An SES member says: it's time for an SES apology

[mgormez]

But in the case of intelligent, educated people without any psychological problems who have a genuine interest in philosophy and DON?T want to be indoctrinated into a Mind Control Cult, knowing the full facts about the School of Economic Science before they enroll would make 99.9% of people run a mile!

It is depressing but in my impression of someone who does 'this' for over a decade, time and time again I learn that people generaly put far more effort in finding the right fridge or selecting options on their new company car, then they put in checking out the backbround of organizations they are about to join.

And mind control (boy, a topic for some hot debate all on itself) is not needed per se. What is done is use the goodness of people against them; the desire to belong, wanting to help the unfortunate, having friends, questions about existence answered, spiritual quests etc. Each of us has urges like those in varying degrees. Many organizations fill a particular void and if the need to fill that void is larger than a tiny voice that says "something isn't right, this is too good to be true", then that voice will be tuned out by the person himself.

Of course, sleep deprivation helps a lot once in. Works wonders on captives too.

[Justice]

Welcome back Sam!

Sam said:

Childish banter will not be indulged upon, for I am enlightened.

I believe Ladbrokes and William Hill are offering short odds on the possible outcome of that ;

P.S. Your 'Welcome Back' card is available at any branch of W. H. Smith

[chittani]

Hey Sam,

So what does a St James boy & recently-departed SES member think re: the subject of this thread?

Would it be a relief for the SES to own up?
What do other St James types think about all of this?

Trying to keep us on topic here ...

All external activities supported by the SES should, I believe, be run by a committee / board of governors with published principles, outside members and transparent procedures. That's St James, Art in Action, Lucca thingy, whatever. It will happen in the end because it makes sense. Why not speed up the inevitable?

The only reason not to do it is a morbid paranoia about contamination from the outside world. Time to wake up, guys: there is no outside world. We're all the same.

At least, that's what the Indians have been trying to tell us.

Scripture corner: "Still a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest" (Paul Simon).

[Free Thinker]

What is done is use the goodness of people against them; the desire to belong, wanting to help the unfortunate, having friends, questions about existence answered, spiritual quests etc. Each of us has urges like those in varying degrees. Many organizations fill a particular void and if the need to fill that void is larger than a tiny voice that says "something isn't right, this is too good to be true", then that voice will be tuned out by the person himself.

Of course, sleep deprivation helps a lot once in. Works wonders on captives too.

Very well said, Mike.

[AntonR]

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[chittani]

Anton

Ha ha! What a fantastically rude posting.

I'm an emotionless android. I'm an immature baby. I'm an ever-so-Anglo-Saxon knight with poofter tendencies who dissolves into a puddle of piss when he gets a whiff of Aussie true grit. Wooah! Strewth! Remind me who's playing the colonial card here?

Look - I never asked 'Justice' about his/her identity. What I asked was "what's your interest in this"? There's no pressure there to reveal identity. I just get the sense that 'Justice' is rent-a-crowd. Maybe there's something behind the facade, but what I read is abstract self-righteousness.

Let's conjugate that irregular verb, 'To Be Justice!': "I am the revealer of truth. You are a victim of oppression. He or she is an evil manipulative cultist." It's a cosy place to be. It must be great to have everything so clear.

I've put my cards on the table, you've done the same. Your postings have been really heartbreaking. Fair play to you. It can't have been easy.

As you've picked up, I am finding this process VERY distressing. But I won't indulge in angry outbursts. It would be an insult to the people who really have something to be angry about.

Anyway, great posting. Maybe more truth there than I would care to admit ...



PS "chittani" doesn't mean "devoid of emotion" ... it means the opposite. To me, anyway.

[Goblinboy]

ROFL! Nice work Chittani. No disrespect to Anthony - I think I appreciate where he's coming from, although I suspect no one but the Ravesis will ever really understand what they went through, but an apt response to the outburst.

(reviews Chittani's post again, rolls on floor again, approves of serious bit, rolls some more).

[AntonR]

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[AntonR]

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[chittani]

Anton,

We may consider ourselves mutually rebuked then ...

But I have to take issue with your latest post, which makes an assumption as to my naivety (and now portrays me not as a quixotic knight but as a pawn). I think I preferred being a knight. But I suppose you are one horse up on me there.

I'm sure there are things you could tell me from your own experience that would raise hairs on the back of my neck. But I doubt whether there would be any surprises. There are those within the organisation to whom I am implacably opposed, because they stand for the opposite of what I see as philosophy. They're not evil, but they are seriously misguided as to what is good. If they got the upper hand again and there was nothing to be done, it would be curtains for my membership.

I bet there are a lot of secret non-Lambie fans out there in the SES praying for the old days to come back. Of course, the respect for authority is so great that they have to obey even in their heads, but they revolt in other ways (pun intended).

Maybe one day I'll see that I'm an innocent dupe, as you say. As Mike so accurately points out, the best way to manipulate people is to use the good within them.

But I think it would be better if we could see past the good v evil story here. Both sides believe in it, to some degree. The governors believe you're 'hardened activists', or the pawns of such; you believe they're evil manipulators, or the pawns of one. I wouldn't like to deny that there may be people that are evil, or at least "negatively inspired", but what you can be certain of is that nobody is ever going to apologise to the devil.

Unless we can see each other as human beings there will be, as you say, no apology. An apology wouldn't prove me right or you wrong, it would just be a sign that normal human relations have been restored.

[chittani]

Anton

I just saw your PS.

I REALLY don't want to get into an argument about Sanskrit. My Sanskrit is poor, it was just a whim really. But since you've raised it again, I will explain what I believe it means.

chitta can mean mind but usually means the heart. Mind would normally be manas or buddhi (I bet even mentioning these words gets some people's hackles up - but guys, don't blame the Indians ...)

So chittani means "hearts", plural. I suppose I wanted something that would mean (to me) a meeting of hearts and minds. V corny I know ...

[Free Thinker]

I'm jumping in here to say that it's refreshing to have another current SES member who can actually speak and appears to really care about what is going on. I'm sure you do care, Chittani, it's just that we must always be cautious at the beginning.

I know that Anton is full of righteous (and well-deserved) anger at his and his family's experiences but I do agree that we have to keep these discussions civil if we are to gain from them. Let's try to keep our anger for those who really deserve it.

I do take issue with the good v. evil but though. I think that while a majority of members are good people who think that they are doing right, and really believe that the teaching will help them and others make the world a better place, there are many at the top who I believe are purely evil - and are having great fun with all the power and authority they wield at the expense of others. Perhaps they didn't start out evil, but the power has corrupted them into thinking they are avatars. Feh!

I'm an open non-Lambie fan. I don't like him any more than I did McLaren. But I guess that many see him as a very different sort of leader than McLaren. And they're right. But that doesn't make him any less of a revolting person.

[chittani]

Free Thinker

Thanks for that. As for Anton ... I can't dislike anyone who's so creative with his insults!

I find the number of evil people in the world decreases as you get to know more of them.

I shouldn't really have got into personalities. But I would have to say Lambie is not someone who fantasises about being an avatar!

(I've actually never heard anyone mention such a thing with reference to a person in the SES, either themselves or anyone else. Even Leon MacLaren. Have you? That would be amusing. Maybe they have more avatars in the US.)

For my money - and maybe he comes across differently overseas - Lambie's hard-working, principled and totally unpretentious. I once overheard him saying to a branch leader: "I write to Mr xxx and tell him what I think he ought to do. Then I go back and I find he's done the opposite. (pause) I rather like that."

Anyway, as I say, the personalities can be a bit of a side track. The main test is how people behave - so we will see about that.

PS
I wonder what the silent SES readers of this forum have to say on the topic of this thread? It would be good to hear some comments. Happy to argue the toss with any of you.

[Free Thinker]

Chittani,

The point about avatars is solely my own. I have not heard anyone say this, and I don't think that anyone actually thinks of himself as an avatar (note the intentional use of the masculine) but that many of the men who have become leaders act as if they were.

I have no doubt that Lambie is hardworking and principled. He could hardly be a school leader if he wasn't. As for unpretentious, I have found that the longer men are involved in the school, the more pretentious they get. I took my husband to a gathering at which there were many people currently (and formerly) involved in the SoPP. he had never met anyone from there before except for me and my peers who are former members. That being said, some of the men really made him feel horribly uncomfortable and condescended to. It was really an awful experience for him. Some of the people he had no problem with, and he got along really well with a few people who are no longer members. But this phenomenon of senior male members getting HUGE egos is not limited to this gathering. One of the reasons my father gave me for his leaving was how the men in his group changed personalities once they became tutors and had been in the group for a long time. Power changed them. As for personalities, Lambie has been utterly rude and condescending to me - a person who find the good in everyone and of whom others have said "Free THinker can get along with anyone. If she doesn't like someone, it means there is something amiss." But I digress.

As for the avatar thing in relation to McLaren - it's not so much that he thought he was channeling God or was born to bring this special teaching to the world - as many personal problems as he had, I don't think this. But it's the climate that was created in the school as a result in which the members TREATED him as if he was an avatar, and that that was OK.

I have posted on my experiences with my health issues and the SoPP extensively because I think that such examples are really telling. I'll briefly outline one here:

My mother was on a week-long residential while I stayed with another SoPP family. I went to day camp with that family's daughter and one day I ate something another child gave me that I was allergic to. Anaphylactic allergic. Going to the ER immediately because if I don't I will die allergic. I called Wallkill and asked to speak to my mother and was told she was in a meeting with McL. I explained the situation to the man who had answered the phone but he wouldn't let me speak to her. I got the head of the camp to talk to him and he still wouldn't. So not interrupting a meeting with McL was more important than an 11 yo being able to speak to her mother in such a circumstance. It wasn't until she got a man from the camp to talk to him that he let me speak to my mother.

Having stayed at the house in Boston one residential where McL was staying and seeing how all the adults acted was really telling. Every single personal wish of his was catered to, and everything had to be PERFECT. I don't think it was because he would have had a fit if it wasn't. But that everyone treated him as if he was such a god that everything had to be his way. This example always stands out in my mine - I was cutting cucumbers for lunch and I was made to throw them out and start over because I wasn't cutting them in the shape that he likes. WTF?!?!?! Aren't we supposed to be giving up our ego and helping others to do so? And the fact that despite a group of us serving him, cleaning his house, preparing his food, scrubbing out the bathroom after he had overflowed the toilet (that was my job - oh boy!) did we ever actually get to meet him? Did he acknowledge anything about what we had done during that week? Nope!

[chittani]

FT

I think the way being made a tutor affects someone depends on the person, like anything else. Above all, it depends on how secure they are. Maybe, also, things were more extreme in some of the overseas branches than in the UK. I bet you got everything in spades.

My own experience over 2 decades, I've seen a lot of inconsiderate behaviour, an amount of arrogance and stupidity, but never much more than that. For every thing that's got me worked up or upset, there's been something else that's made me grateful - maybe a tutor who's been prepared to stay up till 2.30 AM listening to my worries, or the way that grudges never seem to be borne no matter how much grief you give them.

I guess that anyone who's stuck with the School this long will have similar things to say - the good outweighs the bad.

Shame about the avatars though. We used to talk about GMS - Great Man Syndrome. Pygmies with loud voices striding about trying to be the Great Man. You don't see it so much now, which is a shame in a way but probably a good thing if we are to make progress.

There's a whole generation of people coming through into tutoring now who have got the humanity and self-confidence to do things differently. They didn't suffer the pressures of the previous generation and they've had the chance to develop a bit of individuality. Just letting them get on with it is quietly changing the landscape.

They still have some funny ideas, of course - how could they not? - but those are fading away, because nobody is reinforcing them. It's odd - we've not been told, for example, that there's been a change in policy on gender roles. But at the same time, you literally never hear about it. By default, people start to normalise with society, because for the past 5 years nobody has been telling us what to think.

There are no doubt many who view this with horror. I think that for the moment it can only be healthy.