...who believes people should be themselves and not hide...
Isn't using a fake account and crawling this site wearing an anonymizer the same as posting to GLP as an Anonymous Coward, Gerard?
Hmmm.
Well, don't be shy. You are welcome here, under the same rules as everyone else. I just ask that you be yourself.
Comments
Thanks for the link, "Modern-methods-of-mind-cntrol".
The town I live in even the 7th Day Adventist Minster is snitch.... but if you research the history of the 7th Day folks, particulary during the Nazi era of Germany, they were the biggest snitches. They even 'disfellowshipped' the Jewish converts - maybe even handed them over to the Gestopo? I would put nothing past them!!!!
Characteristics of a Cult:
1. The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law.
2. Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.
3. Mind-altering practices (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, and debilitating work routines) are used in excess and serve to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).
4. The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel (for example, members must get permission to date, change jobs, marry—or leaders prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, whether or not to have children, how to discipline children, and so forth).
5. The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s) and members (for example, the leader is considered the Messiah, a special being, an avatar—or the group and/or the leader is on a special mission to save humanity).
6. The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society.
7. The leader is not accountable to any authorities (unlike, for example, teachers, military commanders or ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream religious denominations).
8. The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members' participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group (for example, lying to family or friends, or collecting money for bogus charities).
9. The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt iin order to influence and/or control members. Often, this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion.
10. Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group.
11. The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.
12. The group is preoccupied with making money.
13. Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities.
14. Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.
15. The most loyal members (the “true believers”) feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave (or even consider leaving) the group.
From Cults 101, http://www.csj.org/infoserv_cult101/checklis.htm
Scientology fits most of these characteristics. NZT/ning fits a lot of them. It's different because it's on-line and they don't know where you live and/or aren't close enough to you to show up at your door. You CAN control the situation. Simply don't log on!
I'm going to talk about what caused me to leave Scientology. I see parallels in the context of leaving any group that practices lying and bullying as a policy. It was around 1985 when litigation was going on, the Steve Fishman case I think, in which secret Scientology “scripture” was introduced into evidence. Specifically, it had to do with Scientology's secret counseling level called OT3.
At the completion of that level, L. Ron Hubbard recorded a tape describing his research into OT3 and how it came to be discovered. It was a very popular tape, called “Ron's Journal 67,” and was widely disseminated. In other words, most Scientologists were quite familiar with it. This is similar to the ZT that was widely disseminated about the 7 of 10 before the end of 2010, and there are other similarities.
In that tape, Hubbard stated, in no uncertain terms, that anyone who contacted (i.e., read or otherwise learned of) the OT3 data before they were ready (meaning before they had done all the prerequisite Scientology counseling and training levels) would die of pneumonia. No ifs, ands, or buts.
It was a direct, unambiguous statement. If you found out about OT3 before you were ready, you would die. Period. Because of these alleged dire consequences, OT3 was closely guarded and those undergoing that level were under intense security requirements. All the mystery, of course, made it desirable and was good for sales.
Anyway, this was a major disaster for Scientology that their closely guarded trade secret (yes, a "church" with proprietary trade secrets) had been introduced as evidence in court proceedings (as partial proof of why the plaintiff was claiming he had become mentally unbalanced by Scientology's counseling).
The court record had not been sealed so there was a long line at the Clerk's office to get copies of that information. Scientology had volunteers making up the majority of the line, paying with pennies for the copies, to stall the release of the OT3 materials to the public until their lawyers could get the exhibits sealed. However, some non-Scientologist got a copy and the cat was out of the bag.
Now us gullible, trusting guys at the lower levels of Scientology truly believed this was going to cause a disaster beyond imagination. The L.A. Times would publish it and everyone reading it was going to catch pneumonia and die. We truly believed it. Why? Because we believed in the integrity of L. Ron Hubbard.
I wasn't at the point of being ready for OT3 so this was troubling, but at the same time I was also very curious. The first thing I noticed was the Great Pneumonia Epidemic never materialized. So, this fueled my curiousity even more.
As time went by, I continued to wonder but still I hesitated to look just because one man, regarded as the guru, the leader, he-who-could-not-lie had simply uttered a sentence. We believed that anything he said was the truth and it never even occurred to us that it was anything other than what he said.
Thus, as time passed, the OT3 materials became readily available on the internet (http://www.skeptictank.org/hs/ot3.htm), Scientologists were barred from the internet because all the “bad guys” out there would...I guess the simple way to explain it is to say we were taught to believe that contact with people who didn't believe in Hubbard's work would screw us up in some way, create problems and that the benevolent Church of $cientology was there to run interference and protect our fragile spiritual states.
That was the surface purpose. The real purpose was to prevent members from seeing bad science fiction before they had been conditioned enough to swallow it--hook, line and sinker. Censorship went so far that a program was created by Scientology that all Scientologists were supposed to install on their computer to surf the 'net...called by critics as "the net nanny." It blocked critical (of Scientology) websites.
Anyway, one day years later I finally found the nerve to look. I went on the internet and read the OT3 material about Xenu and the volcanoes (the cosmology of Scientology, how us spiritual beings became less powerful and forgot who were were). I had already suspected that I wasn't going to die of pneumonia since the world hadn't suffered a pneumonia epidemic. And I was right, I didn't get sick at all, much less die.
I did laugh myself sick, though. That was the great “IT”? That people were paying thousands and thousands of dollars for? Did I feel stupid? You bet. Did I feel used? You bet. Did I feel like the world had ended? Yes.
It was at that moment I knew I couldn't continue in Scientology, but how does one leave when you have invested 12 years of your life into it? I'd lose family, friends, business connections. How do you just leave?
Well, my circumstances were different than leaving an on-line cult. Those guys would track me down and coerce me into returning. I was a financial executive and I knew too much. So I cut all ties by disappearing.
However, cutting all physical ties is like a drug addict going cold turkey. Everything you believed in, yearned for, and in this case paid to be taught, was gone. I couldn't trust anything they said because the pneumonia lie was such a whopper. This was why the internet suddenly became “bad,” simply because the lie had been exposed.
Now, about bullying. If you questioned anything about Hubbard's teachings, you ended up with their version of being banned, called “ex communication” (after the corporate reformation into a “religion,” the same bullying tactics were shellacked with a thin veneer of religion).
Why? Simply to keep people who have discovered the truth from telling people still under their spell. It's simply just bad for business for truth to be popping up all over the place.
What's going on at the other ning is so deja vu to me. Members either going gung ho to prove how loyal to avoid censorship or banning, or they are being silent or being very careful to not disagree or question too much, including prefacing questions with, "pardon my foul breath for asking, and I am sure I am probably mistaken, but why ......? This is the typical reaction of an oppressive environment.
So, what does ZetaTalk have in common with Scientology? They are both mind control cults, both using the same tired, but tried and true, tactics.
What is dissimilar? The underlying agendas. Scientology was in business to make money and acquire power to influence society. ZT is in the disinformation business, to discredit the coming earth changes and their cause(s), most likely government supported (because if the gov't didn't want them there, they would exist, now would they?).
And in either outfit, the members are the fodder. Scientology sucks its members' money and the NZT/ning operation sucks its members' intellectual input. Let's face it, if you think up something and float it around, you and your friends are most likely going to believe it when it becomes blessed by "confirmation."
Scientology points fingers at the mental health field, deriding psychiatrist and psychologists, while they themselves are in the mind control business. ZT points the finger at government disinformation while they are in the business of disinformation. Always have a fight going with an enemy you create, which is just a model of what you really are. Ingenious, huh?
So, members of the other ning could just as easily be members of Scientology. They are susceptible individuals to the tactics and techniques of unethical outfits that know how to control people.
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