzo is "still fighting a battle from long ago". Almost nobody here was part of that battle but this is the battleground and he's still fighting.

That's why is makes no sense today.
Are you referring to Incident 2? :unsure:
 

Gib

Crusader
This is why I think it's good to present ideas that challenge the anticult movement belief system. Exes need alternatives to that superstitious, false, and nightmare minded crap.

I'll be presenting those alternatives here on Esmb.

May the best ideas win.
don't give a shit about some anticult movement belief system.

I only know the false promises of the hubbard, his dianetics, his scientology, his bridge to total total freedom. Which are complete bullshit.
 

PirateAndBum

Gold Meritorious Patron
I have some strong disagreements with what Alanzo is trying to do with this essay and his anti-anti-cult crusade.

Alanzo's quoted text in blue, mine in black.

The Anti Cult Movement Harms Ex-Members in 5 Major Ways

I have been writing about this since it first began to dawn on me about 5 years ago. But whenever anyone in the thrall of this anti cult movement ideology hears my screams, they just think I’ve gone back into Scientology.

This is just one example of the stupidity that anti cult movement ideology causes.

Here are 5 ways that I have identified over the last 19 years of being out of Scientology which show how the adoption of the anti cult movement harms ex members.

1. Denies You Your Power of Choice
The concept of brainwashing denies your own power of choice. When you are brainwashed, the choices you make are not your own. So the life you lived was not your own, either.


Look at this idea as sensemaking. This is how you now make sense of your previous life, and who you used to be while you were a member.
Can you see there are other ways of making sense of how you made your decisions, and what you were trying to achieve while in the cult – rather than just “I was brainwashed!”?


Once you begin to investigate those other ways, you’ll find that you were using your own power of choice the whole time.

The ex then didn't have power of choice over accepting this brainwashing idea? If you look at threads as recent as 2 weeks ago you will find one on hypnosis and therein see that there are varied opinions on whether one was hypnotized while in the scn cult. Brainwashing has been debated extensively on ESMB and is not a consensus opinion of exes. I suppose that would make your assertion a straw-man.

As to power of choice when a dedicated member of the co$ I would say that to have full power of choice one must have enough data to make an informed choice. We are well familiar with Hubbard's teaching:

"THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN CONTROL PEOPLE IS TO LIE TO THEM. You can write that down in your book in great big letters. The only way you can control anybody is to lie to them. When you find an individual is lying to you, you know that the individual is trying to control you. One way or another this individual is trying to control you. That is the mechanism of control.

This individual is lying to you because he is trying to control you - because if they give you enough misinformation they will pull you down the tone scale so that they can control you. Conversely, if you see an impulse on the part of a human being to control you, you know very well that that human being is lying to you. Not "is going to", but "is" lying to you.

Check these facts, you will find they are always true. That person who is trying to control you is lying to you. He's got to tell you lies in order to continue control, because the second you start telling anybody close to the truth, you start releasing him and he gets tougher and tougher to control.

So, you can't control somebody without telling them a bunch of lies. You will find that very often Command has this as its greatest weakness. It will try to control instead of leading. The next thing you know, it is lying to the [illegible]. Lie, lie, lie, and it gets worse and worse, and all of a sudden the thing blows up. Well, religion has done this. Organised religion tries to control, so therefore must be lying.

After a while it figures out (even itself) that it is lying, and then it starts down tone scale further and further, and all of a sudden people get down along this spring-like bottom (heresy) and say, "Are we going into apathy and die, or are we going to revolt?" and they revolt, because you can only lie to people so long. Unfortunately there is always a new cycle of lying." - LRH "Technique 88" Lecture

If we always had power of choice then we had power of choice when we became an ex to decide what was what about our experience. So you are making an assertion that we had no power of choice in the anti-cult setting and have thus been damaged by having to frame our experience in some fixed narrative. Seems you are doing what you decry - denying an ex's power of choice. Kinda like Hubbard teaching about control by lying and then doing that very thing to you that he was teaching you to watch out for.

2. Walls Off and Toxifies Your Previous “Cult” Self

Steven Hassan is one of the primary promulgators of the anti cult movement’s ideology on the Internet. He has a model, based on the great Leon Festinger’s work, which Hassan calls “The BITE Model”. This sensemaking instrument prompts you to split yourself up into a “true self” and a fake “cult self”.

Because I personally bought into this anticult ideology when I left Scientology, it’s hard for me to describe the amount of damage this idea caused me, and how much of my life was derailed by it.
I’m just going to scream this: YOU WERE YOU BEFORE THE CULT, DURING THE CULT, AND AFTER THE CULT.
Try using that as a sensemaking instrument instead.


No, that is confusing two different things. The person and the identities that person takes on. Are you seriously going to assert that there is not a "scientologist" identity? A member in good standing, one with that dedicated glare that knows and follows KSW #1? People change over time. If by "you" we take it to mean your set of beliefs; you are NOT the you that you were when you were 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 or 60 years of age. You can scream all you like but it isn't going to change that fact. People change. How about you tell us exactly how your life was derailed and damaged - give it a shot because I kinda suspect that is more dramatic rhetoric than fact. I really don't give a shit what Steve Hassan has to say, I've never read his books, he was a moonie, not a scilon. People are free to make up their minds about the things they read including his books. The "anti-cult movement" won't send you to Qual and then on to Ethics if you don't buy Steve's ideas. Show me the m'f'n routing form dude! :D

3. Gives You Nightmarish Narratives of Who You Were & What You Did

I know of Ex-Members who are heavy anti cult movement promoters who have said that Scientology’s RPF was “the worst experience that any human being could ever live through”. That is a direct quote.

Obviously this Ex has not put his experience into perspective with the experiences of other human beings who have been through things like Auschwitz, Darfur, or even modern day Syria. But that is the kind of nightmare fantasy that the Anti cult movement’s ideology regularly instills in Exes.
These types of cognitive distortions have been proven to cause depression and anxiety – and they come straight out of the anti-cult movement’s ideology.


So an ex is incapable of understanding hyperbole or the difference between facts and opinions? I have not seen that "nightmare fantasy" being instilled in exes. Again, here you are doing what you decry, using hyperbole to instill fear. Does your statement then produce cognitive distortions which may bring about depression and anxiety? Aren't you making exes anxious about the dangerous and damaging anti-cultists with this essay?

4. Becomes a Huge Source of Guilt & Shame
The biggest evangelists of the anti cult movement regularly say that you were not stupid for giving up your power of choice and becoming a brainwashed zombie. But you believe you were a brainwashed zombie. This is the only conclusion allowed. This is a cartoonish oversimplification of your past, who you were, how you thought, and what you believed. But there is no other possible interpretation for who you were but a brainwashed zombie, as long as you buy into the anti cult movement’s ideology.


Are you talking about Tony Ortega? Why not name names? Who are you talking about because I don't match up your statements with anyone I know. I have to chalk this up as more hyperbole from you. Would you agree that Clear and OT are not states that are delivered by the co$? Did you not believe that you would be able to at some point achieve such states when you were involved? I don't call that brainwashing. I call it deception. So were we all deceived? I would say yes, we were ALL deceived by lies that we believed to be true. Coming to terms with that is part of the process of leaving behind the ideology.

Whatever guilt or shame a person feels about their involvement is more likely to do with lost time, finance and relationships. And yes, maybe for being naive or gullible. We all knew why we were involved. For many it was a desire for higher states of awareness and ability. For others, to save the world. For many it was both. Is that something to be ashamed of? No. Is this understanding suppressed in the ex community? Not that I've seen.

So your assertion that "the only conclusion allowed is that you were a brainwashed zombie" is not grounded in reality. Just hyperbolic rhetoric. Why? To make exes feel bad about themselves? That couldn't be it, because you of course aren't trying to damage anyone with your writing, or could it?


5. Prompts You to Nullify & Discard Your Whole Previous Life
If you have ever been to a gathering of Exes who are trapped in the ideas of the anti cult movement, you will see one or two stand up and say that they wasted 30 YEARS of their life while in the cult. Or however long they spent inside. Yet the person they were when they were in the cult was sometimes the best person they’ve ever been. All of that personal experience got wasted when they adopted the anti cult movement, disowning their past and walling it off. Not only is this damaging to an ex-member, but it is so false that it literally wastes the value of your own life experience. That is a colossal waste – directly caused by adopting the anti cult movement’s ideology.


Perhaps this describes you Allen, but I doubt the general applicability of your statement. The last thing you find here on ESMB and other forums is a walling off, people are sharing their experience and discussing them. A person that spent 30 years in the Sea Org is entitled to say whatever they want about it. Was it wasted? I can certainly see how one could say that. Did they make a world without crime, insanity and war? What could their life have been had they not chosen to do that? Did they learn valuable lessons, let's hope so. Is that person just being dramatic and using hyperbole, just as you are?

So you'd like to take the "one or two" and turn it into a condition that afflicts everyone? When people find out the facts and get out after being involved for 30 years it can be quite a shock. It takes a while to process. So what someone says a month after leaving is quite likely to be different than five years after leaving. I can't think of anyone on ESMB or anywhere else I visit of EVER advising anyone that they should wall off their past, disown it, NEVER. So what the fuck are you talking about? I'd have to say you are inventing another straw man.


___________________________________________
There’s a real liability to allowing your sense-making instrument to fall apart on you. And so I realize the level of discomfort that my ideas here are creating in those who have left a cult and found a new ideology to make sense of it for them.
But I’ve seen the anti cult movement do so much damage to myself and to other very good people that I just can’t shut up about this.



So here you are talking about how damaging the anti-cult movement is. Seems you are doing exactly what you are telling us is so bad about the anti-cult movement. Ironic isn't it?

I have to agree that there is a liability to having one's sensemaking fall apart and that your attempt to instill false premises on others is why you might reconsider how you are going about your crusade.
 

JustSheila

Crusader
From what I've observed, Alanzo is "still fighting a battle from long ago". Almost nobody here was part of that battle but this is the battleground and he's still fighting.

That's why is makes no sense today.
Oh, dear. He's stuck in some past track battle fighting ancient wholetrack enemies.

Do you think he needs to be C/Sed for OT7EP and OT3X? :hmm:

(Too bad Challenge / Pheno isn't with us to answer this with another quip back. I loved going back and forth joking with Pheno about solo auditing and C/Sing thingies that sometimes nobody understood but us... inside jokes inside jokes. )

@Hatshepsut @HelluvaHoax! @RogerB
You guys should get it... and maybe have a quote ???
 

dchoiceisalwaysrs

Gold Meritorious Patron
Now I know why walls are so dangerous.

On second thought, what if he can walk through walls... will he then still have 9 lives left or only 8..?
 
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