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Religions Exerting Control
Feb. 5th, 2011 05:33 amThis is long and, despite the personal history at the beginning, it does come around to two current events at the end.
One of the areas that pisses me off is where religions exert undue control in parishioners' lives. Now, I could breezily say that they only exert power over one that one cedes, and that's true as far as it goes. It doesn't represent the whole picture, though.
After leaving Scientology, I found that I could only get -> <- this involved in any faith. I lack the capacity to commit any more. My faith was used to lead me around in directions I didn't want, and when I came up for air, I discovered I was in a much darker, danker place spiritually than when I'd entered. And I want very much for that to never happen again.
That's not entirely fair. Parts of me were better off. I'd say I had learned skills and thus had better capacity to pull myself out of the hole I'd agreed to be in. It was a rather large and deep hole, though.
Over the years, I had given up time and money: 11 years total, of which I was staff for about 7 years, though I also worked as a programmer that entire time as well. Monetary contributions were around thirty grand. I left with less than nothing. I sold my remaining belongings to pay off debt, and had six boxes of belongings that I flew with me to Florida.
So let's talk about Bonewits's ABCDEF scale for cult evaluation with regard to Scientology. I have never spoken about it except among other former CofSers, and I'm going to now.
I went through this rather long list because I saw two news articles recently that spoke about the kinds of social control religion has in our modern world -- and it striking me that in each of these cases, the tentacles of social control reminded me of my time in Scientology.
First, the more dramatically bad one, which occurred in Bangladesh, where a girl was whipped, dying as a consequence, as a part of a fatwa. Two paragraphs from the story I linked to really stood out to me:
"Last July, the Bangladesh high court ruled that extrajudicial punishments in the name of fatwas – religious edicts under Sharia law – were illegal. Local officials were instructed to take active measures to prevent them."
"I'm not educated," Darbesh said. "I don't know what the court laws are. But I know that if I don't listen to the elders, we would be outcast. None of my daughters could marry, no one would even look at us. If I had known that it would be them who would be punished, not me, then I would have tried to stop it."
I never really enjoyed civics class, but I never really appreciated how essential it was until that last paragraph. Being adequately educated to know what the right way to proceed is really is fundamentally useful. Also, there's a big difference between high-falutin' places like a country's supreme court and the countryside surrounding them, and her family lived in the latter. Unfortunately. May she rest in peace.
The second story. Remember the mom whose son dressed as Daphne for Halloween? Yeah, well, there was fallout at the church. Story here.
The manipulation and sleaziness of that just infuriates me. It reminds me so much of how Scientologists would do things, it'd be presented as a fait accompli and then you'd be bullied into agreeing. Of course the pastor meant it as an ultimatum!
In Scientology, the big carrot is the "OT Levels," the secret mystical stuff that's after Clear. After I finished my contract and left working at Scientology, I was told that if I didn't confess to stealing money, I wouldn't be allowed to do my OT levels. (This makes more sense in the context that there was supposedly missing money and I was one of six people who'd had access to the safe, and I was the only one of those six who left. Voila, scapegoat, because only people who have something to hide would ever leave, right? I also felt incredibly guilty for having left and missed my former coworkers, and pushing that guilt hard broke me.). Later I discovered that confessing to same probably also cost me my OT Levels, but fortunately at that point (after I signed the confession) I actually did the smart thing and hired a criminal defense lawyer. Once you cave on something like that, it changes your life for good.
Without going too deeply into Scn doctrine, essentially, your afterlife really isn't secure unless you do these levels. (You can look up the story of Xenu on the net if you like, it is one of the levels.) I started posting to AOL in 1994, and I was bullied by Scientologists there, then on alt.religion.scientology things got so bad that they sent PIs around after all my friends (including guys I'd dated) and posting the text of what was purportedly my confession online. Weirdly, that seemed to make some people more fond of me. I still don't get that part.
For many Christians, communion is a token of salvation, a recommitment to God. Withholding communion seems very analogous to withholding OT levels. Essentially, the pastor was trying to control her eternity and the eternity of her child. Over. A. F'in. Daphne. Costume.
Which is pretty damn evil if you ask me.
One of the areas that pisses me off is where religions exert undue control in parishioners' lives. Now, I could breezily say that they only exert power over one that one cedes, and that's true as far as it goes. It doesn't represent the whole picture, though.
After leaving Scientology, I found that I could only get -> <- this involved in any faith. I lack the capacity to commit any more. My faith was used to lead me around in directions I didn't want, and when I came up for air, I discovered I was in a much darker, danker place spiritually than when I'd entered. And I want very much for that to never happen again.
That's not entirely fair. Parts of me were better off. I'd say I had learned skills and thus had better capacity to pull myself out of the hole I'd agreed to be in. It was a rather large and deep hole, though.
Over the years, I had given up time and money: 11 years total, of which I was staff for about 7 years, though I also worked as a programmer that entire time as well. Monetary contributions were around thirty grand. I left with less than nothing. I sold my remaining belongings to pay off debt, and had six boxes of belongings that I flew with me to Florida.
So let's talk about Bonewits's ABCDEF scale for cult evaluation with regard to Scientology. I have never spoken about it except among other former CofSers, and I'm going to now.
- Internal Control Read the first chapter of Marc Headley's book Blown for Good. Short version: he tried to escape from his CofS position where he was working for almost zero money and they ran his motorcycle off the road so he wouldn't be able to leave.
- External Control If you think that people like Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Giovanni Ribisi and Marissa Ribisi, Kelly Preston, Jenna Elfman, Kirstie Alley, Anne Archer, Juliette Lewis, Priscilla and Lisa Marie Presley, Jason Dohring, Beck, Nancy Cartwright, aren't there being out about their faith to influence you.... Well, they are being pushed to be out and to bring in new members.
- Wisdom/Knowledge Claimed by leader(s) Let's let LRH say it: "In all the years I have been engaged in research I have kept my comm[unication] lines wide open for research data. I once had the idea that a group could evolve truth. A third of a century has thoroughly disabused me of that idea. Willing as I was to accept suggestions and data, only a handful of suggestions (less than twenty) had long-run value and none were major or basic; and when I did accept major or basic suggestions and used them, we went astray and I repented and eventually had to "eat crow"." (from 1965, full text here)
- Wisdom/Knowledge Credited to leader(s) by members The longer you're in Scientology, the more likely you are to feel it's the only road out. It's not like Christianity in that you can't just go down to a denomination down the street. As far as they're concerned, it's the only game there is.
- Dogma Scientology is fundamentalist. See the link at #4 above.
- Recruiting They're famous for proselytizing, including the "stress tests" and personality tests, but internal recruiting for staff and Sea Org is every bit as strong.
- Front Groups Here's a page linked to several lists (non-exhaustive) of front groups. There. Are. Hundreds.
- Wealth The monetary pressure is so, so, so intense. I've seen new people re-finance their house and fork over more than fifty thousand dollars after being involved for a few weeks. (I've also seen some of them stop payment on their checks or request refunds.) But nothing says more about the money pressure than these two details: 1) In 2007, Nancy Cartwright donated ten million, nearly double her annual salary, to Scientology. At the time, she was engaged to Stephen Brackett, and they planned to marry the following spring. 2) In May, 2009, apparently destitute over the state of his finances, he committed suicide. He'd had to have her guarantee a construction loan, and she's being sued over that now. Obviously, if they'd had a sane financial plan, things might have happened differently, but many people in Scientology get depressed over not having enough money to do the services they're told they need. Been there, done that.
- Sexual Manipulation The level of sexual manipulation definitely depends on how far up you are, getting worse as you reach the top, but I experienced it or observed issues with it a few times. First, gays were discriminated against; one gay coworker, when he was expelled, all the times he'd had gay sex were written up and posted on the staff notice board as a part of his expulsion. Ugh. He has a good sense of humor about it; he says that was the only part that was true. Still, he was definitely made to feel wrong. I had a former beau transitioning and people were saying we were still having sex. (So what if we were?) Still, they "knew" we were having perverted sex and were going to tattle. Ugh. I've certainly heard worse that I experienced.
- Sexual Favoritism I've only heard one specific allegation of this, and it's with the current leader. David Miscavige's wife, Shelly, hasn't been seen in public in three years, and his "Communicator" (aka Admin) Laurisse is always with him, sometimes touching in very relationship-y ways. Also, when Tom Cruise and Katie went out to the races with Miscavige, Laurisse was present, but his wife wasn't. People can sleep with whomever, but the missing wife sure is ugly, especially in a state with no-fault divorce. To be clear, she isn't living on the same base, and hasn't been seen at the International HQ in three years. Or out in public.
- Censorship If you've been living under a rock, you may not know about the censorship, but I'll tell you something you didn't know. In an effort to have people report their successes with Scientology on public spamathon web sites, they stealthily installed filtering software that was not disclosed. Critics called this the "Scieno Sitter." It filtered on a number of words, and "Deirdre" was one of them. Guess why.
- Isolation At the upper levels, there's extreme isolation; all communication with non-Sea Org members, even one's own family of Scientologists, is discouraged. At staff levels at orgs (churches) and missions, socialization with non-Scientologists is discouraged, but I was only rarely harassed about that personally. I've heard it's gotten worse.
- Dropout Control Beyond intense. The story of JB leaving and how the CofS tried to recover him.
- Violence Not a part of rank-and-file Scientology, it has become an increasing problem up at the top, as is mentioned in this "Free Heber" post. I don't have any personal love for Heber, but no one should be treated like that.
- Paranoia I could point to so many things, but yeah. Hubbard was paranoid personally, and some of that was actually due to the attempts to infiltrate. It's said that it got worse as he neared death, but I haven't heard that from a source close enough to Hubbard that I'd trust it. However, there was Operation Snow White, where Scientology infiltrated the government, so far the largest known (or admitted, anyway) infiltration of the US government. Hubbard's wife, Mary Sue, was one of the indicted co-conspirators. I also worked with someone who'd been an unindicted co-conspirator. Neil Gaiman's father, David, was also involved in similar projects over in the UK.
- Grimness "Joking and Degrading" is an ethics offense. Levity is only tolerated in narrow areas or areas completely unrelated to Scn.
- Surrender of Will This is not a feature of Scientology at all, actually, at least not directly. There is an indirect aspect to it where you're chronically tried to be manipulated into giving time or money or bringing in new people, though.
- Hypocrisy Yes -- while the use of the term "fair game" was canceled, the policy on enemies was not, so here's their official policy on how people they don't like are to be treated: "May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed."
I went through this rather long list because I saw two news articles recently that spoke about the kinds of social control religion has in our modern world -- and it striking me that in each of these cases, the tentacles of social control reminded me of my time in Scientology.
First, the more dramatically bad one, which occurred in Bangladesh, where a girl was whipped, dying as a consequence, as a part of a fatwa. Two paragraphs from the story I linked to really stood out to me:
"Last July, the Bangladesh high court ruled that extrajudicial punishments in the name of fatwas – religious edicts under Sharia law – were illegal. Local officials were instructed to take active measures to prevent them."
"I'm not educated," Darbesh said. "I don't know what the court laws are. But I know that if I don't listen to the elders, we would be outcast. None of my daughters could marry, no one would even look at us. If I had known that it would be them who would be punished, not me, then I would have tried to stop it."
I never really enjoyed civics class, but I never really appreciated how essential it was until that last paragraph. Being adequately educated to know what the right way to proceed is really is fundamentally useful. Also, there's a big difference between high-falutin' places like a country's supreme court and the countryside surrounding them, and her family lived in the latter. Unfortunately. May she rest in peace.
The second story. Remember the mom whose son dressed as Daphne for Halloween? Yeah, well, there was fallout at the church. Story here.
The manipulation and sleaziness of that just infuriates me. It reminds me so much of how Scientologists would do things, it'd be presented as a fait accompli and then you'd be bullied into agreeing. Of course the pastor meant it as an ultimatum!
In Scientology, the big carrot is the "OT Levels," the secret mystical stuff that's after Clear. After I finished my contract and left working at Scientology, I was told that if I didn't confess to stealing money, I wouldn't be allowed to do my OT levels. (This makes more sense in the context that there was supposedly missing money and I was one of six people who'd had access to the safe, and I was the only one of those six who left. Voila, scapegoat, because only people who have something to hide would ever leave, right? I also felt incredibly guilty for having left and missed my former coworkers, and pushing that guilt hard broke me.). Later I discovered that confessing to same probably also cost me my OT Levels, but fortunately at that point (after I signed the confession) I actually did the smart thing and hired a criminal defense lawyer. Once you cave on something like that, it changes your life for good.
Without going too deeply into Scn doctrine, essentially, your afterlife really isn't secure unless you do these levels. (You can look up the story of Xenu on the net if you like, it is one of the levels.) I started posting to AOL in 1994, and I was bullied by Scientologists there, then on alt.religion.scientology things got so bad that they sent PIs around after all my friends (including guys I'd dated) and posting the text of what was purportedly my confession online. Weirdly, that seemed to make some people more fond of me. I still don't get that part.
For many Christians, communion is a token of salvation, a recommitment to God. Withholding communion seems very analogous to withholding OT levels. Essentially, the pastor was trying to control her eternity and the eternity of her child. Over. A. F'in. Daphne. Costume.
Which is pretty damn evil if you ask me.