Critical Thinking on Cults & AntiCults
AntiCults exist for every Cult.
An out-group of people who were former members of any religion, or minority religion, have always existed to protest their former religious or spiritual belief.
They have simply come to realize a loss of faith.
That loss of faith is colossally disorienting. All people use their ideology or belief system to make sense of the world. So when your sense-making system collapses on you, you feel a certain sense of fuckness for a short, or a long, while.
AntiCults exist where people take up the AntiCult Ideology, mostly promulgated by Lifton and Hassan.
Influenced by anticultism, they deny their own choices made to get involved in their own previous religious pursuit and turn all those personal decisions into things they were ‘brainwashed’ to believe against their will and consent.
AntiCults must be critically examined, and questioned, as closely as Cults.
In keeping with not forgetting the positive and constructive parts of Scientology in order to seek to live with the truth, I found Mimsey Borogrove’s opening post on ESMB to be highly relevant. So I am stealing it and posting it here. Here’s the original: http://www.forum.exscn.net/showthread.php?37893-A-positive-viewpoint-what-s-it-worth A positive viewpoint – what’s it worth? ” I … Read more
A lot of really good discussions about Scientology take place in the comments section of Mike Rinder’s Blog. This is one that took place in March of 2014, and you can find it HERE: http://www.mikerindersblog.org/important-things-read/#comment-41120 Alanzo Wrote: “March 26, 2014 at 5:32 pm Rory wrote that Mike was shouting from the rooftops that “something is … Read more
Go Paul Haggis! This new article at the Mail Online is one of the best I’ve seen at exposing the fanaticism, criminality, and abuse that the Church of Scientology wages against people they consider their “enemies”. I have never seen a Hollywood player use their own good name and resources to warn the public about … Read more
Marty wrote a post on his blog recently that is a throwback, or maybe even a backslide, to his earlier days. It’s here: The Scientology Sandbox In this post, he once again tries to create a “reasonable middle ground” which he proposes that he occupies. Everyone he disagrees with, however, seems to exist on the … Read more
The Ex Scientologist Message Board used to be a therapeutic place for Exes to talk to others about their time in Scientology. Not any more, it’s made up of paranoid sociopaths whose brains have been rutted by destructive habits. They are actually worse than Scientologists now.
The bar was packed. My beer was gone and someone was sitting on my stool. Yellow Badges were everywhere. I walked up to a space next to the busy waitress station and ordered another beer. Glasses were clinking, I could hear “Oh, that’s terrible!” and “You know it’s like she became a different person. She … Read more