I got interested in Tess not too long ago--she seems to be falling faster into "the community" than most folks I've seen. She did a long-winded post a couple weeks ago about trying to drag her boyfriend in, but he was resisting. Tonight I saw on the main page many entries into a new thread she started: "My boyfriend says I'm in a cult."

It must have been rockin', there were quite a few entries. However, by the time I got to the site, the entire thread had been deleted. I'm just idly curious--did anyone see it?

I saw it. He's been looking online, he's found a counselor, he's even found a guy that's worked with other FDR people, and she doesn't want to leave the relationship, but he won't take seriously anything she says because she's in a cult and the cult leader told her to say that, and everyone has been assuming that Boyfriend has his own issues that he's afraid to face and that's what he's really afraid of when she got into FDR.

The most interesting part is when she talked about how she's always been looking for a group to join, and has dabbled in various religions and even Amway, and that Boyfriend likes her more when she's a relativist who doesn't care about Truth, but she cares about Truth now and understands that reason and virtue is the only way to find it.

People were horrified that the counselor was Anglican and an ex-minister and think it is shocking that a representative of one cult has the balls to "counsel" people about how to get out of another.

Basically they made it his issue, and his personal issue, and tied it to his parenting. Late in the conversation, Tess brought out the "his parents were abusive" card and yet he still doesn't want her to ditch her own, and it's bad that he maintains a relationship with his mother, who fed him to his abusive father who has since died.

She's been posting for what? A couple of months?

Oh! And she said she'd offered to quit posting at FDR but that she didn't think that would solve any problems. I think it's the cause and not a symptom, but of course I'm not in the relationship. What do I know, right? Right? But if she asked me--and she won't--I'd say that she should stop posting at FDR and stop emailing or chatting with the people there, and see how long her outrage lasts.

I assume she deleted the thread, or asked for its deletion, probably because it was too much blurge. I've gone on and on online before and then gone back and edited it out. You think differently about things the next day. Or maybe Boyfriend read it and got mad and asked for it to be deleted, or she wanted to delete it before he read it. At this point I'm sure he's following her posts.

Man, all this talk about The Truth just reminds me of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwsWskgKe5E

Scarey stuff when people claim they have THE truth, huh?

Just imagine the situation her boyfriend is in: he loves a woman, and he sees her slowly but surely slip away from him and into this creepy community, and any action he might take to prevent it may be the end of the relationship.

And imagine her own position: she loves both her boyfriend and FDR, but will likely have to choose.

After coming late into this study of FDR it strikes me that whatever the initial objectives of FDR were it has crossed over into becoming a real religious type cult with Molyneux and his dogma at its centre. That dogma of Molyneuism has become based on his personality and his "little red book" which cannot be questioned as it would be heresy. The penance for questioning Molyneuism is first jeering by the true believers, a rebute from the Grand Ayatollah of Molyneuism himself and then expulsion.

On another board, on a completely different topic--which diverged--I stumbled across this passage that someone cited:

Quote:

Man must be consistently demonstrated to be a mechanism without individuality, and it must be educated into a populace under attack that Man's individualistic reactions are the product of mental derangement. The populace must be brought into the belief that every individual within it who rebels in any way, shape, or form against the efforts and activities to enslave the whole, must be considered to be a deranged person whose eccentricities are neurotic and insane, and who must have at once the treatment of a psychopolitician.

It's from some booklet published by, well, L. Ron Hubbard called "The Brainwashing Manual," although I don't know his credibility well enough to decide if he lifted it from someone else. Regardless, it's so easy to flip around. Note my changes in bold:

Quote:

Man must be consistently demonstrated to be a mechanism without statist tendencies, and it must be educated into a populace under attack that Man's statist reactions are the product of mental derangement. The populace must be brought into the belief that every individual within it who rebels in any way, shape, or form against the efforts and activities to enslave individuals, must be considered to be a deranged person whose eccentricities are neurotic and insane, and who must have at once the treatment of a psychophilosopher.

FWIW, I believe that what is generally referred to as statism -socialism, social democracy, liberal democracy etc., commits philosophical errors more egregious than those made by the folks over at FDR, and is also more confusing. I focus (relatively) more on FDR, because they have such pretenses of greatness.

But making philosophical errors does not make one crazy or deranged. At worst it makes you wrong.

Anyway... double post, sorry, all that...

So those of us who are watching Tess's career might find this latest thread interesting:

FDR362--Forget About Offense

She's been deliberately avoiding FDR for a while, it sounds like, and finding holes in things, and trying to figure out why she cares, and blames it all on her false self. We get some interesting statements, including a sunken cost fallacy in the 10:52 AM reply:

Quote:

Stef has to be perfect, or I might feel like I made a dumb choice when I backed this horse.

And things like this in the original post:

Quote:

I feel a huge emotional tension if Stef uses an argument I think is flawed, especially if he then mocks or ridicules those who disagree with him.

.

Quote:

Next thing I know, I'm whining about logical flaws in the free will debate, or complaining that UPB is incomprehensible, when I don't even care about these things. So what if Stef is wrong? So what if he mocks my arguments?

.

Quote:

It's sickening how completely the false self can take over and make itself the normal appropriate response to emotional distress. And once in place, it deletes any ability to perceive anything honestly without the layer upon layer of made-up story and rationalisation. Please, my friends, if you see me delving into intellectualisation, kick me. I've no business getting involved in intellectual debates when I still get all false-selfy about it.

.

Quote:

Last week I attended a friend's wedding, and it really forced me into false-self-mode (all that shallow socialising), which I didn't even notice at first, but then which really began to take over my life again to the point where FDR started to feel 'boring' and 'pointless' and maybe just downright wrong - which of course it would from the false self perspective.

It's just so sad. Her brain is telling her all kinds of things about FDR (and probably other people, too), and she is finding more and more wrong with it, but she feels like Stef has to be perfect or she's just dumb. This is of course silly. Taking time to investigate something you are interested in, even if you end up not liking it in the end and stop doing it, is never dumb. What's awful is that she's been fooled into thinking it's her "false self" that is aware of these problems. Of course it's herself that is false, and not the arguments. Which is false. Her true self is speaking up about FDR and she doesn't want to listen.

Even worse is the part where she went to a wedding and had fun participating in shallow socialization. Maybe I don't go to the right kinds of parties, but I only care about shallowly socializing at them. You're supposed to be shallow. Otherwise, it's called something else. And since so many people at weddings are usually strangers, you can't really meaningful interact, and you are supposed to spend the whole time focused on the bride and groom anyway.

But the real gem--the REAL gem--is in Molyneux's response:

Quote:

I would hope that those who find me in error would find enough affection to correct me.

I'll let you guys parse that one, and all of its many ironies. I've hogged enough of the limelight for now. Double post, remember?

According to the reading that I have been doing about cults lately, one common characteristic of cults is that the genuine personality of members is replaced by a cult formed personality. In the FDR community, this is plainly seen in the phenomenon of "false self vs. true self". I was able to witness this struggle (the "true self" gradually struggling to take over "false self") with various members while I was involved at FDR. It was a scary thing to watch. We now have front row seats as Tess is describing the process in vivid detail. Her genuine personality (called in Moly terms - the "false self") is still struggling somewhat to be heard, but she feels guilty, and is trying to suppress it. If she does not receive help, she will continue to immerse herself in FDR, continue to listen to podcasts over and over again, and continue to surround herself with the FDR community until her "true self" takes over and her "false self" is silenced. The transition will then be complete.