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In Reply to: This might be a personal/individual thing posted by Thinker on December 14, 2003 at 07:17:12:
When you look at a cross section of people that join a cult, in this instance the family, you will see people from all kinds of backgrounds and education. In the early days: focus on youth who were functional or later would be (as in the case of a drug addicted person.)
I was seeking answers and the cult presented as having all the answers and the ultimate good in mind. I would be more likely to compare it to someone leaving an abusive situation and leaping into something that offered respite and SEEMED to be SAFE AND seemed to offer answers and comfort for a world that was wounded. (and a person that was wounded.) Experience is a great developer of "higher self" and in the case of an all controlling destructive cult environment, of which in the early days there was virtually NO information out there about "cults" as it was a new "phenomenon", I would not expect most to have had an inkling that what they were getting into was innately "bad".
Especially not when the options for life in general appeared so grim. And for some the outlook was not grim. There were a few that joined from extremely wealthy families and were attending the best universities. They were often idealistic and as we now know, wealthy families have their definite share of dysfunction too.
I believe that conscience or higher self was there in a sense for all, but was easily manipulated and not out of choice by the people who joined. Yes, people did submit, but not to what was recognized as anything bad.
Perhaps many FGS were like people in autos who were driving on the freeway with a windshield of shattered glass. The view was skewed. That does not make FGs bad people. The family appeared as the repair shop for the world. (and in many instances for damaged lives).
I also believe that from the top that there was definite design and planning in structuring the family. Those separations from children that FGs eventually had, were for most parents anyway, extremely painful. What i do think is an individual responsibility is to look back honestly without any pre-conceived filters of how it is philosophized to have been, and ask yourself, how did you really feel? And were you capable of recognizing "higher-self" pricks as being anything about "higher-self"?
NOW, I am capable of that. It is why it is so hard to look back at letters that clearly devalued people and caused such great harm. Even to the very ones we would normally have been expected and expected of ourselves to protect. It is easy to see from the vantage point I am at now that something was really really seriously messed up with the picture. And I am responsible for what I do with that info. now.
I see it also like battered womens syndrome. First I have to realize that there are healthy options. Then I have to practice making choices (if I want to get out of that bad enough). Knowledge generally comes before action. Some action is taken to leave an abusive situation and then another is usually jumped right back into without knowledge and then exercising options.
