Delete!Delete!Delete! This is what is happening on Myspace right now as I write this blog. Bloggers from every category are deleting their accounts, seeking out new territory to post their thoughts, arguments, stories, and events in their lives.
The glitch/bug that set, the once great social networking site ablaze in its death pyre, prevents bloggers from interacting with their readers. Has evolved into readers being unable to comment on anyone's blogs. What good is your thoughts, arguments, stories, and events that transpire in your life that you want to share, if there is no one to there to argue, validate, or engage in what you have to offer.
The one key element that Myspace had over Facebook was the blogs, this was the last remaining thing MySpace had going for it. With it gone on the whim of some programmer, or marketing executive who decided we need to do away with blogs because FaceBook doesn't have blogs and we want to be more like Facebook; has signed their own death order.
Even if they were to fix the problem tomorrow and put everything back the way it was, it would be too little too late. The Bloggers have left the building. Maybe a new generation of bloggers will take the stage, but those of us that have been battle hardened by our defeats, our victories, our partnerships with other bloggers, and the countless hours we have put into building our fan base, are no longer MySpace Bloggers. We are trying to keep our friendships intake as we set out to explore the great big world of blogging beyond the confines of MySpace.
My 1.0 profile on MySpace will remain active until the idiots in charge wipe their servers in favor of 2.0 and now the 3.0 profiles. Do away with the old and bring in the new that is if they survive with their members Delete!Delete!Deleting their profiles left and right.
About Me
- DESAGO
- Some days I don't really like people. I know I'm not the nicest person in the world, and I don't give a rat's ASS. Yes I have a sour dispositions, So your point is what? I do not, let me reiterate, I DO NOT PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Friday, August 6, 2010
The Raging Religious Douche Bag
Don't step on his dogma, don't make incidental eye contact and don't talk about his God. But what ever you do, don’t mention certain facts about the Bible or how there is no evidence for a historical Jesus, or even how Gays have the right to marry. It doesn't take a whole lot to set this guy off, and after he's pissed, screaming, swinging and insulting you, you might wish you'd actually done something worthy of such a shit-fit, because the novelty wears off very quickly.
He's easy to pick out in a crowd, he'll be one man yelling, screaming and trying to make everyone’s life a living Hell! While everyone in the crowd exchanges confused glances along with sympathetic shrugging shoulders, wondering who pissed in this guys corn flakes. This douche bag makes sure that he can't or won’t be ignored.
What is it that makes this person a raging religious douche bag? Why is he so angry? Why is this guy throwing a tantrum like a titty baby? I will try to explain, the rage, the entitlement, the frustration and the hatred, which encompasses this disorder known as the Raging Religious Douche Bag.
Do you know one, maybe two, if you have spent anytime on the R&P forums of MySpace, you could easily name off 10 or 15 without thinking too long or hard. Westboro Baptist Church comes to mind right off hand. Then you have your long list of regular MySpace Religious Douche Bags These people that profess their allegiances to God and Jesus, but are so filled with piss and vinegar, they in fact do more harm to the Christian religion than any atheist ever will.
Think about it for one minute, there are people forever turned off from Christianity because these guys can't get a message across without sounding and acting like total bastards.
Lets face it. The biggest turn off to Christianity is the Raging Religious Douche Bag. Most Atheists, Jews, Buddhist and even Pagans would agree with a lot of the peaceful practices and teachings of tolerance by Jesus. But these guys always emphasize the differences. They want to feel persecuted and will project their persecution to others to reach this end. Shouldn't the holy spirit be found in their hearts and not from the hateful words of some psychotic homophobic online preacher with a stick in his ass?
Personally, from my interpretation of the bible, even a neurotic non-believer like me has a better shot at Heaven than someone who embraces hate in God's name.
I have found that these people who claim to be Christians often are most critical of those who most resemble themselves or at least reflect their own sinful tendencies. They embrace Christianity with anger and hate, they say they “hate” others, but most often it comes out as ‘Hate the sin, not the sinner,’ but if the Holy Spirit of God truly lived within them, they would be incapable of hating others and would readily forgive others of their so called sins. The revelation that they are so angry at someone else is often an indication of either false or extremely immature faith. So, what they are so threatened by is actually what they are struggling with themselves, their own failed morals, their own insecurities in their faith, their fears and short comings.
Anger
Anger is an emotional state that varies in intensity from mild irritation to intense wrath and rage. Like all other emotions, it's accompanied by physiological and biological changes. In anger, your heart rate and blood pressure go up, and so do the levels of your energy hormones and adrenaline. Anger is either caused by external and internal events, so you can be angry at a specific person, an event, or your anger could be caused by worrying or frustration due to not finding a solution and even feeling threatened by other human beings, either psychologically or physically.
It is a natural, although adaptive response to threats. It inspires powerful, aggressive feelings and behaviors, which allow you to fight and defend yourself when under attack. It can be a difficult emotion to express and manage, particularly because we have been taught to express all of our other emotions other than angry. Therefore, it is not uncommon to feel guilty or ashamed about being angry despite it being a very normal and necessary emotion. We are even taught to avoid angry people, so anger has become the anti-social emotion, instead of dealing with anger in a constructive manner we shun it, we avoid it, or we let it consume us.
People who are easily angered generally have a very low tolerance for frustration, aggravations and hassles of daily living and seem to overreact to the many problems of daily living. They feel that they should not be subjected to frustration, inconvenience, or annoyance. They can't take things in stride, and are particularly exasperated if the situation in some way seems unreasonable to them; for example, such people might become extremely annoyed on being corrected for a minor mistake.
Some angry people are very manipulative. They think and behave as if they can and will change the behavior of others as a result of their rage or tantrums. These people have no real sense of control. They give off the illusion of being in control. But a person with a rage/anger problem can’t be motivational or inspirational to others as anger acts like a block. Such people are believed to suffer from low self-esteem. Actually, insecurity is the bottom line. They are very much aware of the fact that they are mediocre in many aspects of their lives and try to feign control. They try to hide the truth from themselves and feel that they can camouflage their insecurities with tantrums, flare-ups, mood swings, and threats of violence.
Authoritative nature is dominate in people, who get angry easily, they will often times have a sense of entitlement. They want to be the authority on any matter they bring up and do not expect you to counter anything they have to say, but when you do it irritates them to no end. Sometimes they feel they deserve to be catered to, and expect it, but by not doing so, angers them.
Stress does aggravates anger, so, people who have frustrations or problems in their lives will make them react more strongly than the others. The pain and discomfort in their life makes them do so. So our personal situation plays a major role in our reactions to various circumstances in life. The reason we get angry is because it's a way of us trying to avoid the emotional pain that we experience. But primarily we get angry to communicate our thoughts, our feelings and frustrations to those around us.
Some people may suffer from Intermittent Explosive Disorder: There are people who react to situations with a sudden outburst without thinking about repercussions. A 2006 study by the National Institute of Mental Health has determined the condition to be more prevalent than previously thought, affecting around 2 out of every 25 adult Americans, most commonly seen in male youths.
Many people diagnosed with IED appear to have general problems with anger or other impulsive behaviors. They may experience racing thoughts or a heightened energy level during the aggressive episode, with fatigue and depression developing shortly afterward.
The Intermittent Explosive Disorder
Intermittent explosive disorder is characterized by repeated episodes of aggressive, violent behavior in which one react grossly out of proportion to the situation. People with intermittent explosive disorder may attack others physically or verbally and their possessions, causing bodily injury and property damage.
Most people with this disorder grew up in families where explosive behavior, verbal and physical abuse were common. Being exposed to this type of violence at an early age makes it more likely for these children to exhibit these same traits as they mature.
People with other mental health problems — such as mood disorders, anxiety disorders and eating disorders — may be more likely to also have intermittent explosive disorder.
People with traits that are common to personality disorders — such as dramatic, antisocial, paranoid or narcissistic behavior patterns — may be especially prone to intermittent explosive disorder. As children, they may have exhibited severe temper tantrums and other behavioral problems, such as stealing, fire setting and even bed wetting.
To be diagnosed with intermittent explosive disorder you must meet criteria spelled out in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DMS), published by the American Psychiatric Association.
Criteria for intermittent explosive disorder to be diagnosed include:
* Multiple incidents in which the person failed to resist aggressive impulses that resulted in deliberate destruction of property or assault, physical and/or verbal, of another person.
* The degree of aggressiveness expressed during the incidents is completely out of proportion with the precipitating event.
* The aggressive episodes aren't accounted for by another mental disorder and are not due to the effects of a drug or a general medical condition.
Other conditions that must be ruled out before making a diagnosis of intermittent explosive disorder include delirium, dementia, oppositional defiant disorder, antisocial personality disorder, schizophrenia, panic attacks, substance withdrawal or intoxication.
People with intermittent explosive disorder may have an imbalance in the amount of serotonin and testosterone in their brains. They may also show some minor irregularities in neurological signs and electroencephalograms (EEGs).
Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED) is now classified in DSM-IV among the "Impulse Control Disorders Not Elsewhere Classified". This has remained essentially unchanged since DSM-III, which was published in 1980. Prior to that--in DSM-II--the nearest thing to IED was the so-called Explosive Personality, which was regarded as a personality disorder.
In DSM-III, and ever since, it was recognized that some individuals have bouts of explosive behavior that are NOT part of their underlying character structure, and, indeed, are experienced as ego-alien or ego-dystonic.
There is no cure for intermittent explosive disorder, but gaining some control over an otherwise unmanageable condition through therapy and drug treatments is better than doing nothing at all. Anger disorders may require one or a combination of treatments:
* Drug Therapy
* Behavior Therapy
* Anger Management Program
* Psychotherapy
Recognizing there is a problem is the first step to getting help for IED or any other behavioral condition. Intermittent explosive disorder is a behavior condition defined by a particular pattern of anger that is profoundly exaggerated compared to the cause. Left untreated, IED can lead to major disciplinary problems for the adult with this disorder; the risks may include job loss, social rejection, and the potential for serious conflicts with the law. Repeated acts of aggression may cause damage to property, harm to the individual, and injury to anyone that tries to intervene during an outburst.
Morality
Researchers at Stanford University suggests that moralizing the behavior of other people has a lot to do with defending our own fragile egos. People will cast their selves as nobility superior in the morals department to avoid feeling naive and idiotic. Those eager to judge other people will do so, on two main axes: morality and competence. In defending their ego, if they can't impugn someone's ethics, they will simply label them as stupid.
So an atheists who threatens a Christian’s ego by posting a blog about the short comings of the Christian religion, has threatened the religious person psychologically. So the Christian feels they must lash out at this evil person anyway they can. Be it swearing, fowl language, and child-like insults; spelling and grammar errors will run amok, because the religious douche bag, has already lost the ability to reason in their rage.
A homosexual man wanting to marry another man is to the Christian mindset ‘Pure Blasphemy’. A blasphemy that was against his religion and the Christian had been taught that was unacceptable. They will flat out say its an amoral act, and an evil sin.
Now if a religious person can’t judge another person as evil, then they belittle them with insults, as a pretentious self-affirmation that this person is indeed incompetent. Just to keep from feeling idiotic their selves. This is just another attempt to blindly and sadly protect their own inflated egos and the motivation to devalue others.
Conclusion
As you can see, there is normal anger which arises from pain, frustration, and aggravations and is healthy when expressed. Of course, we are unlikely to experience anger in a truly healthy way, without a great deal of practice. And then there is abnormal unhealthy anger which arises from guilt, reflection, insecurity, failed morals, short comings and the mental condition known as IED.
Now add the religious aspects to this disorder. Fear, ignorance, intolerance, a pious self righteous judgmental attitude and a very fragile ego, all these aspects that are promoted by a zealot religious belief. These people who are willing to go that extra mile for their beliefs, from belittling insults to threats of violence to oppressing those they feel deserving of such rage and even murder.
These religious people feel justified in their anger, even thought their anger speaks volumes about their god’s fragile nature. They blame others for their anger. Jonah blamed God for his anger. He thought God was too gracious and forgiving to those whom he felt didn’t deserve it. So, Jonah placed himself in Judgment over the people of Nineveh. Just as these modern day religious douche bags place their judgment on anyone and everyone they feel is deserving of their wraith, is in reality their misplaced anger at God for subjecting them to frustrations, inconveniences, or annoyances. They believe God should have instantly struck down those that they have deemed unworthy, the homosexuals, the atheists, the pagans, the Jews, the godless heathens, the blacks, and anyone else they have set their eyes upon, but God has failed to see these sinners for what they are or recognize or even acknowledge them, so, now these unworthy people are victims of the Holy Wraith of God, by decree of these so called Christians.
Once these douche bags embrace that Holy Wraith, coupled with their judgmental attitude, their mental disorder and their moral superiority; you get the Raging Religious Douche Bag.
Resources:
www.MayoClinic.com
http://eqi.org/anger.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atTSwau9fwM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_explosive_disorder
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200811/morality-sucker-saint
The Angry Christian: A Theology for Care and Counseling
By Andrew D. Lester (Westminster, John Knox Press 2003, 2007)
He's easy to pick out in a crowd, he'll be one man yelling, screaming and trying to make everyone’s life a living Hell! While everyone in the crowd exchanges confused glances along with sympathetic shrugging shoulders, wondering who pissed in this guys corn flakes. This douche bag makes sure that he can't or won’t be ignored.
What is it that makes this person a raging religious douche bag? Why is he so angry? Why is this guy throwing a tantrum like a titty baby? I will try to explain, the rage, the entitlement, the frustration and the hatred, which encompasses this disorder known as the Raging Religious Douche Bag.
Do you know one, maybe two, if you have spent anytime on the R&P forums of MySpace, you could easily name off 10 or 15 without thinking too long or hard. Westboro Baptist Church comes to mind right off hand. Then you have your long list of regular MySpace Religious Douche Bags These people that profess their allegiances to God and Jesus, but are so filled with piss and vinegar, they in fact do more harm to the Christian religion than any atheist ever will.
Think about it for one minute, there are people forever turned off from Christianity because these guys can't get a message across without sounding and acting like total bastards.
Lets face it. The biggest turn off to Christianity is the Raging Religious Douche Bag. Most Atheists, Jews, Buddhist and even Pagans would agree with a lot of the peaceful practices and teachings of tolerance by Jesus. But these guys always emphasize the differences. They want to feel persecuted and will project their persecution to others to reach this end. Shouldn't the holy spirit be found in their hearts and not from the hateful words of some psychotic homophobic online preacher with a stick in his ass?
Personally, from my interpretation of the bible, even a neurotic non-believer like me has a better shot at Heaven than someone who embraces hate in God's name.
I have found that these people who claim to be Christians often are most critical of those who most resemble themselves or at least reflect their own sinful tendencies. They embrace Christianity with anger and hate, they say they “hate” others, but most often it comes out as ‘Hate the sin, not the sinner,’ but if the Holy Spirit of God truly lived within them, they would be incapable of hating others and would readily forgive others of their so called sins. The revelation that they are so angry at someone else is often an indication of either false or extremely immature faith. So, what they are so threatened by is actually what they are struggling with themselves, their own failed morals, their own insecurities in their faith, their fears and short comings.
Anger
Anger is an emotional state that varies in intensity from mild irritation to intense wrath and rage. Like all other emotions, it's accompanied by physiological and biological changes. In anger, your heart rate and blood pressure go up, and so do the levels of your energy hormones and adrenaline. Anger is either caused by external and internal events, so you can be angry at a specific person, an event, or your anger could be caused by worrying or frustration due to not finding a solution and even feeling threatened by other human beings, either psychologically or physically.
It is a natural, although adaptive response to threats. It inspires powerful, aggressive feelings and behaviors, which allow you to fight and defend yourself when under attack. It can be a difficult emotion to express and manage, particularly because we have been taught to express all of our other emotions other than angry. Therefore, it is not uncommon to feel guilty or ashamed about being angry despite it being a very normal and necessary emotion. We are even taught to avoid angry people, so anger has become the anti-social emotion, instead of dealing with anger in a constructive manner we shun it, we avoid it, or we let it consume us.
People who are easily angered generally have a very low tolerance for frustration, aggravations and hassles of daily living and seem to overreact to the many problems of daily living. They feel that they should not be subjected to frustration, inconvenience, or annoyance. They can't take things in stride, and are particularly exasperated if the situation in some way seems unreasonable to them; for example, such people might become extremely annoyed on being corrected for a minor mistake.
Some angry people are very manipulative. They think and behave as if they can and will change the behavior of others as a result of their rage or tantrums. These people have no real sense of control. They give off the illusion of being in control. But a person with a rage/anger problem can’t be motivational or inspirational to others as anger acts like a block. Such people are believed to suffer from low self-esteem. Actually, insecurity is the bottom line. They are very much aware of the fact that they are mediocre in many aspects of their lives and try to feign control. They try to hide the truth from themselves and feel that they can camouflage their insecurities with tantrums, flare-ups, mood swings, and threats of violence.
Authoritative nature is dominate in people, who get angry easily, they will often times have a sense of entitlement. They want to be the authority on any matter they bring up and do not expect you to counter anything they have to say, but when you do it irritates them to no end. Sometimes they feel they deserve to be catered to, and expect it, but by not doing so, angers them.
Stress does aggravates anger, so, people who have frustrations or problems in their lives will make them react more strongly than the others. The pain and discomfort in their life makes them do so. So our personal situation plays a major role in our reactions to various circumstances in life. The reason we get angry is because it's a way of us trying to avoid the emotional pain that we experience. But primarily we get angry to communicate our thoughts, our feelings and frustrations to those around us.
Some people may suffer from Intermittent Explosive Disorder: There are people who react to situations with a sudden outburst without thinking about repercussions. A 2006 study by the National Institute of Mental Health has determined the condition to be more prevalent than previously thought, affecting around 2 out of every 25 adult Americans, most commonly seen in male youths.
Many people diagnosed with IED appear to have general problems with anger or other impulsive behaviors. They may experience racing thoughts or a heightened energy level during the aggressive episode, with fatigue and depression developing shortly afterward.
The Intermittent Explosive Disorder
Intermittent explosive disorder is characterized by repeated episodes of aggressive, violent behavior in which one react grossly out of proportion to the situation. People with intermittent explosive disorder may attack others physically or verbally and their possessions, causing bodily injury and property damage.
Most people with this disorder grew up in families where explosive behavior, verbal and physical abuse were common. Being exposed to this type of violence at an early age makes it more likely for these children to exhibit these same traits as they mature.
People with other mental health problems — such as mood disorders, anxiety disorders and eating disorders — may be more likely to also have intermittent explosive disorder.
People with traits that are common to personality disorders — such as dramatic, antisocial, paranoid or narcissistic behavior patterns — may be especially prone to intermittent explosive disorder. As children, they may have exhibited severe temper tantrums and other behavioral problems, such as stealing, fire setting and even bed wetting.
To be diagnosed with intermittent explosive disorder you must meet criteria spelled out in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DMS), published by the American Psychiatric Association.
Criteria for intermittent explosive disorder to be diagnosed include:
* Multiple incidents in which the person failed to resist aggressive impulses that resulted in deliberate destruction of property or assault, physical and/or verbal, of another person.
* The degree of aggressiveness expressed during the incidents is completely out of proportion with the precipitating event.
* The aggressive episodes aren't accounted for by another mental disorder and are not due to the effects of a drug or a general medical condition.
Other conditions that must be ruled out before making a diagnosis of intermittent explosive disorder include delirium, dementia, oppositional defiant disorder, antisocial personality disorder, schizophrenia, panic attacks, substance withdrawal or intoxication.
People with intermittent explosive disorder may have an imbalance in the amount of serotonin and testosterone in their brains. They may also show some minor irregularities in neurological signs and electroencephalograms (EEGs).
Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED) is now classified in DSM-IV among the "Impulse Control Disorders Not Elsewhere Classified". This has remained essentially unchanged since DSM-III, which was published in 1980. Prior to that--in DSM-II--the nearest thing to IED was the so-called Explosive Personality, which was regarded as a personality disorder.
In DSM-III, and ever since, it was recognized that some individuals have bouts of explosive behavior that are NOT part of their underlying character structure, and, indeed, are experienced as ego-alien or ego-dystonic.
There is no cure for intermittent explosive disorder, but gaining some control over an otherwise unmanageable condition through therapy and drug treatments is better than doing nothing at all. Anger disorders may require one or a combination of treatments:
* Drug Therapy
* Behavior Therapy
* Anger Management Program
* Psychotherapy
Recognizing there is a problem is the first step to getting help for IED or any other behavioral condition. Intermittent explosive disorder is a behavior condition defined by a particular pattern of anger that is profoundly exaggerated compared to the cause. Left untreated, IED can lead to major disciplinary problems for the adult with this disorder; the risks may include job loss, social rejection, and the potential for serious conflicts with the law. Repeated acts of aggression may cause damage to property, harm to the individual, and injury to anyone that tries to intervene during an outburst.
Morality
Researchers at Stanford University suggests that moralizing the behavior of other people has a lot to do with defending our own fragile egos. People will cast their selves as nobility superior in the morals department to avoid feeling naive and idiotic. Those eager to judge other people will do so, on two main axes: morality and competence. In defending their ego, if they can't impugn someone's ethics, they will simply label them as stupid.
So an atheists who threatens a Christian’s ego by posting a blog about the short comings of the Christian religion, has threatened the religious person psychologically. So the Christian feels they must lash out at this evil person anyway they can. Be it swearing, fowl language, and child-like insults; spelling and grammar errors will run amok, because the religious douche bag, has already lost the ability to reason in their rage.
A homosexual man wanting to marry another man is to the Christian mindset ‘Pure Blasphemy’. A blasphemy that was against his religion and the Christian had been taught that was unacceptable. They will flat out say its an amoral act, and an evil sin.
Now if a religious person can’t judge another person as evil, then they belittle them with insults, as a pretentious self-affirmation that this person is indeed incompetent. Just to keep from feeling idiotic their selves. This is just another attempt to blindly and sadly protect their own inflated egos and the motivation to devalue others.
Conclusion
As you can see, there is normal anger which arises from pain, frustration, and aggravations and is healthy when expressed. Of course, we are unlikely to experience anger in a truly healthy way, without a great deal of practice. And then there is abnormal unhealthy anger which arises from guilt, reflection, insecurity, failed morals, short comings and the mental condition known as IED.
Now add the religious aspects to this disorder. Fear, ignorance, intolerance, a pious self righteous judgmental attitude and a very fragile ego, all these aspects that are promoted by a zealot religious belief. These people who are willing to go that extra mile for their beliefs, from belittling insults to threats of violence to oppressing those they feel deserving of such rage and even murder.
These religious people feel justified in their anger, even thought their anger speaks volumes about their god’s fragile nature. They blame others for their anger. Jonah blamed God for his anger. He thought God was too gracious and forgiving to those whom he felt didn’t deserve it. So, Jonah placed himself in Judgment over the people of Nineveh. Just as these modern day religious douche bags place their judgment on anyone and everyone they feel is deserving of their wraith, is in reality their misplaced anger at God for subjecting them to frustrations, inconveniences, or annoyances. They believe God should have instantly struck down those that they have deemed unworthy, the homosexuals, the atheists, the pagans, the Jews, the godless heathens, the blacks, and anyone else they have set their eyes upon, but God has failed to see these sinners for what they are or recognize or even acknowledge them, so, now these unworthy people are victims of the Holy Wraith of God, by decree of these so called Christians.
Once these douche bags embrace that Holy Wraith, coupled with their judgmental attitude, their mental disorder and their moral superiority; you get the Raging Religious Douche Bag.
Resources:
www.MayoClinic.com
http://eqi.org/anger.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atTSwau9fwM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_explosive_disorder
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200811/morality-sucker-saint
The Angry Christian: A Theology for Care and Counseling
By Andrew D. Lester (Westminster, John Knox Press 2003, 2007)
My Time in the Nut House
My Time in the Nut House
A little humor
by Desago
I was in the nut house twice, both times I was suicidal, but the people there made me feel really welcome. Especially the second round, because you kinda knew what to expect. There was a daily dose of mind altering meds, followed by the caffeine withdraw, and to top it off, I found Jesus there... actually there was two, but in my Thorazine state of consciousness I couldn't tell the difference between the white Jesus or the black Jesus. SO, I swore off Jesus and founded a new religion out of the orange sweater I found hanging in my closet, all hail Fred the Orange Sweater.
Fred dictated a set of commandments to me in the wee hours of the night, but with writing implements a rare commodity (don't want mental patients hurting themselves with sharp pointy objects). I had to make due with the pea gravel I would sneak in from the smoke yard. I would arrange them in a certain order under my bed from the words Fred spoke to me. I was almost finished with the 99,000 words of the commandments when upon returning from the smoke yard with the final stones to complete the painstaking task, I saw the cleaning lady come out of my room with a bucket full of pebbles and no I'm not talking fruity Pebbles.
My bed was made and all the hard work was missing, I blamed my roommate who had a mysterious accident later that night; apparently he choked on a hand full of pea gravel that he had picked up in the smoke yard. Poor guy, no one even saw him as a suicide risk.
About a week later I was released I wore Fred out the door of the nut house, but he never spoke to me again, I even went so far as to threaten him with unraveling him into a ball of string for my cat to play with. But he has yet to speak. He still hangs in my closet and I wait for him to retell me the commandments because I now have paper and pen ready to scribe the scared words.
A little humor
by Desago
I was in the nut house twice, both times I was suicidal, but the people there made me feel really welcome. Especially the second round, because you kinda knew what to expect. There was a daily dose of mind altering meds, followed by the caffeine withdraw, and to top it off, I found Jesus there... actually there was two, but in my Thorazine state of consciousness I couldn't tell the difference between the white Jesus or the black Jesus. SO, I swore off Jesus and founded a new religion out of the orange sweater I found hanging in my closet, all hail Fred the Orange Sweater.
Fred dictated a set of commandments to me in the wee hours of the night, but with writing implements a rare commodity (don't want mental patients hurting themselves with sharp pointy objects). I had to make due with the pea gravel I would sneak in from the smoke yard. I would arrange them in a certain order under my bed from the words Fred spoke to me. I was almost finished with the 99,000 words of the commandments when upon returning from the smoke yard with the final stones to complete the painstaking task, I saw the cleaning lady come out of my room with a bucket full of pebbles and no I'm not talking fruity Pebbles.
My bed was made and all the hard work was missing, I blamed my roommate who had a mysterious accident later that night; apparently he choked on a hand full of pea gravel that he had picked up in the smoke yard. Poor guy, no one even saw him as a suicide risk.
About a week later I was released I wore Fred out the door of the nut house, but he never spoke to me again, I even went so far as to threaten him with unraveling him into a ball of string for my cat to play with. But he has yet to speak. He still hangs in my closet and I wait for him to retell me the commandments because I now have paper and pen ready to scribe the scared words.
The 2012 Revelation
The 2012 Revelation
as Dictated
by
Fred the Orange Sweater
As you may have noticed recently there is a trend of corresponding Doomsday Prophecies all coming together in the same year, 2012. This Dictation of Revelations has come to me in the wee hours of the morning, spoken to me by Fred the Orange Sweater. Yes, he finally decided to speak to me again and I didn’t need any mind altering drugs. Now before you get your panties in a bunch and get all terrified about the end of the world, let me just say there is no giant spaceship that we can all run to escape the end of the world, there aren’t going to be any aliens races coming to rescue our dumb asses and there isn’t going to be anyone left alive, so planning to survive is an utterly fruitless effort. There isn’t going to be miracles performed by some absentee deity, that can prevent 2012 from happening. So it looks like pretty much everyone is fucked.
Now before I get into the nitty gritty of the Mayan Calendar, that everyone has heard of, its amazing that these people who couldn’t read or write English could accurately predict the end of the world right down to the very day.
Unlike the fear mongers that are trying to make a quick buck, off scaring the shit out of you, this information comes free of charge, however if you feel this information is helpful, please leave a donation, by dropping me a personal email, its not like you are going to need money after 2012, we will all be dead, right. Might as well max out those credit cards while you can, screw the high interest payments because after 2012 the credit card companies won’t be able to file a negative report on your credit history.
First on the agenda is looking at the different prophecies and showing how they all correlate into 2012. As I go through each one try to understand how accurate these things are, there has been many real predictions come true so these prediction add to the validity of 2012.
The I-Ching:
In the pre-800-number era of human existence, the people of ....China.... received their psychic advice from one of their oldest texts, the I-Ching. You asked the I-Ching a question and a certified coin flipper, flipped three coins in to the air, drawing a hexagram based on the results. This told your fortune, somehow.
The I-Ching had nothing to do with the end of the world until a man by the name of Terence McKenna came along and made a pattern out of every possible result. After applying this pattern to a line graph accompanied by a timeline of recorded history, he discovered that the high and low points of the graph coincided with several significant events.
On December 21, 2012, the line slowly dips off of the chart, indicating a world-ending catastrophic butt plug. The details are still sketchy but this should be enough to convince you the average person on the street that this shit is real. Why is this any different than say flipping a coin minted right here in the USA? Its not like it would come up heads or tails and then you could read some pattern off George Washington vs the Eagle.
What the I-Ching Predicted that Came True?
The Fall of the Roman Empire..
The Discovery of the New World..
World Wars I and II
Why This isn’t Bullshit:
Its not like McKenna utilized a pattern of his own invention to create a time-line of his own invention, and then predicted world events that had already happened. That would be unheard of.
After all, there's enough bad shit in human history that you couldn’t possibly correlate several large scale catastrophes right alongside any random pattern. But the I-Ching is real and from this overwhelming evidence you can see where we are going to be, come 2012.
The Hopi:
The Hopi are one of America's oldest Indian tribes, found in the northeastern section of Arizona along with absolutely nothing else. They have a rich mythology filled with Spider Women, Skeleton Men and the repeated creation and destruction of the Earth. They are a bleak people.
The Hopi believe time to be cyclical and made up of a number of worlds. When a world begins it is innocent and pure, but as time goes by the world and its people become corrupted by sex, war and other things like telephones and the internet.
According to the Hopi lore, we are currently living in the fourth world. Sadly, due to the white man and his insatiable white quest for spiritless technology, we are rapidly approaching the Great Purification.
What Predictions of the Hopi Came True?
There are nine signs that lead to the Great Purification.
Dastardly deeds of white men.
"The coming of spinning wheels filled with voices" - early American pioneers in wagons, or bass-thumping Escalades with spinning rims.
The coming of the white man's cattle - Longhorns. Or maybe it was college football?
"The land will be crossed by snakes of iron" - Railroads.
The world will be crisscrossed by a giant spider's web - telephone lines or the Internet.
The building of a large network of roads.
"...The sea turning black, and many living things dying..." - Oil spills.
"...Many youth, who wear their hair long like my people, come and join the tribal nations..." - hippies.
A "dwelling-place in the heavens... that shall fall with a great crash" - U.S. Space Station Skylab, which fell to Earth in 1979.
Why it Isn’t Bullshit
The signs of the Hopi apocalypse are text book predictions with a particular emphasis on the ill-deeds of the white man. Consequently, they could be a curse, place upon the white man by those wise and primitive Native Americans. What better way to rid the world of those pesky white man than rid the world of man. Pay no attention to the fact that these prediction were published in the late 1950’s well after we had railroads and telephones, and a dependence on oil, or even our highway system in place. These legends have been were told to the Hopi many, many moons ago by the Great Spirit. So get ready for the end of the world.
Nostradamus:
Ah, Nostradamus. No one else in history has caused more people to shit their shorts than the man whose cryptic predictions spanned many years into the future, because he was scared the his predictions would have cost him his life, if he predicted the royal family might die, or some strange fact when he was alive, not like he didn’t see his own death or even predict that this generation would take his predictions and use them to finalize our plans for the end times.
In 1982, the world gained a whole new reason to shit their shorts in fear of Nostradamus when a never-before-published work of his was discovered in Rome. A repeated image in the book is that of an eight-spoked wheel, which absolutely represents the intersection of the Divine Cross (made up of the angles of our galactic center and the celestial equator) and the Terrestrial Cross (the angles that make up our equinox and solstice). The two crosses only come into alignment once every 13,000 years, and we're due for alignment in, 2012.
The book has an image that shows three solar eclipses followed by a lunar eclipse, indicating that sometime between 1992 and 2012 our world will end. Sure it’s a 20 year period but you have to remember the Nostradamus was alive possible hundreds of years ago and his predictions weren’t always set in a time frame but the following predictions did come true.
What Predictions Nostradamus made that Came True?
The Reign of Napoleon
The Rise of Hitler
The Atom Bomb
The Kennedy Assassination
Why it Isn’t Bullshit:
Just ignore the facts that, the book contains three different handwriting styles, that it is a copy of an original so damaged most of it could not be deciphered and that every predicted event occurred well before the book's "discovery" in 1982. Just think of it as being scribed by those followers of Nostradamus who wanted to have an extra copy of this unpublished book on hand in case anything happened to the original, which was a very smart idea seeing as how the original was so damaged you couldn’t even read the title page much less anything else
Its not like there are dozens of lunar and solar eclipses taking place during the 20 year period of 1992 and 2012. There was a period between 2007 and 2008 that met the three and one criteria, and people seriously questioned “Why the fuck didn't the world explode.” The answer is very simple it wasn’t 2012 yet.
The Mayans:
Could the ancient Maya—whose empire peaked between A.D. 250 and 900 in what is now Mexico and Central America..—really predict the end of the world in 2012? I will offer up the most overwhelming evidence and show you exactly what will happen come 12/21/2012.
The Maya kept time on a scale few other cultures have considered. Back when they were an advanced civilization living in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula about 3,000 years ago, they developed around 15 to 20 calendars, all with a slightly different purpose: the Tzolk'in was used to calculate crop cultivation, the Haab followed the cycles of the sun and the Long Count ticked off the harrowing last days of this planet. The Long Count calculates a period of time known as the Great Cycle, which is a count of about 5,125.36 years. Scholars paired up the dates of the Long Count with Gregorian calendars and found that the current Great Cycle began August 13, 3114 B.C, and ends on December 21st, 2012.
First off we will have a polar shift, that means the north pole will now become the south pole and vice versa. This will spawn Earthquakes, Volcanic Eruptions, Tsunamis, killing every living thing on the planet.
Now how exactly does the pole shift happen, well it begins with a Galactic Alignment, that sets us up like bowling pins, As Solar Storms bombard us with cosmic rays destroying our magnetic field, destroying all electronic devices and turning up the heat; you won’t be able to walk outside without your skin charring in the sunlight, but you won’t have to worry too long about stocking up on SFP 5,000. The planet's crust and mantle will suddenly shift, spinning around Earth's liquid-iron outer core like an orange's peel spinning around its fleshy fruit, which sets off the polar shift.
As we sit here and die, Planet X aka Nibiru, the 10th planet or maybe a brown dwarf star, (and no I’m not talking about Gary Coleman here,) in our solar system that has an oblong orbit around out sun, will collide with the Earth. A direct hit and Blam! We have a new asteroid belt in our solar system that we aren’t going to be around to enjoy.
What Mayan Predictions came True.
Well they made a Calendar that tells when the sun rises and sets and it ends in 2012.
Why this Isn’t Bullshit.
During the 2012 winter solstice, time runs out on the current era of the Long Count calendar, which began at what the Maya saw as the dawn of the last creation period: August 11, 3114 B.C. The Maya wrote that date, which preceded their civilization by thousands of years, as Day Zero, or 13.0.0.0.0.
Maya astronomers built observatories and, by observing the night skies and using mathematics, learned to accurately predict eclipses and other celestial phenomena. So add in all the astro-phenomena and you have the end of the world.
Its not like the Long Count Calendar is past oriented, so that rulers and kings could lay claim to their ancestors to claim a legitimate seat of power. Or that there are any other Mayan predictions for future events. Nor did they leave any specifics as to what will happen in 2012, but being more advanced we filled in the blanks, and know full well that the world is going to end in 2012.
Lets take the a look at what a NASA scientist have to say about 2012. These people are always looking out into space and they know full well what dangers lurk just around the bend.
What the fuck does he know anyway? Its not like he has years of education and expertise to make such bold statements.
(If you can’t see the satire or sarcasm in this blog you are really too fucking stupid to live.)
420 Geared up and Ready to go
For all of you that know what 420 is there is no explanation. For those of you that don't know, here is a simple explaination.
What does 420 mean? There are varying theories on the origin of 420. Some say that 420 originated from a police code that announces marijuana use is taking place. Yet another story is that a group of guys (Waldo's )(ever wonder where the phase where's Waldo? came from) in the 1970's made 4:20 their official meeting time to smoke marijuana after school.
Read more: http://blogs.myspace.com/desago#ixzz0vthszCPJ
For all of you that know what 420 is there is no explanation. For those of you that don't know, here is a simple explaination.
What does 420 mean? There are varying theories on the origin of 420. Some say that 420 originated from a police code that announces marijuana use is taking place. Yet another story is that a group of guys (Waldo's )(ever wonder where the phase where's Waldo? came from) in the 1970's made 4:20 their official meeting time to smoke marijuana after school.
In the 21st Century, 420 is firmly established as a code amongst tokers, a time of day and even sort of a toker's New Year's Day. It's in our culture now and only time will tell where it ends up.
April 20th (4/20) is another usage, meaning that it is time for to plant before the summer.
Whatever the real story is, 420 has been an important part of the marijuana culture since the 1970's. The significance of 420 has been kept underground and is mostly known only among marijuana smokers. Many non-smokers aren't aware of the symbolism when they see someone wearing a T-shirt or baseball cap that says 420 across the front.
When the 420 icon is somehow discreetly worked into a mainstream product like a film, marijuana users take notice. The film Pulp Fiction is rumored to have had all clocks throughout the movie set to 4:20. Marijuana smokers familiar with the symbol picked up on it—most people, however, did not.
While some marijuana smokers are using 420 as a code that enables them to openly speak about marijuana in front of parents or teachers. 420 has been to some, a sacred symbol for nearly 30 years.
When the 420 icon is somehow discreetly worked into a mainstream product like a film, marijuana users take notice. The film Pulp Fiction is rumored to have had all clocks throughout the movie set to 4:20. Marijuana smokers familiar with the symbol picked up on it—most people, however, did not.
While some marijuana smokers are using 420 as a code that enables them to openly speak about marijuana in front of parents or teachers. 420 has been to some, a sacred symbol for nearly 30 years.
Simply put, 420 is a symbol of cannabis and its culture. Today, April 20th events are international, and 4:20 pm has become sort of a world wide "burn time".
Known 420 Myths
Police dispatch code for smoking pot is 420.
The number 420 is not police radio code for anything, anywhere. Checks of criminal codes suggest that the origin is neither Californian nor federal. For instance, California Penal Code 420 defines as a misdemeanor the hindrance of use of public lands.
Police dispatch code for smoking pot is 420.
The number 420 is not police radio code for anything, anywhere. Checks of criminal codes suggest that the origin is neither Californian nor federal. For instance, California Penal Code 420 defines as a misdemeanor the hindrance of use of public lands.
There are approximately 420 active chemicals in marijuana.
Actually, there are approximately 315 active chemicals in marijuana. This number goes up and down depending on which plant is used.
Actually, there are approximately 315 active chemicals in marijuana. This number goes up and down depending on which plant is used.
April 20th is National Pot Smokers Day.
Well, it is now :) ; but that wasn't the origin.
Well, it is now :) ; but that wasn't the origin.
April 20th is Hitler's birthday.
Yes, it is his birthday. But, as 420 started out as a time, not a date, his birthday had nothing to do with it.
Yes, it is his birthday. But, as 420 started out as a time, not a date, his birthday had nothing to do with it.
The date of the Columbine school shootings.
This happened after the term was already in use.
This happened after the term was already in use.
4:20 is tea time for pot-smokers in Holland.
Tea time in Holland is at 5:30 pm, or is it 2:30 pm? Seems no one is quite sure when the wonderful people of Holland drink their tea.
Tea time in Holland is at 5:30 pm, or is it 2:30 pm? Seems no one is quite sure when the wonderful people of Holland drink their tea.
So now that you know what 420 means. I have declared this as the offical opening day for Hippie hunting season.
Yes, thats right boys and girls, Hippie season has opened, all hippies that are live captured shall be placed in the Hippie Launcher (patent pending) and hopefully end up in Utah. The Mormons there need someone to preach to about the further teachings of Jesus Christ and who better to recieve those teachings than the pot heads that currently reside in Colorado. Some maybe convert and be baptised others will make their way back to Colorado, but there is always next year.
No limit on the number of hippies you can, bag. Once considered a protected species, but due to over population and a rise in intellectual damage, from too much weed being smoked. The once state wide hunting ban has been lifted and no hippie, young or old is safe.
What You Need
Weapons
guns, when hunting hippies for fun
guns with tranquilizer darts, when hunting hippies for profit
high-powered water cannons, for flushing hippies out of their dens and de-lousing them later.
BB Guns
Paint ball Guns
laser-guided missiles, for when you're just too lazy to sneak up on the hippies and blow them away one by one.
rocket launchers
beer.....not really a weapon, but it makes hippie hunting more fun
Heavy metal rock (not Stoner Metal, Black Sabbath, or Led Zeppelin)
Wallhax on
A good aimbot
A redeemer (or translocator to telefragg them)
A 9mm (come on seriously, just pop a cap in their butts)
Flame Throwers and Fire Bombs are frowned upon because the flame can release the Built up THC in their blood stream and if inhaled you may be mistaken as a hippie yourself and shot on the spot
Bait
free vegetarian food
free tofu
shrooms
snacks, for when the hippies get the "munchies"
taped hippie calls, including "free pot", "free food", "free money", "free Mumia"
Drums (used for drum circles, 3 raps on the drum and you will have these hippies right were you want them, stoned in a circle)
Anything with the words 'Save the _______ (insert word here)'
A big, flashy sign pointing to a 'major music fest'. It'll attract hippes by the millions, guaranteed, since music festivals are the only opportunities for hippes to score with each other in massive stoned orgies.
Plan of Attack
Before hippie hunting, you must first de-scent yourself. Any traces of soap, perfume/colonge, aftershave must be washed off and covered over with smelly hippie oils, grime, or dirt. Alternatively, if you don't want to stoop to their level(and happen to have a lot of money), wear a radiation-protective suit, then smear your protected body in said foul excretions. Hippies can smell a clean person from a mile away, and will flee at the presence of your fresh, out-of-the-shower lack of stench.
Once ready, find a proper place to hunt for hippies.
Light marijuana as bait. The scent will lure hippies into the area, thinking there's free weed to be had. Be careful not to inhale the fumes yourself, or you may become a hippie.
If you can find a CD with any of the songs of Woodstock, play them as the Hippies draw near. Make sure to put protective gear (earplugs) before playing the songs though, or else you may die or worse, be converted. They will all immediately freeze in place and start either singing, smoking weed, reproducing, or just sitting there humming. That's when you fire. It is highly discouraged to use anything not from that time period as bait, for it is the equivalent of infecting them with rabies.
Rules & Regulations For Hippie Hunting
- To avoid annoying the neighbors, refrain from hunting hippies between the hours of sun-up and sundown. To hunt hippies between these times can be impolite, and considered poaching.
- Baiting hippies is allowed, but dressing up a friend like a hippie and getting him/her to lead other hippies to a kill zone is discouraged, as real people could be mistaken for hippies and get hurt or killed.
- Hippies may be flushed from their dens by the use of the following animals: dogs, police, Christians, IRS agents, etc....
- flushing hippies from their dens using tear gas, pepper spray, or other airborne chemicals is not permitted when hunting, though still quite fun. Water can be used to flush hippies from their hiding places.
- if you are using a translocator, then you will need to throw your translocator near any hippie, and translocate through them, killing them. Before using your translocator, you will need to make sure that it is in good working condition (undamaged).
- if you are using a redeemer, make sure that you are a hell of a long ways away from your target. Right click your mouse button, and you will see through a video camera attached to the front of the redeemer. Steer the redeemer to your target and blow its ass up to hell.
Hippie Hunting For Fun
Have fun, be safe. (Use condoms)
Profit
Hippie hair is a commodity traded on the open market, and a ton of hippie hair can be sold for as much as ten pence per ton at your average wig-makers. Whether you sedated & restrain your hippie, or just kill them, the hair must be washed and dried first. Trying to wash hippie hair after it's been shaved off leads to more hair going down the drain and clogging it up. Use a beard trimmer or a pair of scissors to remove the hippie hair, though a beard trimmer is recommended as it's quicker. Also hippie scalps are now coming into fashion. It isn't considered cruel to scalp hippies while they are still alive, as they will be stoned out of their wits and won't feel a thing.Note: make sure to wear proper biohazard gear when shaving the dirtiest areas of the hippie; the groin and the armpits. Even a thorough washing of these areas may not scrub away all contaminants. Keep hair from these areas in separate bags, as the wig-makers will first irradiate the hair before using it, thus making it safe.
Price Tag Per hippie
-single druggy hippie (600$)
-Drug selling/growing hippie scum (1,000$)
-Hippie community member (800$)
-Hippie community leader (5,000$)
-College Know-it-all hippie (10,000$)
Happy Hunting
Mac slap, I'm Lovin It.
Hippie Launcher, and mac slap, I'm lovin it, Copyright and trademark KMT & RD 2008
Hippie Launcher, and mac slap, I'm lovin it, Copyright and trademark KMT & RD 2008
Read more: http://blogs.myspace.com/desago#ixzz0vthszCPJ
Celebrity Shark Attack
Celebrity Shark Attack
by
Desago
As most of you know, I have a very low opinion of celebrities. To me, they are ego inflated court jesters, you use their status to influence their adoring fans to buy into their particular brand of bullshit.
With the recent tabloid news of Tiger Woods' affair and Charlie Sheen's domestic abuse charges, and their product endorsements being dropped, that have plagued ever TV and radio broadcast; I feel its time for another bitch session.
First we are going to address why people are so engrossed in the lives of celebrities and then we will address possible solutions for the future.
Connecting with Celebrities.
There are many ways in which to connect with a celebrity, I'll list a few.
Micheal Jackson
As children we become attached to those people we fell connected to, we will see another child embodied in a cartoon on Saturday morning, we will hear him singing on the radio, we tune in our TV to watch him perform on a variety show. He grows up as we grow up, and we continue to be entertained. We hear some controversy surrounding our childhood friend (though we have never talked to them, could never get closer than 10th row seating at their concerts, never got an answer to our fan mail other than an offer to join their fan club, which we did.) We still see them as that innocent child whom we felt connected to. At first we shrug it off, someone is trying to scam our beloved friend out of their hard earned money. They embody the very essence of our childhood so we back our friend and continue to eagerly await their next album or a glimpse of them on the TV or paper. No matter what we hear as the next news story breaks, it does not deter us from believing in our childhood friend, because to do so would destroy our childhood fantasy, to acknowledge any wrong doing on the part of our friend would demote him to a mere mortal and kill off that last fiber of innocence that we struggle to hold on to. We continue to support and voice our opinions of innocence of our friend. The next thing we know, our friend is dead. Drug overdose. Our world stops spinning, the sun doesn't shine as brightly as it once did. Our idol was mortal after all.
Tiger Woods
We see a cute little kid playing golf on the TV, he is 2 years old. Again the embodiment of innocence, comes into play. We play golf as well, our family has played the game for years, so we see promise in this child. Years later we see the child again, playing professionally; he wins, we celebrate. We knew he could do it. As he grows we follow his progress. We feel his victory with each tournament won, we share his agony of defeat. Here is this child we saw play golf when he was only two, we think if only we could have started out that early we could have been playing pro, doing what we love, instead of that boring dusty office we are strapped into 40 hours a week. He embodies our dream of success, we see him in magazines hocking watches and on TV, pushing razors, we see these things as his ticket to success, so we run out and purchase these goods, our game doesn't improve but we still have fun watching him win. The next thing we know there is talk of an affair, we are eager to find out if it is in fact true. All signs point to yes, as the Magic 8 Ball says. We feel betrayed, the illusion of innocence is over, our idol is nothing but a mere mortal.
Brittany Spears is another person who has been in the public eye since she was a child on the Mickey Mouse Club and pop culture videos, the embodiment of innocence. We cling onto ever facet of her life as she moved into womanhood, motherhood and finally bald headed crazy-hood. Our idol is again mortal.
Lady Diana the story book wedding to a prince, instantly connected with every girl who had fantasied about marrying into a royal family. Every girl I have ever known has envisioned herself becoming a princess by saying I do. Their childhood innocences died in a car wreak along with a mortal woman, who was once the future Queen of England.
Kurt Cameron, grew up on TV, teenage girls connected with him as the idea boyfriend, boys viewed him as a role model, millions tuned in each week to see him portray a beloved character and connected with his teenage problems, as these things mirrored their own problems. His ignorance in pushing his religious views as earned him a lot of disrespect from former fans, because he crossed the line and that childhood innocence turned to loathsome hatred.
What is it that makes you hate someone you once adored? An invisible line we draw in our minds, we tolerate certain behaviors from our friends, family and coworkers. We set up a standard that we don't cross and gage the behaviors of others by our standards, if someone doesn't cross our invisible line then we connect with them, once they cross that there is no turning back. Celebrities lose fans when they cross that line, be it extra martial affairs, drug abuse, hocking a product that a fan dislikes. Female celebrities are at the fore front of the hatred line, because to the average woman on the street who will never be as beautiful or as sexy or have a hunky stud wrapped around their finger, or have their boyfriend fantasies about so and so when making love to them. The line in the female mind is very fickle when it comes to female celebrities, they either love them or hate them.
Possible solutions
Ok we all know that when a celebrities career wanes, they start to struggle to find work, going from the A list down to the B list and even finding their selves on the XXX list. Before ending up on some reality show, as a drunken loser whose porno career was very short lived. Jail, rehab and finally death are the only options to put their name back in press, and we all know that with death, people recall the connection they once had with their childhood idols. Final releases of albums, memorabilia from the by gone era, last movies, a chance to reconnect with that childhood innocence one last time, the average person on the streets way of saying goodbye to their childhood friend.
So first off we have to put these people back into the position of entertaining us. Celebrity porn is so popular because you get to envision what it would be like to fuck your favorite celebrity. How many out there saw Show Girls with Elizabeth Berkley, or took a peek at Paris Hilton's home movie. Celebrity Issues of Playboy sell off the stands so every time a celebrity appears in a start of undress, extra issues are printed. Nude pictures of former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, while she was sunbathing on vacation in 1971, appeared in the second issue of Hustler magazine and this made Larry Flynn a millionaire overnight. Sex sells, celebrity sex sells more.
But instead of demoting our once beloved icons to XXX status we set up a Celebrity Brothel. For a modest fee you get to enjoy the company of your once revered idol for the evening. You would have a line out the door across the street and reservation booked up almost a year in advance.
On the aspect of death, we set up a new reality TV show. Where the celebrities engage in life and death struggles. Who doesn't love a good fight for survival. We would actual route for our favorite celebrity... what? You mean this has been done already? Celebrity Death Match! Oh, but that wasn't real, I am talking real blood, real death brought to you in full 1080 HDTV. I'm talking Meet the Organ Donors, what terminal ill kid wouldn't kill to have an organ transplant from their favorite sports hero. It would be fashioned after Punk'd. The failing sports star is told a dying kid wants to met him, upon arrival the kid says thank you for your donation. The sports star is puzzled but then tazered and wakes up in a tub full of ice missing a liver or kidney, laughing "Oh boy, I guess I fell for it" Aston Kutcher could host it.
Then we have Celebrity Shark Attack. Set up like Survivor, we take a bunch of over weight out of shape celebrities to an island, have then run through a bunch of huddles to get them back into shape, then have them swim 2 miles in shark infested waters. If they survive they get a new movie contract and A list status again and a T shirt saying I survived Celebrity Shark Attack. If they die, well death does have a way of busting that failed status, it puts them back in the limelight one last time, with the highlights of their death broad-casted around the world.
People would say "did you see the look on his face, when the shark bite off his leg?" They would mistake shock for fearlessness. Screams of agony as war cries. But mostly people would be entertained again and that is what counts.
by
Desago
As most of you know, I have a very low opinion of celebrities. To me, they are ego inflated court jesters, you use their status to influence their adoring fans to buy into their particular brand of bullshit.
With the recent tabloid news of Tiger Woods' affair and Charlie Sheen's domestic abuse charges, and their product endorsements being dropped, that have plagued ever TV and radio broadcast; I feel its time for another bitch session.
First we are going to address why people are so engrossed in the lives of celebrities and then we will address possible solutions for the future.
Connecting with Celebrities.
There are many ways in which to connect with a celebrity, I'll list a few.
Micheal Jackson
As children we become attached to those people we fell connected to, we will see another child embodied in a cartoon on Saturday morning, we will hear him singing on the radio, we tune in our TV to watch him perform on a variety show. He grows up as we grow up, and we continue to be entertained. We hear some controversy surrounding our childhood friend (though we have never talked to them, could never get closer than 10th row seating at their concerts, never got an answer to our fan mail other than an offer to join their fan club, which we did.) We still see them as that innocent child whom we felt connected to. At first we shrug it off, someone is trying to scam our beloved friend out of their hard earned money. They embody the very essence of our childhood so we back our friend and continue to eagerly await their next album or a glimpse of them on the TV or paper. No matter what we hear as the next news story breaks, it does not deter us from believing in our childhood friend, because to do so would destroy our childhood fantasy, to acknowledge any wrong doing on the part of our friend would demote him to a mere mortal and kill off that last fiber of innocence that we struggle to hold on to. We continue to support and voice our opinions of innocence of our friend. The next thing we know, our friend is dead. Drug overdose. Our world stops spinning, the sun doesn't shine as brightly as it once did. Our idol was mortal after all.
Tiger Woods
We see a cute little kid playing golf on the TV, he is 2 years old. Again the embodiment of innocence, comes into play. We play golf as well, our family has played the game for years, so we see promise in this child. Years later we see the child again, playing professionally; he wins, we celebrate. We knew he could do it. As he grows we follow his progress. We feel his victory with each tournament won, we share his agony of defeat. Here is this child we saw play golf when he was only two, we think if only we could have started out that early we could have been playing pro, doing what we love, instead of that boring dusty office we are strapped into 40 hours a week. He embodies our dream of success, we see him in magazines hocking watches and on TV, pushing razors, we see these things as his ticket to success, so we run out and purchase these goods, our game doesn't improve but we still have fun watching him win. The next thing we know there is talk of an affair, we are eager to find out if it is in fact true. All signs point to yes, as the Magic 8 Ball says. We feel betrayed, the illusion of innocence is over, our idol is nothing but a mere mortal.
Brittany Spears is another person who has been in the public eye since she was a child on the Mickey Mouse Club and pop culture videos, the embodiment of innocence. We cling onto ever facet of her life as she moved into womanhood, motherhood and finally bald headed crazy-hood. Our idol is again mortal.
Lady Diana the story book wedding to a prince, instantly connected with every girl who had fantasied about marrying into a royal family. Every girl I have ever known has envisioned herself becoming a princess by saying I do. Their childhood innocences died in a car wreak along with a mortal woman, who was once the future Queen of England.
Kurt Cameron, grew up on TV, teenage girls connected with him as the idea boyfriend, boys viewed him as a role model, millions tuned in each week to see him portray a beloved character and connected with his teenage problems, as these things mirrored their own problems. His ignorance in pushing his religious views as earned him a lot of disrespect from former fans, because he crossed the line and that childhood innocence turned to loathsome hatred.
What is it that makes you hate someone you once adored? An invisible line we draw in our minds, we tolerate certain behaviors from our friends, family and coworkers. We set up a standard that we don't cross and gage the behaviors of others by our standards, if someone doesn't cross our invisible line then we connect with them, once they cross that there is no turning back. Celebrities lose fans when they cross that line, be it extra martial affairs, drug abuse, hocking a product that a fan dislikes. Female celebrities are at the fore front of the hatred line, because to the average woman on the street who will never be as beautiful or as sexy or have a hunky stud wrapped around their finger, or have their boyfriend fantasies about so and so when making love to them. The line in the female mind is very fickle when it comes to female celebrities, they either love them or hate them.
Possible solutions
Ok we all know that when a celebrities career wanes, they start to struggle to find work, going from the A list down to the B list and even finding their selves on the XXX list. Before ending up on some reality show, as a drunken loser whose porno career was very short lived. Jail, rehab and finally death are the only options to put their name back in press, and we all know that with death, people recall the connection they once had with their childhood idols. Final releases of albums, memorabilia from the by gone era, last movies, a chance to reconnect with that childhood innocence one last time, the average person on the streets way of saying goodbye to their childhood friend.
So first off we have to put these people back into the position of entertaining us. Celebrity porn is so popular because you get to envision what it would be like to fuck your favorite celebrity. How many out there saw Show Girls with Elizabeth Berkley, or took a peek at Paris Hilton's home movie. Celebrity Issues of Playboy sell off the stands so every time a celebrity appears in a start of undress, extra issues are printed. Nude pictures of former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, while she was sunbathing on vacation in 1971, appeared in the second issue of Hustler magazine and this made Larry Flynn a millionaire overnight. Sex sells, celebrity sex sells more.
But instead of demoting our once beloved icons to XXX status we set up a Celebrity Brothel. For a modest fee you get to enjoy the company of your once revered idol for the evening. You would have a line out the door across the street and reservation booked up almost a year in advance.
On the aspect of death, we set up a new reality TV show. Where the celebrities engage in life and death struggles. Who doesn't love a good fight for survival. We would actual route for our favorite celebrity... what? You mean this has been done already? Celebrity Death Match! Oh, but that wasn't real, I am talking real blood, real death brought to you in full 1080 HDTV. I'm talking Meet the Organ Donors, what terminal ill kid wouldn't kill to have an organ transplant from their favorite sports hero. It would be fashioned after Punk'd. The failing sports star is told a dying kid wants to met him, upon arrival the kid says thank you for your donation. The sports star is puzzled but then tazered and wakes up in a tub full of ice missing a liver or kidney, laughing "Oh boy, I guess I fell for it" Aston Kutcher could host it.
Then we have Celebrity Shark Attack. Set up like Survivor, we take a bunch of over weight out of shape celebrities to an island, have then run through a bunch of huddles to get them back into shape, then have them swim 2 miles in shark infested waters. If they survive they get a new movie contract and A list status again and a T shirt saying I survived Celebrity Shark Attack. If they die, well death does have a way of busting that failed status, it puts them back in the limelight one last time, with the highlights of their death broad-casted around the world.
People would say "did you see the look on his face, when the shark bite off his leg?" They would mistake shock for fearlessness. Screams of agony as war cries. But mostly people would be entertained again and that is what counts.
Responsibility
Responsibility
An Essay
by
Desago
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Responsibility
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How can you define responsibility? Are you a responsible person? What is your attitude towards irresponsible people? Can you remember an accidents that happened because of someone being irresponsible? These are questions you need to ask yourself to accept your own responsibility.
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Responsibility defined.
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1. the state or position of being responsible
2. a person or thing for which one is responsible
3. the ability or authority to act or decide on one's own, without supervision
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This is how I view responsibility. Responsibility is your birth right. Responsibility for the responsible, the more you accept the more that will be given to you. With responsibility goes authority to direct and take the necessary action to ensure success.
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Being responsible refers to our ability to make decisions that serve our own interests and the interests of others. We first need to accept responsibility for ourselves before we can be responsible for others. In learning to be more responsible it is important that we know our limitations. It does not matter how smart we are, there is only so much responsibility that a person can handle. It is also important to remember that we are not responsible for things that are out of our control, for example, how other people feel or how they react to ourselves or others. Sharing responsibility for both success and failure can lead to increased responsibility to oneself and others. When you hear the word "responsibility," what do you think of first? Many people think of the word BLAME, as in, "Whose responsibility is this?" or “Who is responsible for this?” I think of responsibility as seizing what's in front of you, exerting choice, and taking control. The real meaning of responsibility is the ability to respond. It's going out and creating what you want through personal choices. The responsibility that each of us has is that we are completely, 100% responsible for how our lives turn out.
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It's a free choice, to accept your responsibility. I don't choose to keep some "duty" for eternity that's my own choice; and I was responsible for accepting the duty, nobody laid it on me. To some being responsible means taking care of, and raising a family, to others it means being active in political campaigns and voting, and to some it means taking responsibility for their own actions. Society will also expect you to be responsible for your actions and supplies. Responsible people look to the long-term goals, and not always what is easy or for what provides immediate satisfaction. If the people in our society took responsibility for all their actions, our society as a whole would be better. People are not born with a sense of responsibility, they have to learn it and accept it. Negative attitudes are very common. But you can pick it up and lay it down. Good and responsible people do exist in the world.
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There are many events in a person's life that have an impact so large, that the person' life is forever changed. Hopefully most such events are positive, and help him in his life. However, there is also the undeniable fact that bad things happen. It is not uncommon to hear someone wondering aloud why an event took place. A person's actions come into question, and it is wondered what the person's motivation was. Once we start questioning the events of our lives, we begin to test out different theories that we have heard over time. "It was fate," “My destiny” or "It is part of God's plan," or other theories which attempt to put some meaning and reasoning behind events in our lives, this how ever takes away human responsibility. Human's also begin to wonder how it is that their actions are determined. Aside from these various explanations, philosopher's have created explanations which can tell the story of human action. There are four main positions that one can maintain. Hard determinism, compatibilism, indeterminism, and skepticism.
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Man has always struggled with the issue of human responsibility, even the great
philosopher Aristotle admitted that there were cases in which he felt it was too difficult to either find a person responsible or not responsible for their actions. Therefore, we need a structured set of characteristics to describe Human Responsibility.
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Three characteristics of Human Responsibility
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1) Whether or not the person causally contributed to the event happening, either passively or actively.
2) A person to be held responsible is whether he or she knew or should have known that the event would happen.
3) Free Will
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Learning the Skill of Self -Responsibility
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There comes a moment in your life that you have to step up and claim it as your own. “I put myself here. I created this world that now seems upturned.” You have to finally claim that ‘personal responsibility' for your life. Taking this step required a
skill that needs to be learned by many individuals. The acceptance of inner
acknowledgment that we are solely responsible for our choices in life, even when
life deals us a bad hand, will give us an upper hand. Taking control of that bad situation frees us to seek out and accept help for ourselves.
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In taking on this task we must ask ourselves this simple question, how rational
are we in dealing with the part we played in being who we are today? And if not,
who is the responsible party? Why are we so programmed to blame?
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Alexander Graham Bell (1827) said,
“A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with- a man is what he makes of himself. In entering adulthood we chose how our self-esteem develops, but instead we seem to always have that, if it was not for her or if I could only go back and do things different. We must learn to work out our anger, hostility and depression over those haunting ghosts and focus on our now. Who we are and where we are going with this life.”
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Removing Blame
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As I have already stated Blame is the name of the game. We have this tendency to shove off our responsibility to those around us, the fall guy, the scapegoat, who can we put in our place, to catch hell for this, who is the villain here? Christians readily place blame on atheists, on Satan, on those who do not accept their deity of chose. Republicans place blame on the Democrats, because of political motives. Injured workers place blame on the insurance companies, the list goes on and on. So how do we as a society remove the blame?
1) Accept our part, our responsibility, of the situation, did we either passively or actively contributed to this event? If we are in the wrong then promptly admit it, without trying to hide behind our shame.
2) Let go of the guilt of powerlessness. If we did not play a part in the situation, if we are not directly or indirectly responsible for this situation, why feel guilty about it, other than being powerless or not in control, there is no shame in admitting things are out of your limited range of control.
3) Control is an illusion, you can’t control how other people think or feel, you can’t make someone accept your point of view, without manipulation of the situation, but manipulation removes responsibility, both yours and theirs from the situation.
4) Admit your own short comings, your own limitations, as a human being and embrace your birth right of being a responsible person.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
How does mind control work?
How does mind control work?:
A technical overview of mind control tactics
Terminology note: Today Mind control or brainwashing in academia is commonly referred to as coercive persuasion, coercive psychological systems or coercive influence. The short description below comes from Dr. Margaret Singer professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley the acknowledged leading authority in the world on mind control and cults. This document, in substance, was presented to the U.S. Supreme Court as an educational Appendix on coercive psychological systems in the case Wollersheim v. Church of Scientology 89-1367 and 89-1361. The Wollersheim case was being considered related to issues involving abuse in this area.
Coercion is defined as, "to restrain or constrain by force..." Legally it often implies the use of PHYSICAL FORCE or physical or legal threat. This traditional concept of coercion is far better understood than the technological concepts of "coercive persuasion" which are effective restraining, impairing, or compelling through the gradual application of PSYCHOLOGICAL FORCES.
A coercive persuasion program is a behavioral change technology applied to cause the "learning" and "adoption" of a set of behaviors or an ideology under certain conditions. It is distinguished from other forms of benign social learning or peaceful persuasion by the conditions under which it is conducted and by the techniques of environmental and interpersonal manipulation employed to suppress particular behaviors and to train others. Over time, coercive persuasion, a psychological force akin in some ways to our legal concepts of undue influence, can be even MORE effective than pain, torture, drugs, and use of physical force and legal threats.
The Korean War "Manchurian Candidate" misconception of the need for suggestibility-increasing drugs, and physical pain and torture, to effect thought reform, is generally associated with the old concepts and models of brainwashing. Today, they are not necessary for a coercive persuasion program to be effective. With drugs, physical pain, torture, or even a physically coercive threat, you can often temporarily make someone do something against their will. You can even make them do something they hate or they really did not like or want to do at the time. They do it, but their attitude is not changed.
This is much different and far less devastating than that which you are able to achieve with the improvements of coercive persuasion. With coercive persuasion you can change people's attitudes without their knowledge and volition. You can create new "attitudes" where they will do things willingly which they formerly may have detested, things which previously only torture, physical pain, or drugs could have coerced them to do.
Coercion is defined as, "to restrain or constrain by force..." Legally it often implies the use of PHYSICAL FORCE or physical or legal threat. This traditional concept of coercion is far better understood than the technological concepts of "coercive persuasion" which are effective restraining, impairing, or compelling through the gradual application of PSYCHOLOGICAL FORCES.
A coercive persuasion program is a behavioral change technology applied to cause the "learning" and "adoption" of a set of behaviors or an ideology under certain conditions. It is distinguished from other forms of benign social learning or peaceful persuasion by the conditions under which it is conducted and by the techniques of environmental and interpersonal manipulation employed to suppress particular behaviors and to train others. Over time, coercive persuasion, a psychological force akin in some ways to our legal concepts of undue influence, can be even MORE effective than pain, torture, drugs, and use of physical force and legal threats.
The Korean War "Manchurian Candidate" misconception of the need for suggestibility-increasing drugs, and physical pain and torture, to effect thought reform, is generally associated with the old concepts and models of brainwashing. Today, they are not necessary for a coercive persuasion program to be effective. With drugs, physical pain, torture, or even a physically coercive threat, you can often temporarily make someone do something against their will. You can even make them do something they hate or they really did not like or want to do at the time. They do it, but their attitude is not changed.
This is much different and far less devastating than that which you are able to achieve with the improvements of coercive persuasion. With coercive persuasion you can change people's attitudes without their knowledge and volition. You can create new "attitudes" where they will do things willingly which they formerly may have detested, things which previously only torture, physical pain, or drugs could have coerced them to do.
The advances in the extreme anxiety and emotional stress production technologies found in coercive persuasion supersede old style coercion that focuses on pain, torture, drugs, or threat in that these older systems do not change attitude so that subjects follow orders "willingly." Coercive persuasion changes both attitude AND behavior, not JUST behavior.
THE PURPOSES AND TACTICS OF COERCIVE PERSUASION
Coercive persuasion or thought reform as it is sometimes known, is best understood as a coordinated system of graduated coercive influence and behavior control designed to deceptively and surreptitiously manipulate and influence individuals, usually in a group setting, in order for the originators of the program to profit in some way, normally financially or politically.
THE PURPOSES AND TACTICS OF COERCIVE PERSUASION
Coercive persuasion or thought reform as it is sometimes known, is best understood as a coordinated system of graduated coercive influence and behavior control designed to deceptively and surreptitiously manipulate and influence individuals, usually in a group setting, in order for the originators of the program to profit in some way, normally financially or politically.
The essential strategy used by those operating such programs is to systematically select, sequence and coordinate numerous coercive persuasion tactics over CONTINUOUS PERIODS OF TIME. There are seven main tactic types found in various combinations in a coercive persuasion program. A coercive persuasion program can still be quite effective without the presence of ALL seven of these tactic types.
TACTIC 1. The individual is prepared for thought reform through increased suggestibility and/or "softening up," specifically through hypnotic or other suggestibility-increasing techniques such as: A. Extended audio, visual, verbal, or tactile fixation drills; B. Excessive exact repetition of routine activities; C. Decreased sleep; D. Nutritional restriction.
TACTIC 2. Using rewards and punishments, efforts are made to establish considerable control over a person's social environment, time, and sources of social support. Social isolation is promoted. Contact with family and friends is abridged, as is contact with persons who do not share group-approved attitudes. Economic and other dependence on the group is fostered. (In the forerunner to coercive persuasion, brainwashing, this was rather easy to achieve through simple imprisonment.)
TACTIC 3. Disconfirming information and nonsupporting opinions are prohibited in group communication. Rules exist about permissible topics to discuss with outsiders. Communication is highly controlled. An "in-group" language is usually constructed.
TACTIC 4. Frequent and intense attempts are made to cause a person to re-evaluate the most central aspects of his or her experience of self and prior conduct in negative ways. Efforts are designed to destabilize and undermine the subject's basic consciousness, reality awareness, world view, emotional control, and defense mechanisms as well as getting them to reinterpret their life's history, and adopt a new version of causality.
TACTIC 5. Intense and frequent attempts are made to undermine a person's confidence in himself and his judgment, creating a sense of powerlessness.
TACTIC 6. Nonphysical punishments are used such as intense humiliation, loss of privilege, social isolation, social status changes, intense guilt, anxiety, manipulation and other techniques for creating strong aversive emotional arousals, etc.
TACTIC 7. Certain secular psychological threats [force] are used or are present: That failure to adopt the approved attitude, belief, or consequent behavior will lead to severe punishment or dire consequence, (e.g. physical or mental illness, the reappearance of a prior physical illness, drug dependence, economic collapse, social failure, divorce, disintegration, failure to find a mate, etc.).
Another set of criteria has to do with defining other common elements of mind control systems. If most of Robert Jay Lifton's eight point model of thought reform is being used in a cultic organization, it is most likely a dangerous and destructive cult. These eight points follow:
TACTIC 1. The individual is prepared for thought reform through increased suggestibility and/or "softening up," specifically through hypnotic or other suggestibility-increasing techniques such as: A. Extended audio, visual, verbal, or tactile fixation drills; B. Excessive exact repetition of routine activities; C. Decreased sleep; D. Nutritional restriction.
TACTIC 2. Using rewards and punishments, efforts are made to establish considerable control over a person's social environment, time, and sources of social support. Social isolation is promoted. Contact with family and friends is abridged, as is contact with persons who do not share group-approved attitudes. Economic and other dependence on the group is fostered. (In the forerunner to coercive persuasion, brainwashing, this was rather easy to achieve through simple imprisonment.)
TACTIC 3. Disconfirming information and nonsupporting opinions are prohibited in group communication. Rules exist about permissible topics to discuss with outsiders. Communication is highly controlled. An "in-group" language is usually constructed.
TACTIC 4. Frequent and intense attempts are made to cause a person to re-evaluate the most central aspects of his or her experience of self and prior conduct in negative ways. Efforts are designed to destabilize and undermine the subject's basic consciousness, reality awareness, world view, emotional control, and defense mechanisms as well as getting them to reinterpret their life's history, and adopt a new version of causality.
TACTIC 5. Intense and frequent attempts are made to undermine a person's confidence in himself and his judgment, creating a sense of powerlessness.
TACTIC 6. Nonphysical punishments are used such as intense humiliation, loss of privilege, social isolation, social status changes, intense guilt, anxiety, manipulation and other techniques for creating strong aversive emotional arousals, etc.
TACTIC 7. Certain secular psychological threats [force] are used or are present: That failure to adopt the approved attitude, belief, or consequent behavior will lead to severe punishment or dire consequence, (e.g. physical or mental illness, the reappearance of a prior physical illness, drug dependence, economic collapse, social failure, divorce, disintegration, failure to find a mate, etc.).
Another set of criteria has to do with defining other common elements of mind control systems. If most of Robert Jay Lifton's eight point model of thought reform is being used in a cultic organization, it is most likely a dangerous and destructive cult. These eight points follow:
Robert Jay Lifton's Eight Point Model of Thought Reform
1. ENVIRONMENT CONTROL. Limitation of many/all forms of communication with those outside the group. Books, magazines, letters and visits with friends and family are taboo. "Come out and be separate!"
2. MYSTICAL MANIPULATION. The potential convert to the group becomes convinced of the higher purpose and special calling of the
group through a profound encounter / experience, for example, through an alleged miracle or prophetic word of those in the group.
3. DEMAND FOR PURITY. An explicit goal of the group is to bring about some kind of change, whether it be on a global, social, or
personal level. "Perfection is possible if one stays with the group and is committed."
4. CULT OF CONFESSION. The unhealthy practice of self disclosure to members in the group. Often in the context of a public gathering in the group, admitting past sins and imperfections, even doubts about the group and critical thoughts about the integrity of the leaders.
5. SACRED SCIENCE. The group's perspective is absolutely true and completely adequate to explain EVERYTHING. The doctrine is not subject to amendments or question. ABSOLUTE conformity to the doctrine is required.
6. LOADED LANGUAGE. A new vocabulary emerges within the context of the group. Group members "think" within the very abstract
and narrow parameters of the group's doctrine. The terminology sufficiently stops members from thinking critically by reinforcing a "black and white" mentality. Loaded terms and clichés prejudice thinking.
7. DOCTRINE OVER PERSON. Pre-group experience and group experience are narrowly and decisively interpreted through the absolute doctrine, even when experience contradicts the doctrine.
8. DISPENSING OF EXISTENCE. Salvation is possible only in the group. Those who leave the group are doomed.
2. MYSTICAL MANIPULATION. The potential convert to the group becomes convinced of the higher purpose and special calling of the
group through a profound encounter / experience, for example, through an alleged miracle or prophetic word of those in the group.
3. DEMAND FOR PURITY. An explicit goal of the group is to bring about some kind of change, whether it be on a global, social, or
personal level. "Perfection is possible if one stays with the group and is committed."
4. CULT OF CONFESSION. The unhealthy practice of self disclosure to members in the group. Often in the context of a public gathering in the group, admitting past sins and imperfections, even doubts about the group and critical thoughts about the integrity of the leaders.
5. SACRED SCIENCE. The group's perspective is absolutely true and completely adequate to explain EVERYTHING. The doctrine is not subject to amendments or question. ABSOLUTE conformity to the doctrine is required.
6. LOADED LANGUAGE. A new vocabulary emerges within the context of the group. Group members "think" within the very abstract
and narrow parameters of the group's doctrine. The terminology sufficiently stops members from thinking critically by reinforcing a "black and white" mentality. Loaded terms and clichés prejudice thinking.
7. DOCTRINE OVER PERSON. Pre-group experience and group experience are narrowly and decisively interpreted through the absolute doctrine, even when experience contradicts the doctrine.
8. DISPENSING OF EXISTENCE. Salvation is possible only in the group. Those who leave the group are doomed.
COERCIVE PERSUASION IS NOT PEACEFUL PERSUASION
Programs identified with the above-listed seven tactics have in common the elements of attempting to greatly modify a person's self-concept, perceptions of reality, and interpersonal relations. When successful in inducing these changes, coercive thought reform programs also, among other things, create the potential forces necessary for exercising undue influence over a person's independent decision-making ability, and even for turning the individual into a deployable agent for the organization's benefit without the individual's meaningful knowledge or consent.
Coercive persuasion programs are effective because individuals experiencing the deliberately planned severe stresses they generate can only reduce the pressures by accepting the system or adopting the behaviors being promulgated by the purveyors of the coercion program. The relationship between the person and the coercive persuasion tactics are DYNAMIC in that while the force of the pressures, rewards, and punishments brought to bear on the person are considerable, they do not lead to a stable, meaningfully SELF-CHOSEN reorganization of beliefs or attitudes. Rather, they lead to a sort of coerced compliance and a situationally required elaborate rationalization, for the new conduct.
Once again, in order to maintain the new attitudes or "decisions," sustain the rationalization, and continue to unduly influence a person's behavior over time, coercive tactics must be more or less CONTINUOUSLY applied. A fiery, "hell and damnation" guilt-ridden sermon from the pulpit or several hours with a high-pressure salesman or other single instances of the so-called peaceful persuasions do not constitute the "necessary chords and orchestration" of a SEQUENCED, continuous, COORDINATED, and carefully selected PROGRAM of surreptitious coercion, as found in a comprehensive program of "coercive persuasion."
Truly peaceful religious persuasion practices would never attempt to force, compel and dominate the free wills or minds of its members through coercive behavioral techniques or covert hypnotism. They would have no difficulty coexisting peacefully with U.S. laws meant to protect the public from such practices.
Looking like peaceful persuasion is precisely what makes coercive persuasion less likely to attract attention or to mobilize opposition. It is also part of what makes it such a devastating control technology. Victims of coercive persuasion have: no signs of physical abuse, convincing rationalizations for the radical or abrupt changes in their behavior, a convincing "sincerity, and they have been changed so gradually that they don't oppose it because they usually aren't even aware of it.
Deciding if coercive persuasion was used requires case-by-case careful analysis of all the influence techniques used and how they were applied. By focusing on the medium of delivery and process used, not the message, and on the critical differences, not the coincidental similarities, which system was used becomes clear. The Influence Continuum helps make the difference between peaceful persuasion and coercive persuasion easier to distinguish.
VARIABLES
Not all tactics used in a coercive persuasion type environment will always be coercive. Some tactics of an innocuous or cloaking nature will be mixed in.
Programs identified with the above-listed seven tactics have in common the elements of attempting to greatly modify a person's self-concept, perceptions of reality, and interpersonal relations. When successful in inducing these changes, coercive thought reform programs also, among other things, create the potential forces necessary for exercising undue influence over a person's independent decision-making ability, and even for turning the individual into a deployable agent for the organization's benefit without the individual's meaningful knowledge or consent.
Coercive persuasion programs are effective because individuals experiencing the deliberately planned severe stresses they generate can only reduce the pressures by accepting the system or adopting the behaviors being promulgated by the purveyors of the coercion program. The relationship between the person and the coercive persuasion tactics are DYNAMIC in that while the force of the pressures, rewards, and punishments brought to bear on the person are considerable, they do not lead to a stable, meaningfully SELF-CHOSEN reorganization of beliefs or attitudes. Rather, they lead to a sort of coerced compliance and a situationally required elaborate rationalization, for the new conduct.
Once again, in order to maintain the new attitudes or "decisions," sustain the rationalization, and continue to unduly influence a person's behavior over time, coercive tactics must be more or less CONTINUOUSLY applied. A fiery, "hell and damnation" guilt-ridden sermon from the pulpit or several hours with a high-pressure salesman or other single instances of the so-called peaceful persuasions do not constitute the "necessary chords and orchestration" of a SEQUENCED, continuous, COORDINATED, and carefully selected PROGRAM of surreptitious coercion, as found in a comprehensive program of "coercive persuasion."
Truly peaceful religious persuasion practices would never attempt to force, compel and dominate the free wills or minds of its members through coercive behavioral techniques or covert hypnotism. They would have no difficulty coexisting peacefully with U.S. laws meant to protect the public from such practices.
Looking like peaceful persuasion is precisely what makes coercive persuasion less likely to attract attention or to mobilize opposition. It is also part of what makes it such a devastating control technology. Victims of coercive persuasion have: no signs of physical abuse, convincing rationalizations for the radical or abrupt changes in their behavior, a convincing "sincerity, and they have been changed so gradually that they don't oppose it because they usually aren't even aware of it.
Deciding if coercive persuasion was used requires case-by-case careful analysis of all the influence techniques used and how they were applied. By focusing on the medium of delivery and process used, not the message, and on the critical differences, not the coincidental similarities, which system was used becomes clear. The Influence Continuum helps make the difference between peaceful persuasion and coercive persuasion easier to distinguish.
VARIABLES
Not all tactics used in a coercive persuasion type environment will always be coercive. Some tactics of an innocuous or cloaking nature will be mixed in.
Not all individuals exposed to coercive persuasion or thought reform programs are effectively coerced into becoming participants.
How individual suggestibility, psychological and physiological strengths, weakness, and differences react with the degree of severity, continuity, and comprehensiveness in which the various tactics and content of a coercive persuasion program are applied, determine the program's effectiveness and/or the degree of severity of damage caused to its victims.
For example, in United States v. Lee 455 U.S. 252, 257-258 (1982), the California Supreme Court found that
"when a person is subjected to coercive persuasion without his knowledge or consent... [he may] develop serious and sometimes irreversible physical and psychiatric disorders, up to and including schizophrenia, self-mutilation, and suicide."
WHAT ARE THE CRITERIA OF A COERCIVE PERSUASION PROGRAM?
A). Determine if the subject individual held enough knowledge and volitional capacity to make the decision to change his or her ideas or beliefs.
B). Determine whether that individual did, in fact, adopt, affirm, or reject those ideas or beliefs on his own.
C). Then, if necessary, all that should be examined is the behavioral processes used, not ideological content. One needs to examine only the behavioral processes used in their "conversion." Each alleged coercive persuasion situation should be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. The characteristics of coercive persuasion programs are severe, well-understood, and they are not accidental.
COERCIVE PERSUASION IS NOT VOLUNTARY, PEACEFUL, RELIGIOUS PRACTICE OR CENTRAL TO ANY BONA FIDE RELIGION.
Coercive persuasion is not a religious practice, it is a control technology. It is not a belief or ideology, it is a technological process.
As a PROCESS, it can be examined by experts on its technology COMPLETELY SEPARATE from any idea or belief content, similar to examining the technical process of hypnotic induction distinct from the meaning or value of the post-hypnotic suggestions.
Examining PROCESSES in this manner can not violate First Amendment religious protections.
Coercive persuasion is antithetical to the First Amendment. It is the unfair manipulation of other's biological and psychological weaknesses and susceptibilities. It is a psychological FORCE technology, not of a free society, but of a criminal or totalitarian society. It is certainly not a spiritual or religious technology.
Any organization using coercive persuasion on its members as a CENTRAL practice that also claims to be a religion is turning the SANCTUARY of the First Amendment into a fortress for psychological assault. It is a contradiction of terms and should be "disestablished."
Coercive persuasion is a subtle, compelling psychological force which attacks an even more fundamental and important freedom than our "freedom of religion." ITS REPREHENSIBILITY AND DANGER IS THAT IT ATTACKS OUR SELF-DETERMINISM AND FREE WILL, OUR MOST FUNDAMENTAL CONSTITUTIONAL FREEDOMS.
High on Jesus
High on Jesus
We have all heard of the Addict, who will drink, or use drugs, or even gamble; without concern for those they hurt. But there is another addict that is more socially accepted than the run of the mill junkie, looking for a quick fix. Many of you reading this essay will instantly recognize those of whom I speak. And hopefully realize these people are sick with the disease of addiction.
The term "addiction" is used in many contexts to describe an obsession, compulsion, or excessive psychological dependence, such as: drug addiction (e.g. alcoholism), nicotine addiction, problem gambling, crime, money, work addiction, compulsive overeating, computer addiction, video game addiction, pornography addiction, etc. Few people are ever really cured of their addiction; they just simply trade one addiction for another, because the underlying problem of addiction has never fully been addressed. They simply hope the new addiction will be a more positive addiction than the one with the deviant behavior.
Such as religion; yes that is correct boys and girls, religion can become addictive. This essay will hopefully reveal the startling overwhelming evidence, that some people of the religious mind set are in fact addicted to their religion.
According to Rev. Leo Booth, author of When God Becomes A Drug, a person can, indeed, become addicted to religion. He writes that there are symptoms by which to determine the possibility that someone is “addicted” to their religion. These include, but are not limited to; “black and white simplistic thinking, shame based belief that “God will fix you”, uncompromising judgmental attitudes, and progressive detachment from the real-world, isolation, and breakdown of relationships.” (Booth 1991)
Not many people have had to deal with the addict mindset; trying to convince them (the addict) that they are in the wrong. It can be frustrating, to say the least; because in their mind they are not in the wrong. In medical terminology, an addiction is a chronic neurobiological disorder that has genetic, psychosocial, and environmental dimensions and is characterized by one of the following: the continued use of a substance or behavior despite its detrimental effects, impaired control over the use of a chosen drug (compulsive behavior), and preoccupation with a drug's use for non-therapeutic purposes (i.e. craving the drug). Accord to Narcotic Anonymous literature; “An Addict is a man or woman whose life is controlled by drugs, the getting, using and finding ways and means to get more.”
But how does that correspond to the Religious addict? You ask.
“"The goal of addiction is to get the high and if the high is 'I am righteous' and the feeling that I'm righteous then whatever I do will be to get the feeling of 'I am righteous' again. No matter who gets stepped on or whatever happens that's the goal," Minor said.
In reality, addicts use religion to avoid thinking about the hard realities of life, preferring a black and white set of beliefs that provide easy answers. This takes away the addicts need to take responsibility for their lives or their beliefs. Religious addicts can easily be spotted by their rigid, either/or thinking, perfectionist thinking and an inability to take responsibility for their positions.” Dr. Robert Minor, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas.
Many people simply misunderstand the addictive mindset; they believe that the ‘Bad’ can simply be replaced by the good. This is made very clear in Alcoholics Anonymous literature; “In many regards the choice of addictive behavior is a falling from spirit, in the sense that addictive behavior is of a self centered, self serving attitude, whereas spirituality encourages a sense of connectedness and being of service to others. Most individuals that have chosen to partake in addictive behavior do so at the expense of others, and they do it with one thing and only one thing in mind; the need to mask the pain of their emotional issues. Making a connection with spirit allows the addicted person to view things in a greater perspective and allows them to understand that one person’s actions affect the many.”
The very founder of AA, Bill Wilson, was introduced to the idea of a spiritual cure by an old drinking buddy, Ebby Thacher. Wilson, or Bill W. as he became know in AA; underwent what he believed to be a spiritual experience and, convinced of the existence of God, he was able to stop drinking. However his compulsive behavior was not arrested, with his ‘cure’ from the disease of alcoholism. He was constantly seeking out new spiritual ways to treat the problems of others who still suffered. As you can see he simply traded one addiction for another, because of the underlying problems, the needs and compulsion to immerse oneself into an addiction, he was never really cured.
Here are some general signs of drug use from the Mayo Clinic:
• Feeling that you need the drug regularly and, in some cases, many times a day
• Making certain that you maintain a supply of the drug
• Feeling that you need the drug to deal with your problems
• Driving or doing other activities that place you and others at risk of physical harm when you're under the influence of the drug
• Greatly impaired perception of reality
Symptoms of religious addiction
The Rev. Leo Booth has compiled a list of symptoms that can be associated with a religious addiction. They include:
Religious convictions are stated as black and white.
Isolation from people who do not share the same beliefs.
Think of the world and flesh as inherently evil.
Obsessive about praying, going to church, reading the Bible, attending crusades, watching television evangelists, sending money to missions.
Excessive fasting.
Hearing messages from God.
Judging others, often angry and violent toward "heathens."
Brainwashing - attempt to persuade family and significant friends to their way of thinking.
Compulsively talking about God, religion or quoting from Scripture.
Conflict of ideology with hospitals and schools.
Discourage thinking for oneself, doubting or questioning.
Sexuality seen as dirty or bad.
Cannot accept criticism.
Suffer tension, stress, often develop physical illnesses, such as eating disorders, depression and anxiety.
Often stare, go into trances.
Erratic personality changes.
Evaluating and Assessing Religious Addiction
If you know someone who is extremely religious, consider their history:
Have they always been that way?
Does their zeal represent a sudden personality change?
Do the religious beliefs provide peace and personal contentment?
Has the person become belligerent and defensive?
Are they gentle in their speech or harsh, argumentative and self-righteous?
Have they become intolerant of other points of view?
Have people started avoiding them?
Has their quality of life improved or deteriorated?
How their religious attitudes affect people can represent an infinite variety of causes and motivations, and the reasons behind those causes can explain a great deal about the individual’s psychological profile and mental stability. It’s not enough to simply say, “His religion makes him feel good,” because there are many troubled people who find similar peace and strength through negative stimuli as well, such as alcohol and drugs.
Religion, like alcoholism, can be a crutch, and it can be an addiction. Just as with alcohol, religion may be used to hide other problems. Addiction is defined as the abuse of a substance to cover up the underlying disease or discomfort. Religion can be viewed as an addiction if it is used as a cover up for unresolved issues of shame, anger and authority. When you take away the superficial layers of the drinking or the religion, the underlying pathology is revealed.
Knowing what lies underneath that veneer of religion is critical to understanding the hyper-religious person’s behavior. Therefore, it helps to know what brought about the change in attitude when someone’s conspicuous preoccupation with religious belief and ritual takes on an extreme, consuming new importance in their lives.
A suddenly increased interest in God and religion is often triggered by a trauma or severe anxiety, and those may come in many forms:
* Death of a loved one
* A break in a relationship
* Serious illness or accident
* Personal or financial loss
* Incarceration
When people’s security in their selves is threatened, for whatever reason, they often turn to God. Such a reaction is understandable: a confused, frightened individual who feels helpless will naturally reach out for a source of comfort and solace. Also, a frequent catalyst for triggering Addictive Religious behavior may be a latent psychiatric disorder, such as depression.
Regardless of the reason why a person chooses to pursue religion, at what level does healthy, normal religious belief become abnormal?
Often the personality change is subtle. Eventually, though, hyper-religious behavior will manifest itself in obvious and disconcerting ways, such as:
Loss of Objectivity
Their ability to reason logically can become impaired. Such as, an inability to think, doubt, or question religious information, and/or authority and unwillingness to understand the opinions and interpretations of others. A concrete and rigid thinking style develops that does not allow for consideration of extenuating circumstances in a person's life. Black/white, good/bad, either/or simplistic thinking: one way or the other with very little room for gray areas. A tendency toward magical thinking, that God will fix you/ do it all, without serious work on your part. Confusion and doubts lead to mental, physical or emotional breakdown. They develop a fear-based or guilt-based belief system, believing/following a religion out of fear, not understanding and love. They also tend to have a shame-based belief system that they are not good enough or are not doing it right. They believe in a punishing and angry God.
Reactivity: Anger and Defensiveness
If sincere faith in God is supposed to bring peace and contentment, a religious person who is paranoid and confrontational about it may have a larger mental problem. They tend to have increased conflict and argumentation with science, medicine, and education. They tend to become argumentative and defensive in dialog. They have a limited ability to explain their beliefs. Since their belief system about themselves and the world is fear-based, they seldom understand religion, but follow it out of a dependent need for strength and power. Force is their farce.
Judgmental and Critical
Hyper-religiosity may be revealed in someone as unusual self-importance, as if that person were much closer to God, making others around him seem inferior. They develop uncompromising judgmental attitudes, with a readiness to find fault or evil out there. An attitude of self-righteousness or superiority: "we versus the world," including the denial of one's humanness. They tend to be blind to their own behaviors, denying their projections on to the idol 'god' they have created.
Obsessive and Compulsive Behavior
Ritual is part of religion, and as such is neither good nor bad. However, when it disrupts normal activities it is unhealthy—as in being unable to function without repeated readings of the same passages, or unusually frequent rituals. Scrupulously rigid and obsessive adherence to rules, codes of ethics, or guidelines. Compulsive rituals or obsessive praying, quoting scriptures and excessive fasting often accompany the change in thinking patterns. Giving up sleeping or eating to pray or meditate. Again, prayer and meditation are important aspects of faith, but not to the point of jeopardizing a person’s health or relationships.
Isolation
Isolation and breakdown of relationships often follows. Progressive detachment from work and relationships is noticeable as they spend more time proselytizing their message. Manipulating scripture or texts, feeling specially chosen, claiming to receive special messages from God, they move further and further away from the mainstream of social contacts.
Breakdown
In severe cases they may also develop some of the following patterns:
Psychosomatic illness: back pains, sleeplessness, headaches, hypertension, etc.
Maintaining a religious "high", trance-like state, keeping a happy face (or the belief that one should...)
Denial of any personal problems
When behavior borders on manic or pathological, the hyper-religious person may even start hallucinating, i.e.: hearing voices or seeing images, or possibly “talking to God.”
By then, it’s clearly evident something is wrong to the people around the religious addict, but not so clear to the addict.
If you know someone whose interest in religion has suddenly (or even gradually) reached a point of fixation—when their regular lives are negatively affected—you need to understand what’s motivating their behavior. The problem could go away, but it could also get worse.
The ultimate temptation of the believer is to assume that his or her way to God is the best or only way for others. The particular Way to God becomes what is adored, not the ineffable and incomprehensible Mystery to which we give the name of God. In essence they become addicted to their faith. It becomes a means of escape. It is no longer a living BY faith; with understanding, hope and growing in unconditional love. Instead of love of God softening their lives, it makes them harsh, rigid and limited.
Physical Changes
One of the first signs that one might be affected to religion is their look. A glazed, high appearance, as if the person was using either drugs or alcohol; but without laboratory evidence of abuse where the patient has not been tested or he/she has tested negative. This might be the easiest way to determine if someone is addicted to religion, though some people who are truly believers in a particular religion may say that this is only the conclusion of coming to terms with God or a true vision of holiness in their life so one must be careful not to jump to too many conclusions early before intervening in such a person's life.
Compulsive ritualization with religious issues and behaviors.
Bible reading and church attendance are to many religious addicts what bingo or slots might be to someone in Gamblers Anonymous. Because so many different religions exist in this country; including those outside of the mainstream concepts of religion such as Paganism and Buddhism. Those in recovery must find a definition of sobriety appropriate to them. Behavioral addictions always include compulsive behavior, which are the bottom-line definitions of a behavioral addiction. For the behavior is their drug. For a Buddhist, of course, a different set of compulsive behaviors from a Christian's problem behaviors would exist. Therefore, sobriety is different for each religions addict, but the concept of sobriety is different for each religious addict but the concept of sobriety as practiced by groups like NA is focused on the behavior, not the drug.
Isolation from the outside world and social involvement only with other addicts.
This must be a symptom of the serious addict. This differentiates the dabbler and the true believer who is equivalent to the person who takes prescription drugs for a lifesaving purposes, from the addict. A dabbler will decide to avoid an illicit drug she/he doesn't like unlike the dabbler in religion who will attend a given church only once or twice. They may do this several times and then decide to refrain from joining for any one of a number of good reasons. People marked as "true believers" genuinely agree with the doctrines of the particular church they attend and try to live by its guidelines without being a rule maniac and neither isolate themselves from the outside world nor associate with those who misuse the resource they find so comforting. This kind of progressive movement in religion, which is equivalent to the change in tolerance seen in some alcoholics, is another type of addiction altogether. These addictive believers find their drug of choice so much of a high that they choose, at least initially, until religion becomes a drug to which the addict is addicted at the life-maintenance stage to isolate their social contacts to fellow addicts.
Withdraw symptoms
Withdrawal can refer to any sort of separation, but is most commonly used to describe the group of symptoms that occurs upon the abrupt discontinuation/separation or a decrease in dosage of the intake of medications, recreational drugs, and/or alcohol. In order to experience the symptoms of withdrawal, one must have first developed a dependence upon a substance. The term "cold turkey" is used to describe the sudden cessation use of a substance or behavior and the ensuing physiologic manifestations.
These withdrawal symptoms are created when the addict stops going to religious meetings or involving themselves in any activity relating to religion which could be anything from Sunday services right down to pot luck suppers. A primary symptom is going right back to the problem religion and by association, Christ himself, was suppose to save and cure you from be it excessive grief over a loved one or another associated addictive behavior like drinking or overeating. Depression and euphoric recall which romanticizes aspects of these elements of the group one despised most could be others.
Withdrawal symptoms can vary significantly among individuals, but there are some commonalities. Subnormal activity in the nucleus accumbens is often characterized by depression, anxiety and craving, and if extreme can help drive the individual to continue the substance or behavior, despite significant harm — the definition of addiction — or even to suicide.
Addiction is to be carefully distinguished from physical dependence. Addiction is a psychological compulsion to use a substance or behavior despite harm that often persists long after all physical withdrawal symptoms have abated. On the other hand, the mere presence of even profound physical dependence does not necessarily denote addiction, e.g., in a patient using large doses of opioids to control chronic pain under medical supervision
As the symptoms vary, some people are, for example, able to quit smoking "cold turkey" (i.e., immediately, without any tapering off) while others may never find success despite repeated efforts. However, the length and the degree of an addiction can be indicative of the severity of withdrawal.
Withdrawal is a more serious medical issue for some substances than for others. While nicotine withdrawal, for instance, is usually managed without medical intervention, attempting to give up a Benzodiazepine, alcohol and even religious dependency can result in seizures and worse if not carried out properly.
What course does one take to become cured from addictive religion?
As you can see there is a cure, but remember there are underlying problems that lead to this addiction to religion in the first place. It can best be treated by counseling, and only through this type of treatment can you address those problems, instead of kicking on addiction for another. Religious intervention has been used in the past to deprogram cult members, but kidnapping and unlawful restrain is a very serious crime. Addicts can not filter information the way a non addicted person will. So pointing out their faults and short comings will usually intensify their using and abusing of their religious behavior. The primary goal is to get the addict to admit they have a problem. This is the first step according to AA and NA documentation. Also from a psychological stand point, only by recognizing that there is a problem can you begin to address the problem.
Resources:
http://www.desertpastor.com/paradoxology/2003/12/r
eligious_addic.html
http://www.rickross.com/reference/fundamentalists/
fund80.html
http://www.crescentlife.com/spirituality/religious
_addiction.htm
http://www.fairnessproject.org/Addiction%20Reviews
.html
eligious_addic.html
http://www.rickross.com/reference/fundamentalists/
fund80.html
http://www.crescentlife.com/spirituality/religious
_addiction.htm
http://www.fairnessproject.org/Addiction%20Reviews
.html
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Abused God (2008) by Rev. Dr. Regina Pinto-MouraToxic Christianity: Healing the Religious Neurosis (1992) by Paul Deblassey
Mindful Recovery: A Spiritual Path to Healing from Addiction (2002) by Dr. Thomas and Beverly Bien
When God Becomes a Drug: Book 1; Understanding Religious Addiction & Religious Abuse (1998) by Leo Booth and John Bradshaw
Religious Addiction, Mental health and Spirituality (2008) by Regina Pinto-Moura
Overcoming Religious Abuse & Religious Addiction (2000) by Father Leo Booth
Healing Spiritual Abuse and Religious Addiction (1992)by Matthew Linn, Sheila Fabricant Linn, and Dennis Linn
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