Programming others to do one’s will, or else…
When I first trained in my field, veterans from Korea and those coming back from Nam who’d been POWs, had often suffered extensive efforts by the enemy… to rearrange their impulses, instincts and attitudes. At that time too, deprogramming had become a watchword, and thus we studied deeply the psychological effects of vulnerable human beings being ‘programmed’ by others
…Actual brain changes appeared to take place, deleterious ones that undercut the victim’s confidence and certainty about selfhood… and psychological changes, such as, feelings of helplessness, inability to think for oneself clearly and quickly. These and more, appeared to issue from experiencing untoward pressures and torments meant to destroy the core person.
Thus, whether crude or sophisticated the enemy attempted to cover over and subvert the soldiers’ true selves, by:
–using punishments erratically,
–withholding of food and other subsistances,
–restricting movement, and access to the outer world, to like-kind colleagues who shared a desire to be free
–and to also, reward via pathetic means, erratically also… as one soldier I worked with had been given a rat’s leg, raw, as a reward for agreeing to be beaten by the enemy in order to save a badly battered fellow soldier from being beaten to death.
That kind of ‘reward’ of ‘poisonous love’ can seem a moment of light… but only to those entirely degraded, those whose core self has been stolen away.
The good news is that the core self can, with care and time, be restored. And the work to do so is noble and worthy.
Yet… though we can notice that some aspects of a deleterious cult are also held by highly disciplined groups and service groups….
we can also note the difference between a group that is straight arrow, and one that is destructive … in the latter, the creative spirit is not free, and the person is
–not free to leave,
–not free to learn beyond the leader’s knowings,
–not free to change,
–not free to question or to create,
–not free to be compensated,
–not free to create sub-groups,
and that the ‘contact’ or agreement to become part of the cult was made without fair reasoning
–by virtue of being born into the cult as a baby,
–or being seduced into it during a time of travail,
–or being drawn in by insecurity, ill health, lostness, a seeking of intense meaning and dense ‘unusual’ experiences,
–or wanting very deeply to belong and be loved but without adequate fore-discernment,
–and other kinds of tender vulnerabilities that are found particularly in the young, the naïve, the unworldly,
the hopeful, the weary, the good hearted, those who feel called to serve…
…including some who
–hope for a free ride, who are themselves exploitative,
–those who have been in some hurtful way disenfranchised by their parents or a great love,
–those who have been already denuded of the core self by some previous person or association,
— those who want to attain importance/protection by being attached to someone or something their see as very shiny,
— those who are passive-dependent as personalities (want to be taken care of and told what to do and not have to think/feel anxiety),
— those in the manic swing of bi-polar disorder who will be thrilled, fawning and radiant acolytes …for as long as their mania lasts
–those caught in an over-idealizing complex as either part of a garden variety neurosis, or as a feature of borderline personality disorder….
Vulnerability to joining up and defending a destructive cult is not a matter of intelligence. IQ is not a factor for pledging. Vulnerability to ‘hyper-belong’ is often caused by absence of experience, lack of discernment, and a good deal of disappointment and/or distrust of/with the world ‘out there.’
Here is a shortlist of how to go about it, were one to try to ‘build’ a negative cult… keeping in mind that the destructiveness of such comes from de-personalizing human beings, by stripping them of freedom to choose to follow one’s own pathway without being exiled, to force, to threaten shunning and exile, to keep a soul from learning deeply and broadly in the world as well as within the community, to shame and humiliate, and to even strike or deprive of necessities, in order to garner ‘perfect’ obedience. In a phrase: Absolute CONTROL over others’ thoughts, feelings, bodies, development, social, spiritual, and economic functions.
–Set oneself up as inspired by God or the equivalent
–Claim Revelation
–Take on one’s own version of being the wise old man (omniscient father,) or the great mother (endless maternalism)
–Remove all finances from devotees or require huge amounts of money from them in order to remain part of the group
–Isolate the group on a parcel of land, set far away or difficult to access by car or on foot.
–Change the diet to an eccentric one, healthy or not
–Regiment living quarters, reduce decoration, games and toys and material goods to bare bones or nothing
–Deprive sleep, despite the fact that different people have different circadian rhythms, and thereby different sleep needs to be well rested and healthy
–Say when people may eat and when they may not, when they may go to the bathroom and when not
–Decide who will ‘marry’ whom, rather than allowing free choice
–Punish those who do not conform immediately
–Exile all who challenge the great mother or wise old man’s power, ideas or sanity
–Act beneficently when people are giving to the ‘leader’; sex, food, pleasures, luxury
–Speak in dulcet tones then, or a strange auto-language,
–Lead people in many hours’ long stultifying study, or chants, sermons, talking, singing by the leader and perhaps one acolyte
–Make sure the leader is treated better than anyone else
–Create rituals so people can show grandiose gratitude to the leader
–Do not differentiate between slavish fawning and true earned respect
–Be filled with inauthentic regret when punishing others
–Withhold food, meeting time, off time, being able to leave the room, restrict space
–Do so erratically so the followers might never know if and when they will cause displeasure
–Require all followers to dress alike and to wear a certain look on their faces and use certain idiosyncratic phrases and gestures
–Teach the rest of the group to go against whomsoever dares question the leader, by rewarding devout snitches
–Script what people are to say, to whom they are to say it; give them a cunning double-talk language to deal with and close off ‘outsiders.’
–Insist that people love each other
–Make the people grossly emotionally dependent on one another, so they have no recourse outside the cult to flee to for guidance, help of shelter
–Instill in them a fear, distrust and even hatred of outsiders, former family who are no longer a part of the cult
–Define anyone who thinks differently than they do as going to eternal hell, as trying to break up the commune, as ‘toxic.’
–Allow no changes of mind without said person being branded an infidel
–Make certain everyone except the leader does rigorous, hard or dangerous labor and constant work to keep the commune going, building elaborate structures
–Make crime holy.
–Belittle those who refuse to leave their brains behind.
–Manipulate all aspects of life; speech, where people sleep, whom they sleep with, when, why, how, how often, what they see, what they say, when they’re allowed to speak to the leader, how they must speak to the leader, how they must emulate the leader’s idiosyncrasies of accent, speech tone, eye movements, walk, and so on
–Encouragement to sever all ties with former acquaintances, friends and family…(isolation intent)
–Intrude on people’s physical, mental, emotional and spiritual space whenever possible.
–Require sexual intercourse and other acts in a ritualistic manner.
Some current thought about deleterious cults is that fear of the world, coupled with fear of the leader’s distaste for anyone acting outside his say-so, and complete lack of financial access, makes a devotee afraid to leave.
A destructive cult leader often does not allow free access to a phone, has computers only for certain approved study, and most followers have no ability to drive a car, nor permission to visit friends or family off the commune grounds whenever they wish. They may not even know the whereabouts of their family members any longer.
Thus, the Jeff brothers, and others like them who have similar ‘temples’ in Canada and Colorado and Arizona and Utah, seal the women and children into fulfilling the men’s voracious appetites for being taken care of like babies, sexually, mentally, emotionally, and physically.
Being the sole recipient of ‘the gaze’ is what such cult leaders appear to be after, and to unearnedly, gain the power of life and death, literally, over others… all these belonging in the category of infantile longing, which in grown men, signals a deep mental dysplasia.
You may notice that in this time of no doubt distress for the women and children, not one ‘husband’ has ridden in on his horse wet, and vowed to save them all, and gone on television and radio without cease to help his loved ones. No. None of the ‘husbands’ are acting like true husbands.
Instead, as is predictable, a destructive cult self-styled leader, sends the women and children to take the blows for him. They are the ones on television. They are the deer caught in the headlights there, obviously scripted by someone to be evasive about underage girls, including themselves being married off… this giving the appearance of cunning rather than innocence in the women.
The ‘husbands’ seem to be using the women now, in a new way– as shields for the men’s hide-saving. They have the women showing off for the cameras the Spartan environs the children live in, the motel-like ‘house’ that holds over 700 people, the bed/ dresser/desk sameness that is accorded in each room… reminds me…
forgive me, of some of the similarly appointed ‘nurseries’ where ‘breeding’ of a ‘superior race ‘was carried out via impregnating certain kinds of women during the Third Reich in Germany. It appears the FLDS ‘home’ is not built for hominess and comfort and displays of the personalities of persons who live there, but rather looks more like a depersonalized magazine layout of a place for production, uniformity, efficiency.
It appears all the talk by the Jeffs and their other male cohorts, about being a meretricious FLDS husband to ten women and 20, 30 and 40 children at a time, is a self-styled puff piece, and in no way protective of women and children or the elderly women. Rather, the Jeffs ‘husbands’ seems to be acting out their predatory attitudes, letting the women and children take the hits for them… this time in full public view.
There is often a lag time in waking up to the fact that one is being exploited and ill used and/ or abused; it is not unusual for a time to disbelief the evidence that is clearly right in front of one’s nose. That lag time is normally exploited by the user to keep their woman in line, to fill her with self doubt, to be extra nice to her to make her think maybe she was just imagining it all.
But still, maybe this most current using of the women and innocent children as shields by the pusillanimous leaders who are willing to let the women and children take all the hits for them, maybe this will be a wake up call. In the long run, no matter the legal roundabout which with that many lawyers (300 so far) is guaranteed to cause disorder and contretemps enough for six thousand… still, may it all awaken enough women, and free them and benefit them and their little ones in good ways, for all their lives long.
———
If you’d like to read my earlier article written re that surely there must be a third way besides ignoring or capitulating to so-called ‘religious’ ideas made up by human beings that are actually criminal ideas: here