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In Reply to: Warning: this is as long & rambling as the weather is bad out posted by Refugee on January 09, 2005 at 00:42:44:
Refugee,
I was very moved by the quiet yet intense strength of your expression. I guess it is because you expressed a lot of the things I have also lived and that I rarely if ever get a chance to verbally share with others. I was going to write about the Stanford Prison Experiment as it is pertinent (and I would add to that the Milgram experiment on obedience) - you preceded me.
Any discussion concerning what "remains" after "those years" would have to include such knowledge.
[I personally know Haney, by the way, and he is every bit the deep and interesting person that transpires from his work.]
Recruitment aside, and concerning the degrees of culpability, what is left is that each person IS responsible for what they did. Undue influence plays a great part in some cases, less so in others. A case in point: all were subjected to a rather uniform influence (MO-Letters and threats for non-complying behavior) but not ALL acted in the same way. People have various breaking points, various motives guiding them, various dark sides, various ways to express their dark side, various degrees of courage and need to conform. People also joined or were recruited starting from various personal degrees of acting integrity and different cultural backgrounds.
I know people who have blamed the stressors in TF for their physical abuse of spouses and children. While these stressors are usually indeed aggravating factors, there are men who DID not beat/abuse/torture/rape their wives. There is strange shroud of silence over the ones who did. We talk a lot about the molestation of the children, and justly so. I rarely hear about the women who were threatened, rape into submission, beaten, and blackmailed. (And I consider rape having to have sex against my personal will, just because policy dictates it. That "policy" is violating the individual. SOME women in TF have endured countless acts of rape, in their marriage, and by other ex-members, under duress) I have yet to read a post of detailed apology by a male that used his power as a leader or as the benefiting part of the "law of love" towards the women that he coerced into sexual acts. Nobody likes to talk about this. The same could be true of women who did this to men. It was definitely more rare, given the commonly accepted construction of gender roles, but it DID happen in some cases.
There are individuals in TF who DID NOT beat, use, molest children, who did not even consider ethical giving demerits to a child. Some of us felt like we got stuck into an asylum, and could find no practical way out. I can only speak for myself and perhaps a few others I was close to, and I agree with you that a lot of the philosophical speculation does NOT help the injured.
I also agree with you that saying "we were all hurt" does not help matters one bit because it SHUTS down the conversation exactly where it should start. There are various degrees of responsibility involved in each individual (and some collective and public) cases, and a dialogue or a way to START the painful process of coming to terms with one's past needs to be supported by a personal dedication to what our "reality" was then, and to the courage to individually accept the degree of responsibility that IS our own.
THAT can only be done individually, and I believe the tone and the way in which we express our experience in this journey will communicate a lot of who we are and how we are trying to come to terms with the life we have lived. The examples set by some people like JP, Ed, and some others, even just the effort of setting up and keeping a site like this one speak volumes on that commitment on the part of some.
Primo Levi is one of my favorite writers. One of the problems in dealing with situations that involve extensive amounts of trauma is the need to stay connected enough to try to process and heal from it, tempered by the need to stay AWAY from it enough so that it will not destroy us in the process.
The weight is GREAT, especially for the ones who were sincerely motivated, and the ones who ended up being simply virtual bystanders/prisoners in the sub-utopian world defined by the writings of a lunatic in spite of their best efforts. As you have aptly mentioned, some of us got in trouble in the effort of resisting or helping the "weaker than us." I got literally beaten for trying to protect my own children and was seriously punished for expressing my dissent in situations where others were equally abused.
When you add to this the fact that some of us left out own personal "system" family devastations and abuse at a very young age (not even legal age) only to run from the frying pan into the fire, you can see how the shades of gray you mentioned require careful examination and a sober, heartfelt response.
Ultimately, I am convinced that many of us who at times write on these ex-member sites (I won't make the separation between SG's etc because I don't think that separation really includes everyone BECAUSE of the very shades of gray) are doing this in the EFFORT to communicate a need to find and foster healing and resolution of SOME kind to the extremely complex issues we have lived with.
If there is ever bad weather where you are, do ramble more in this particular joint. Your rambles have lightened up my evening in my part of the world. Thank you for that.
