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Why is DM like that? How does one understand?

Voltaire's Child

Fool on the Hill
IMO, if you really want to understand DM- and this also pertains to other abusive cult leaders of other cult- I really think that there are a couple things that would help you do that.

1) that no esoteric discipline or set of ideas will override a person's own intentions. I don't care how much FPRD the person gets or counselling about warm fuzzies or sacrement of penance/reconciliation- if that person intends to do certain things then those methods won't take hold. Anyway, DM doesn't get auditing, but even if he did...

And if you have disciplines that aren't all they're cracked up to be, then that's also a factor. But I really think the main thing is that the person's own plans and intentions are going to come first. If he or she sees the light after getting counselling, auditing, doing an eval, getting some divine revelation and changes his intentions, boo yah! But for that, you need an open hearted individual. You don't find many of them running cults.

2) People often wonder if cult leaders and other abusive religious leaders really believe in the precepts of the religion they claim they are furthering, or if it's only about the money and power and secretly the cult leader is laughing at the poor suckers.

Well, I think that if you really want to know, then read up on Borgia and Medici popes. Corrupt men linked to murder, sexual scandals, illegitimate children, power plays- not very religious, were they? But I really think that if you could have met those men with a crystal ball or a lie detector (or an emeter! Heh!) and could have looked in their hearts, you would have found that each of them believed in Jesus as the Son of God and the general wonderfulness of the Roman Catholic Church.

I don't think they were laughing on the way to the bank (and these guys were incredibly wealthy) anymore than I think DM is doing so.

I bet DM thinks that auditing and word clearing and TRs and Admin policy are just totally rad. Yeah, he screws with that stuff all the time, but he really thinks he's above the rules. It's obvious that money and power matter to him but I think he's got himself convinced that the cult needs him to be like that.

However, I also think it's rationalization. Because if he truly were objective, he'd see that he's bleeding the organization dry and that "stats are down". But then again if he truly were objective, he wouldn't beat his staff, he wouldn't have OSA running around hurting people, he wouldn't have all those execs in the hall, he would have been broken hearted over Lisa McPherson and would have done everything he could to have brought her isolation watch to a screeching halt as soon as he knew about it.

Never ever underestimate a person's ability for rationalization and fooling him or herself.

Scn execs are perfectly capable of breaking a zillion written policies and even stealing from the organization and still think that Hubbard was a genius and that the OT levels are amazing case changing procedures. After all, Hubbard was like that.

This is NO different from the Borgia and Medici popes or from some of the corrupt and greedy Puritan higher ups who used their religion as a way to get back at people, sometimes because they wanted someone's land.

People compartmentalize. Yes, these people are running all the way to the bank, but I don't think they're laughing at the suckers while so doing. THEY are the biggest suckers of all.
 

NCSP

Patron Meritorious
I think you're quite right about compartmentalization. For a long time I was puzzled about Hubbard (and DM): was he a con man? A true believer? Mentally ill?

Reading Robert Jay Lifton's excellent book on Aum Shinrikyo, Destroying the World to Save It, I realized that (as Lifton says about Asahara) there's nothing keeping him from being all of those things at once. People are very complex, often with little insight into their own motivations, and are perfectly capable of holding contradictory attitudes and opinions at the same time.

Another valuable insight from that book was the way in which it discussed the symbiotic nature of the relationship between "guru" and "follower." Just as the follower doesn't exist without the guru, the guru doesn't exist without the follower. In psychological terms, this means that a guru (or cult leader, whatever) experiences defections of members as an assault on themselves, a diminution of their own being. For a megalomaniac, this can obviously be extremely traumatic, and so you get these extreme mechanisms for preventing people -- even people the guru hates and abuses -- from leaving, and for punishing those who do.
 

lotus

stubborn rebel sheep!
Why DM is like that????

I had to first understand What LRH was really to have a bit or responses about that question
It is realted - closely related

DM is a Rondroid

A LRH mindfuck product

as some others are

He might appears worst

only because he hold all the absolute powers tihin the CO$

:confused2:
 
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Student of Trinity

Silver Meritorious Patron
Most if not all religions seem to include versions that are compatible with all sorts of crimes and abuse. But even strictly orthodox Scientology seems particularly well suited to abusive doublethink, because it places so much emphasis on controlling reality. If a Scientologist with power feels like doing some action, what restraint do they face? They can always say — or better, "postulate" — that it's somehow for the greater good.
 

Sindy

Crusader
I believe DM to be totally trapped by the position he chose to muscle himself into.

He can see the holes in the boat. He knows how corrupt Hubbard was and that the OT levels are bunk. He pushed himself into power and is playing that piece on the game board, for blood, because it's the only piece he knows how to play.

He doesn't have the luxury to self inspect. He can't. He is driven by other forces that he set into play by his own acts of self aggrandizement that he cannot, now, take back even if he wanted to. He has to play this thing out until the very end because he has no alternative.

He can't leave, decompress, waver, drastically change course, or take even a minute to question what he is doing. The stress must be horrific.

The man has been driven to insanity. He is quite mentally ill. I am sure a major breakdown is on the horizon.
 

Voltaire's Child

Fool on the Hill
Most if not all religions seem to include versions that are compatible with all sorts of crimes and abuse. But even strictly orthodox Scientology seems particularly well suited to abusive doublethink, because it places so much emphasis on controlling reality. If a Scientologist with power feels like doing some action, what restraint do they face? They can always say — or better, "postulate" — that it's somehow for the greater good.

I could also say that about medieval Christianity and ancient Judaism. They murdered women, they stoned them. They burned people. They had biblical precedent.

But that having been said, the difference between them and Scn is that they allowed themselves to be impinged upon by society and they unofficially have culled their own scriptures. I don't think any Jews have stoned adulteresses in centuries. (Moslems, unfortunately, can't say that- at least not about the fundie ones). Christians haven't burned anyone at the stake in a while.

The last recorded incidence of sati mata amongst Hindus was, unfortunately, 1985- but prior to that you have to go back at least a hundred years.

So I think that Scn refuses to move with the times, that this is one of the problems re the abuses.

If I were still an apologist, I'd say, hey, those other religions had centuries to reform, it took them that long. Yes, but that's because they didn't have the media back then or the internet and society was very different then- those societies didn't find that kind of behavior anywhere near as disgusting as ours does. There were no hate crime laws.

Fluffy's conclusion: were Hinduism, Judaism and Xtianity in their early abusive forms getting pressured nowadays, their reforms would have taken place quicker. Scn? It just won't.

That's how it seems to me.

So with other religions having stuff in them that's just as hideous yet they reformed, what is it about them that allowed this persuasion that you don't find in Scn? On the surface, early elder religions are just as nasty as Scn. Yet, it seems that this is really not the case.
 
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