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In Reply to: Re: Cult brainwashing vs mental conditioning posted by Carol on September 04, 2004 at 21:50:08:
This hypothesis could be very true of most ordinary social dynamics, but I'm wondering if it holds completely true of someone who walks into a pre-existing group with strong fear and control mechanisms already in place.
You say, "The individual mind creates and organizes social reality by interacting with other minds doing exactly the same thing. When we join together and create a group identity, we create a larger, more powerful reality than our individual interior state of mind."
But most of us didn't help create the group identity. We entered the group and our identity was gradually forced to conform to the group-think, and sometimes terrible punishments and pressures were made to bear upon individuals who tried to assert independent thought. Think of both FGs and SGs who were sent to Retraining Camps for expressing a desire to go visit "system" relatives, or who expressed a "doubt" in group doctrine.
