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In Reply to: No, I don't see it that way posted by Acheick on July 23, 2002 at 23:56:46:
The point I made was that you can't judge people as good or evil simply by their status as a member or former member.
The "mindset" comment came from the idea that people in cults (not just the Family) learn to think that anyone who is not in the cult is bad. In my experience, and again, not just with Family people, people who get out of cults flip that logic over. Now everyone who is in the cult is bad. They are still a slave to the same method of thinking that colors everything they do.
The mindset is: People who aren't like me are bad. That's where I was going with the comment on Narcissism, which is a preoccupation with ones own self.
Based on this mindset, a lot of ex-members never would have liked me, or gotten to know me. When they were in the cult, they would have thought I was evil for not being in the cult. Now that they are out, they will think I'm evil because I'll never be an ex-member. Getting to actually know me would be more work than a person trapped in this mindset would be up to. They might embrace me to a point, then when I come off with something that sounds like it isn't part of the "party" line, they might rebuke me, or push me away (speaking from personal experience here). After all, I'm different (aka evil), why should I be trusted?
I'm not saying that every ex-member thinks like this, but I am willing to go out on a limb and say that this is a very common mindset amoung ex-members, and that almost virtually every Family member operates in that mindset.
