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In Reply to: Could you have done it? posted by Thinker on November 21, 2002 at 11:12:46:
The question is maybe better put, "WOULD you have done it?" When I thought about the "could" it scared me because I actually froze for a second and couldn't answer your question.
But I think I can definitely answer your question "No", I would not have done it. When the Jonestown suicides happened in Guyana in 1979 I read the Time magazine article about it and was shocked. I thought for sure those people had been out of their minds. Then a shepherd "explained" to me that no, the Jonestown people were sincere Christians and the same enemies persecuting them were the ones persecuting us, so they had done the only thing they could to escape.
I didn't buy it. And a couple months later when a new ML came out saying that they had "chosen the only way out" I still didn't buy it. I definitely was brainwashed by years of Family propaganda, but I don't think the mental paralysis had ever reached the survival mode center of my brain. I wasn't paralyzed on that deep of a level.
I think when we talk about brainwashing we have some kind of idea that it's a "total" effect, like you're either 100% brainwashed, or not at all. I think most of us were in various degrees of brain paralysis. I was probably running at about 80% mind control. That was enough to keep me in the cult for decades and do bizarre stuff, but I still had some mental wiggle room for some issues. I think that also explains why so many people could be extgremely sold out to the Family, believe the Letters, yet still be "disobedient" and break some rules like alcohol consumption rules, etc.
There was a point after some breakings that my mental paralysis went up to about 95%, and at that point, crap, I just might have drank the cool-aid, but fortunately that was only a momentary "culpa mea" high tide, and after about a year my mind control reading was back down to 80%, and then over the next ten years it began slipping and slipping until so much of my mind was thinking that it overcame the fear that paralyzed the rest of my mind, and I was outta there!
