Ex Scientology Kids

Hi thkaal, that is a very good question and one that has been bugging me too. I have been lurking on different boards for a long while now reading as much as I can. The people I have come across are articulate, intelligent and humourous. Why would they accept some really strange ideas for years?

I think any theory can be accepted if parts of it resonates with the person and if the person is then surrounded by others that agree and actively encourage.

I can only relate it to the Dan Brown book "Da Vinci Code". People were telling me how marvellous this book was, how interesting and mind blowing. My mother gave me her copy to read and I couldn't believe this extremely badly written book could enthrall so many. It didn't reveal anything new, I have read similar theories in other books. I really didn't get the hype and still don't. It will always remain, to me, a truely awful book that had been hyped to death by a group of amazing spin doctors. They are the true miracle workers in my mind. LOL

While I was working in the corporate world I was forced to go on both work related courses and those horrendous Rah-Rah personal development courses. The corporate had a policy wherby each employee had to attend x amount of hours in "training"per year. The personal dev courses would drive me insane.

Other members of the group would quite happily buy into the concepts of positive thinking and goal setting and were convinced they too could be millionaires with perfect families if only they applied these 7 steps, or 10 steps or 101 dalmatian steps to their lives. All I ever wanted to do, during every tedious minute of these hellish courses, was to go home.

Maybe I am just exceptionally cynical. In my view the only one getting happy and rich was the author.

Eventually I had had enough of having my precious days wasted with this nonsense and told the company that I would quite happily participate in any work related course, but I will not attend anymore brainwashing personal development courses. They listened and I was never sent on them again.

BUT
Perhaps if something struck a chord, perhaps if I were unhappy in my life or searching for "an answer"or unhappy in my marriage, perhaps I felt there was something more, I may have bought into them. I may have overlooked the glaring inconsistencies because some point had resonance for me. If I was then surrounded by people who not only agreed with the principles but gave me personal testimonies, success stories. I think I would have happily endorsed everything and overlooked the parts the didn't seem quite right.

We all have our own pain and problems, we all have our own personalities and ways of dealing with these.

I feel most of humanity is "searching"for that thing that gives meaning to existence. I am just so sorry that some good people were sucked into something very different to what they expected and it had devastating consequences on their lives and their families lives.


Peace

I'm reading a book called The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, by Eric Hoffer. Hoffer does not deal specifically with Scientology, but does address a common thread that runs through fanatical movements. He says that frustration is the target peculiarity of fanatics, and assumes that this mindset is necessary to obtain the most desirable results with regard to the fanatic's twisted adherence to his new faith.

He also suggests that through amplifying the negative feelings of the frustrated adherants, the movement advances its interests by seconding their propensities.

He writes that "all mass movements strive to impose a fact proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world. And, that that faith becomes the things the fanatic declines to see. He avers how startling it is to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible, and that faith manifests itself not in moving mountains, but in not seeing mountains move. He say's that in the context of mass movement's faith should not be judged by its profundity, sublimity, or truth but by how thoroughly it insulates the individual from himself and the world as it is."

It's a really good read ...

I'd only have joined scn for the kewl gurlz, but all the kewl gurlz realised it was crap and quit...

Join for the lulz, stay for the brainwashing.