Paul Haggis on leaving his religion
Feb. 7th, 2011 02:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deirdreOscar-winning director and writer Paul Haggis speaks out about his time in Scientology. And holy crap, the FBI's apparently finally looking into some of the issues.
Haggis, and later on in the article, Jason Beghe, talk about some of the mental effects that happen, and I haven't covered them before.
Because an e-meter can pick up emotional reaction (well, technically, it picks up resistance, but that does seem to translate to involuntary reaction fairly well), I found that I stopped thinking certain thoughts. If you don't think them and don't react to certain things, then an e-meter won't pick it up, so even if you're hauled in to be chewed out, there's nothing there. It's an unconscious (or even conscious) way of gaming the system.
Over time, your life shifts subtly as you find that you are only thinking things that would be acceptable, yet have this vague ennui you can't quite identify, the stuff that was never able to coalesce into words.
That's the hardest thing to unpack if you've been in for a while.
It sounds like Haggis is having that problem, only bigger.
One paragraph that is an amazing thing to read in the New Yorker:
"The laws regarding trafficking were built largely around forced prostitution, but they also pertain to slave labor. Under federal law, slavery is defined, in part, by the use of coercion, torture, starvation, imprisonment, threats, and psychological abuse. The California penal code lists several indicators that someone may be a victim of human trafficking: signs of trauma or fatigue; being afraid or unable to talk, because of censorship by others or security measures that prevent communication with others; working in one place without the freedom to move about; owing a debt to one’s employer; and not having control over identification documents. Those conditions echo the testimony of many former Sea Org members who lived at the Gold Base."
Yes. Please investigate this.
You really can't imagine the stuff that's going on in California at Gold Base. It is gruesome and heart wrenching -- and some of it is happening right now to people I know.
Haggis, and later on in the article, Jason Beghe, talk about some of the mental effects that happen, and I haven't covered them before.
Because an e-meter can pick up emotional reaction (well, technically, it picks up resistance, but that does seem to translate to involuntary reaction fairly well), I found that I stopped thinking certain thoughts. If you don't think them and don't react to certain things, then an e-meter won't pick it up, so even if you're hauled in to be chewed out, there's nothing there. It's an unconscious (or even conscious) way of gaming the system.
Over time, your life shifts subtly as you find that you are only thinking things that would be acceptable, yet have this vague ennui you can't quite identify, the stuff that was never able to coalesce into words.
That's the hardest thing to unpack if you've been in for a while.
It sounds like Haggis is having that problem, only bigger.
One paragraph that is an amazing thing to read in the New Yorker:
"The laws regarding trafficking were built largely around forced prostitution, but they also pertain to slave labor. Under federal law, slavery is defined, in part, by the use of coercion, torture, starvation, imprisonment, threats, and psychological abuse. The California penal code lists several indicators that someone may be a victim of human trafficking: signs of trauma or fatigue; being afraid or unable to talk, because of censorship by others or security measures that prevent communication with others; working in one place without the freedom to move about; owing a debt to one’s employer; and not having control over identification documents. Those conditions echo the testimony of many former Sea Org members who lived at the Gold Base."
Yes. Please investigate this.
You really can't imagine the stuff that's going on in California at Gold Base. It is gruesome and heart wrenching -- and some of it is happening right now to people I know.