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In Reply to: Reductive? posted by For a historical perspective on January 18, 2006 at 14:30:53:
Reductive is not an insult. It is just descriptive of a way to assess an issue without looking at all its complexity.
You seem to be on the defensive. (Referring to the first lines in your reply.) There is no reason to get defensive as this is just a conversation.
About your points. Agreed about the battering situation. But I insist that the similarities between the Manson Family and The Family lie in the type of connection established between leader and follower. The use of the word "love" to describe acts that were not "loving" in the least. Some acts perpetrated on children (and adults) in TF were also all based on "love." Including torture, solitary confinement, separating you from your loved ones, taking your kids away - all for love.
I don't care for the particulars of drugs and technical death. If you don't think some people have found death in TF you need to look closer. The acts perpetrated in TF at the command and indoctrination of Berg have CAUSED several deaths, by suicide, by lack of medical care, by utter desperation because of extreme traumatic situations. Need we look at the latest, Ricky Rodriguez? If that is not death, and if Berg is not involved with that, I don't know who is.
Some people have talked about feeling already dead, before their suicides. Some people struggle with death on a regular basis because of what they lived in TF. Suicide is just the act that brings the body together with the death one feels has already experienced.
I reiterate that I think it is reductive not to notice the many similarities in the dynamics of "the families" formed by Manson, Jones, Koresh, etc. I suggest again you read about Leslie Van Houten, Susan Atkins, and the others who followed Manson. They sound like people I have met in the Berg family, true believers. The only reason we have not had a case like their is that Berg was very strong on (among many things) preaching sex with children and not going out and directly killing somebody. But some of those children have been feeling like they died a long time ago. The essence of the relationship between a cult leader and a follower is what I am talking about. And, even the case of battered women, when they cannot protect their kids from the batterer they will have to live with that as well, once they get out.
