In Reply to: Re: Also top leadership were "exceptions" posted by CB on November 19, 2005 at 10:09:17:
You wrote: "TFI leadership expects the lower ranks to take responsibility for things they have little or no control over (like birth defects). At the same time, the lower ranks refuse to take responsibility for things within their power to change (like corrupt, pedophilic leadership)."
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I don't see how the lower ranks can take responsiblity while within the family for changing corrupt, pedophilic leadership. At least not in the past. Perhaps now there is more room for that? I don't know. But when I was in I would be a liar to say that I did not believe that I was wrong or weak to doubt leadership for anything even if something registered in me as 'disgusting' it would have translated to being 'my weakness'. I left believing I was wrong and that I was condemning myself and my children but I could not face what was clearly coming, and so much more came than I could imagine.
There is much being left out about the state of mind of the drones that follow the mosquito or maybe queen bee would be another analogy to those of us that were once part of the hive, sustaining it.
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And you wrote:
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It's a very confusing state of affairs that results in paralysis and inertia. People just keep plugging along doing a whole lot of nothing and telling themselves it's really important work. It's very much like the Green Door world that Berg projected outward as being a spiritual insight into the World System. The current Family System is a microcosm of the tail-chasing, pointless, busyness that Berg despised in the World System."
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I absolutely agree that life in the family was very much "The Green Door" and about "Tales From the Darkside", an alternate sur-reality.. Indeed a pointless business. I am glad to be out of that for decades now, but realize I was unable to see what I was in while I was IN it. I had to get out and away for awhile to start thinking rationally.
Some people believe that it was criminal to have seen the Davidito book and not gone running to authorities to report Berg and Maria.
Being a former member at that time, I know it was one of a number of things to be published that led to my leaving against my internal implanted beliefs. In spite of my inability to recognize what Berg was doing as crime in the context of the family (and that is very important..in the context of being a family member at the time)I am aware in looking back that it was something I could never imagine participating in and never did while in. Being on the outer edges of the family the "opportunity" presented itself with an outsider only once but I did not follow through as there was no leader to coerce the action. Even if there had been, I don't know if I could have. In this case, the person was a teenaged youth and I was in my latter twenties.
I had heard about some people who were said to have "shared" with more minor youth internally within the family. I know these are the sorts of things, this and the knowledge that things were about to tighten up with the move into India and the third world, that were precursors to my leaving with my kids. That and the fact that I had the means, my children with me, to be able to make a break and get the hell out of dodge with no one to spirit any of my kids away or attempt to set my thinking crooked.
Even after leaving when I did verify some materials, there was no acknowledgement that there was anything that could be done about it. CAN (before Scientology took it over) was aware of what was being practiced in the family, but who knew where Maria was or what name she was travelling under etc?
I think people have to get out of that system, that upside down dark world to start finding their marbles and then it takes playing with them some to realize how to start using them.
To me, it is clear why people within can't 1.) Be honest 2.)Report things that are clearly criminal WHILE THEY ARE IN IT- having it defined as "right".
I see FG more like I see battered women in that they have to get out of the relationship and be free of it long enough to see just how screwed up it all was.
Berg and Co. beat the hell out of followers with being "selfish", "self-centered", "rebellious", committing "sin as unto witchcraft", etc for the slightest of doubts.
In a sense FG were largely youth who were broken down and often before being recruited were broken down to begin with..then built up in a highly controlled environment to think and behave according to specified code.
Some became monsters, some went crazy, some cut their lives short or died of diseases that were preventable or untreated and some LEFT THE FAMILY bearing scars. FG pain was as legitimate and real as anyone else's pain.
I agree that there is a responsibility having been a member to validate what a person knows and can see in hindsight was criminal. Absolutely.