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In Reply to: Re: interesting post on Moving On posted by From Banshee on September 08, 2004 at 16:59:41:
First of all I like to thank you,Banshee, for the time you took in posting here.I am sorry about the bewilderment & heartache that some/many of our posts must have caused you.....I read many, very many posts at movingon & I must say, that I didn't read so super many at exfam. it takes time & effort though to understand the other side & I am not so sure, whether many SGs bother so much to try that...I don't blame them...they think of better options in life & I am not so good in it either, to explain the amount of insanity in TF ...however I noticed, that people at exfam. try their levelbest to shed light on that shameful past of ours...any contributions of the SGs in this regard I find always informative & needed.
I appreciate therefore your article & reading about the heavy abuse you had to endure, relativates also the wording.I am amazed at the sympathy you have for your mother.I hope you have someone, to share your innermost feelings with...too bad, that there's a wall between you & your mother. I must say though, that there's no one in my family, who really understood me before TF, while in TF & not even much afterwards...the comparison is quite lame, I only wanted to stress, that there are many people, who crave to be understood by their closest relatives, whether in , never having beeng in & out of TF.I take great comfort in the ancients accounts of the "man", we actually were supposed to follow, but didn't, in some issues, yes, but in so many rather the contrary, as you have witnessed unfortunately too....anyway, HE wasn't understood always either, whether by relatives or followers...you know the story.
Nowadays I am "alone", but not really alone...I treasure that.
I wish in the "communication" with the SGs, you e.g., to get first some minor things accross:
I liked the first post of Carol in this thread, e.g. she made IMO the valid point, that the worst abusers don't seem to post here,
with may be an exception, as Albatross/Daniel once hinted at, no clue, whom he meant, for understandable reasons.
(Although I must say, that I was quite shocked, to have read at movingon, that Singing Sam apparently had some habit of having
Sex with teens...I don't remember anything about their age???)
My Longman-dictionary however gives quite a wide array of definitions for abuse...I am sure Carol & others have addressed that profoundly...I want to say: we all...a l l ...FGs, directly or indirectly, made it possible for the abuse of the SGs to have taken place.For that I am personally very sorry & I wish to know some more ways to undo it...
Like Perry I often thought about it, what we FGs can learn from atrocities, that happened in history, how mankind/people dealt with them or failed to deal with them, what laid the ground for the crimes to have taken place...a huge subject.
In your article you say:
> The recent poll that asked us who we blamed for our abuses was a bit difficult to answer, mainly because my answer is far too tangled to fit into one of the four choices given. The closest answer—and I believe this was already brought up, but what the heck—would be more like, “All of the above, and more, including myself, society, the hippy movement, Fate, and even the Cosmos because sometimes I like to blame it too!” And if it had asked who we blamed the MOST, it would still be hard to answer, because I honestly don’t know.
An amazingly vast answer...have no clue, why you include yourself, except that you may be try to be extra "fair", longsuffering...sorry, I am lacking the right word.
I don't know you, but IMO it has all to do with adults, mostly within TF, probably the overall situation of society contributed to it...about the Cosmos...we could discuss ; )
So the FGs should generally all take the blame, many, from what I read, do it...there are levels of abuse, which also SGs seem to indicate.Now, if an FG has a very "personal", narrow perception of what abuse is about, it seems to me difficult, to have a proper dialogue...without necessarily lying - I doubt that anyone does here, nor that they have forgotten any incidents - a FG could claim, that he hasn't personally witnessed or participated in any abuse of a SGmember...sexual abuse, that is...having had sex with someone....that is true in my case, meaning, I didn't have sex with any minors, nor did I encourage it personally & I bet in many more cases of FGs...weren't there some 40000 or more former members???
Mr. Don is an example of someone, who lived at the outer fringes of TF, so what he witnessed is not necessarily representative of TF....TF also was not so homogeneous, as some make it sound, what some areas adhered to as far as counsel is concerned, others seemed to have neglected...
You call it induction, if someone concludes from some,several, many cases/facts to make some general rules... quite a few seem to fall prey to this regarding TF
To sum it up: All participated in the abuse, in the broadest sense, but not all in the "ugliest" sense...so in denying it, some might just refer to the latter...first we should have the definitions down pat, before we jump on people...
I don't like sweeping generalisations: I can't find the article anymore, where Jules gave a link to a website, which claimed, that there
was no significant opposition in Nazi-Germany...the whole is a super deep important subject; many failed to understand, how a people of supposed literate etc. people could fall prey, give room, participate in that regime...
However the linked website, citing some historian, was really a scream, it was tendentious IMO...if people don't know about the brothers & sisters Scholl, (The White Rose)....the group around Stauffenberg, who planned & conducted a bombattack
against Hitler, which unfortunately failed, well, that's sad...because those & pastors like Bonhoeffer payed with their lives...that is
IMO gross, dishonouring simplification....just a sideremark, but really necessary...
So at the same token, why not give the FGs some credit, while there were thousands of blind eyes to the abuse in general - that includes the various aspects of corporal punishments.... - still there seemed many FGs, who escaped before the sexual abuse of Teens took place, they jumped off the train, so to speak, late, but better then, than later...that is positive IMO. Those who jumped later, seemed to have gotten more injuries, their children included....that is very sad...as TF is a sad case anyway...
What I/we read in TF, why nothing got done about it earlier, has been discussed before here, may be it needs some more discussing...I have to give my version too...
you say:
> a) “COG Who?” Joining a group that you know nothing about or haven’t checked out or investigated is kind of like signing a 10-year contract with a company that hasn’t even told you what you’ll be doing, or accepting a job at a company you haven’t even confirmed to be in existence. It doesn’t make you look like a victim; more like lacking brain cells.
I don't know, where you work, but I am working for a globally active company, with gross worldwide annually sales of some 35 billion Dollars .When I got a job with them 6 years ago, I really needed desperately a job & they needed labourers.
Do you really think, that I had a good idea, what I would do, with whom I would work etc.By the way, the founder of the company, some 100 years ago, seemed to have some really good work ethics...you think, I knew about that???
In addition to that, the contract is not for 10 years, but rather open, with obvious rights on both sides.
At the same token, how much does a man & a woman, falling in love, really know about each other...with some couples it lasts long until they seperate...they discover later some ugly part, they didn't know before about the other...or they get bored, upset etc.
That many SGAs pride themselves to have lots of brain cells, I already noticed, no doubt, it should be true...during my time in TF I met however several adults with a completed university study, engineer or architect, to name a few...some haven't completed their studies, like myself...
I readily agree, that I should have more braincells ; ).... but intelligence alone doesn't seem to me to be the issue, when it comes to deception....I already said that longer ago at movingon, in response to a post from pharmaboy, cause you have in this world plenty of very intelligent people who get tricked by some crooks....how do you explain that?....how do you explain the optical & other delusions we all seem to get tricked by?...
I ,sometimes, get weary of always hearing how you got born into it...alright we joined, we were stupid, alright,....we looked for some alternative in this "stupid" world...yeah, it's still stupid...even before I joined I was antisystem to some degree....the problem was, we thought to have joined some Heaven/haven...instead our ships got sunk in that haven...it was not the way out, it seemed to be...very stupid, alright, to have not foreseen that.....But for goodness sake, how many "mistakes" do you find elsewhere,
big atrocities......when I followed on TV the events in BESLAN /Caucasian-Russia I had to cry...this is/was so horrible...
when I saw some amateur videoing (or BBC??) of the "life"/most brutal killings in Ruanda, I had to cry...when I first saw about the
massacres of the Nazis as a Teen, I was shocked.....this we can continue...I mean, is there only "greatness" about "The System",
the world???....we dared to be different...and failed...true...sad....I wish for you SGs to succeed in going further, making it better...
but sometimes I get the "vibes", that some might miss a point here & there about the "world" too. (and when I read the accounts of VeryLonelyGirl, cyborcosmic & others, it made me cry as well...)
I wish you & all the precious SGs all the healing you need & very much deserve...it was bold & very good of you to post here under your name...I don't think we adults suffered as you, you had it really miserable, some more, some less, could I put it that way?...some even had some fond memories...I also have some good memories, but I wouldn't join TF again for any money or wish granted...
