In Reply to: Thoughts about choice (slightly revised repost) posted by AG on February 17, 2004 at 16:42:32:
I like the way your point 5) covers a lot of ground. The "conscience, personal values and beliefs, or ideological convictions" you point out, the individual differences, is what lead us to react a certain way, many times different to how others react to the same thing. In my opinion, not remembering this is at least the reason for one type of misinterpretation, when we tend to universalize (some may say globalization) our views and perspectives; the one size-fits-all comment. I am not saying that you do this. I am thinking in general terms. The other side of the same coin is when we cannot function without seeking guidance from others, when we are unable to make decisions. I am not passing judgment, it is just an observation.
In my opinion, both cases are the same type of manifestation of individual differences. I am coming to the conclusion that these differences may be important because they are omnipresent in all our actions.
We joined the COG for many different reasons, we stayed for many different reasons, we left for many different reasons, we view the xCOG web sites and boards under different light, we have different ideas and are in general so different that it is a type of miracle when we actually agree on anything. Sometimes even using the same words we mean different things. If the agreement is the result of "understanding" something, making sense of things, then we have processed information and come up with a conclusion, even if our conclusions are different. In The Family, agreement didn't come as a result of cognitive processing of information, it came already chewed up, digested and labeled as a conclusion. We just took it in. In reality, not everybody did, as revealed by the number of those who didn’t stay in.
I advance that in most cases, cult to the personality of David Berg in The Family was not really the hot spot for indoctrination but the unwillingness of people to process information on their own, some sort of mental slothfulness. This was one of the byproducts resulting from Family life but also probably a skill we had not yet developed
or that we were willing to let go.
What is intriguing is that we would function well in most domains except in issues of spirituality and Christianity, and this is the key point in my opinion. Spirituality and reason were presented as separated and apposing entities so we could be uninhibited to accept anything spiritual, even the most bizarre and crazy imaginations without legitimate reasoning. When we used our cognitive processing capabilities to find the safeguards in The Bible, their system started to break down.
Some people started processing this information while in TF and then left willingly. Others left unwillingly, were kicked out or under pressure, and it was only afterwards when they started processing information. Some still refuse to do it and stubbornly hold on to the mental structures that contradict facts. To survive, they explain away those challenges by creating Vandari ghosts to help them reject the facts.
For these reasons, sites like this are critical in providing factual information to dispel the notion that they are imaginary ghosts.