286. I know - September 11, 2009 Page 81
282. silentpurr
I once had a similar experience with food-stamps only for real. I left because I exhausted all my financial resources to the last dime while being in the FOF. No one has ever asked me for money because I never had any and during 85% of the time I have been on salary. During these years I fell into the trap of NOT ‘going back to life’. I thought it would be the worst choice I could make. Only the worst choice of course was staying in OH and becoming extremely poor. I still have this anger inside because I allowed myself to arrive to such poverty. Part of it is definitely due the atmosphere in OH, but there were others who took care of themselves very well. So it’s the FOF, but also my belief that I could live there simple life with no money. I know I am not a typical participant of this blog. I do not hate the FOF or RB. I do think that there is a great deal of naivety amongst many students, especially those who are completely broke. I still have good friends there, with whom I keep contacts.
Elena:
Your statement is very sincere and much appreciated. What you are describing is exactly what hundreds of ex-members feel and that is one of the reasons for their not wanting to attack the Fellowship to its closure. I think neither you nor they have processed what really happened to us there. You still think it was "normal". You can't detect how it harmed you. You think that staying for many years not working for a better job or caring for your self in a different way, was not influenced by the world in which you were living. You think it was your choice. The fact that people only mattered in as much as they worked for the Fellowship is one of the reasons that people could not thrive in their own life. There wasn't the support or the stimulus.
Did you stay single?
Many men stayed single because marriage and women didn't matter at all and were perceived as more of a nuisance than an addition. That alone harmed a lot of men because instead of affirming themselves with a woman they allowed a laissez-faire attitude that justified their lack of effort towards a more balanced life. Here I am of course parting from the premise that marriage is good and beautiful and makes people's lives more balanced which in itself is a concept that disappeared in Robert's outlook and homosexuality. For him the ideal would've been 100% gay men at his disposal and women as cleaners and money makers and he came very, very close to achieving that by making sissys, unmarried, and unloyal men of the men.
The question is not to hate the Fellowship or Robert but to understand how people's lives were harmed and will continue to be harmed in cults. Having no sympathy and even despising the inhumanity of cults is the natural emotional experience of a healthy human being. The fear of experiencing disgust for the inhumanity of the Fellowship doesn't allow most ex-members to perceive the truth about it. Most of them still think that experiencing disgust is a negative emotion that they do not allow themselves to have. What's interesting about this is that the capacity to experience sympathy for what is good and beautiful seems proportionate to the capacity to experience disgust for what is ugly and harmful. What cult members lose socially is the freedom to express their sympathy or lack of sympathy and by not being able to express it externally gradually numb the experience after having repressed it. This condition of repression and numbness to emotions weakens their sense of I or the sense of them selves and leads to depression. If we accept depression as low self esteem or a weakened I, the fact that the individual has allowed the institution to place him or her in a condition of inequality as a human being to the guru and others in the group, simply confirms the reality of his/her condition. It isn’t that the individual member is depressed or in low self esteem because he is a deranged person, it is that the member is objectively in a social condition of inequality and to be able to accept it he MUST depress his SELF or I to be able to participate in the life of that group.
This exploration must continue further. In regular society these relationships of superiority and inferiority are also handled in every instance of class, race, education, nationality and people who are identified with these imaginary differences between human beings, adopt inhuman acts towards those they think are in a lower condition. These separations are what make the human being of today so unconsciously inhuman.
Everyone can walk as equally human in the Public Square. In Public spaces people cannot adopt their “club” attitudes and behaviour as strongly as in private places: at home with the inferior “women and children”; in the clubs with the waiters and servers; in the universities, teachers have increasingly become authoritarian and of course in the streets the police keeps the status quo by not allowing free public expression. Doctor and patient relationships have also become more authoritarian than human. Today people think that being “professional” is having no feelings.
More later…
