|
In Reply to: Re: internet chat as a forum for justice.. posted by Albatross on February 17, 2004 at 13:27:12:
You Posted:
"One person Berg, was spring from which all this evil bubbled forth. Nevertheless a whole generation of FGA's enthusiastically lapped it up."
===========================================
What do you see that it was that we generation of FGA's teens and youth ourselves 'eagerly lapping up'? Because when we joined the family at least to rank and file was pretty Victorian about sex, there were very few kids and those were just a few babies, and the goal was to make the world a better place AS FAR AS WE KNEW. Berg was not "King David" yet, and FFing started slowly and systematically. Then began to work it's way down towards children. At least as far as lower rank and file knew. Have you done much research about the dynamics of cults?
=========================================
You posted:
"The COG/Family did not take long before becoming a geographically dispersed organization. As I see it, there did not exists an environment suitably controlling to justify the claims by the I-was-duped-by-the-cult-but-could-not-leave school of thought. Without the devoted and wholehearted participation of the rank and file FGAs, Berg would be just another washed up, apocalyptic survivalist preacher with a penchant for little girls and watching his wife sleep with other men."
============================================
This was certainly not know by many rank and file though in hindsight I now know that this was behind the scenes.
==========================================
You posted:
"He would be just another nut job crying in the wilderness. Instead, the landscaping of this hobbesian garden of earthly delights was done by the busy hands of a generation of willing converts. To put this all on Berg and an imaginary cadre of manipulative minions makes for a tidy explanation, but perhaps ignores the reality of what can be wrought by a group of people who give themselves without noticeable reservations to the rantings of a criminally insane megalomaniac."
========================================
I agree with your apt definition of Berg as "a criminally insane megalomaniac" and I believe Zerby fits that profile too. But in the family there is not room at the top for more than one ultimate head. (Now Zerby, and anyone groomed to replace her in case of her demise).
What I disagree with is your image of what life was like as an FGA upon being recruited into the group, giving up everything, and having a totally controlled environment. Have you researched that much? I can certainly see where you draw your conclusions from the time that you came into the world and then growing up in the family. But perhaps it would help to have some realistic depictions of what the family was like and who was targeted for recruitment in our day as youth. It was very, very different. Also, my experience was very different. I took the bait, but did not see the hook. And the bait was not sex or pedophilia. Berg via his already programmed handful of leaders took me to increasing depths with lots of tools for breaking me down. Those leaders were later deposed much the same as in the Chinese cultural revolution under Mao. There was sleep deprivation, proper food deprivation, lengthy classes, exhortations, scripture memorization, witnessing, buddies (didn't go anywhere without one, not even to the toilet), signs everywhere with sayings, purging sessions OFTEN, all designed to break down. To describe this would take far more than this post, but perhaps you have some questions and different FGs can answer (that are EXERS) as to what got them into the group and how they got out. And what was it like. We were taught to believe that gut feeling was evil. All this was backed up by the bible.(or so it seemed) WAY before FFing was introduced.
I don't say this to excuse anything that happened to children growing up in the family, but humiliations and degradations galore occurred to me systematically as well as to most other FG's that I know of.
Maybe this is not the time for you to consider this.
