Mockingbird's Open Challenge for Cult Experts!

  This is Mockingbird's Open Challenge for Cult Experts!

Okay, I think that I have found a really good challenge. If you are up for it!

I had someone who didn't know I was in Scientology or any of my background or education ask if the content of one of my off the cuff remarks was a book (or synopsis I suppose) and I ended up explaining (perhaps poorly) that being an ex cult member requires studying certain topics for recovery (and that Scientology in particular being composed of thousands of hidden hypnotic techniques requires studying hypnosis more than probably any other cult for recovery).

I think that a podcast (or probably series) that lays out the relevant and beneficial curriculum for cultic studies in general and particularly for cult recovery and explains what each subject offers and why it is needed for cult recovery would be, well, probably one of the best products any cult expert could offer. (Or series of blog posts or articles depending on which media you are most comfortable with)

An effort to act as a librarian and guide, offering the most accessible (lay people need books you can read with a high school education or less and understand), concise (people are not likely to read ten one thousand page volumes to cover one topic in the subject like the practice of shunning or disconnection), and most of all - relevant (the content has to clearly at some point be shown to have importance regarding understanding cults, preferably very early on) content can be a great product for any cult expert to produce. 

Here was my response to their comment:

 "The field of cultic studies has a broad number of subjects you end up taking on. As an ex cult member I felt a personal responsibility to do this. Scientology in particular uses thousands of ideas from hypnosis so you should get a fair basic education on hypnosis if you were in Scientology and it involves the techniques human predators use to control people. So you should get a basic understanding of human predators. And the way that social factors allow them to control groups, so you end up reading about social psychology and books on the relationships between followers and leaders. And it involves the psychological vulnerabilities that allow people to be fooled so you read about psychology and logical fallacies and cognitive biases extensively. It involves understanding poor choices and the tendency to make them and stick with them so you have to get a very good education on critical thinking and the methods of persuasion used on people so you have to examine rhetoric, propaganda analysis, and related topics.

It just makes you look at a lot and by reading a half dozen to two dozen or more books on a half dozen or more subjects to get started in the field you end up looking at how ideas from psychology interact with ideas from sociology and how ideas from critical thinking interact with ideas on debating and how ideas from economics interact with critical thinking and psychology.

You end up asking the questions a scientist or serious debate student would ask in subjects that traditionally don't always have that approach, like philosophy or economics.

You have to learn, to some degree, how you were fooled in a cult and see how the same errors in constructing arguments (logical fallacies) or errors in thinking (cognitive biases) can mislead you in other contexts.

It's just to me a natural part of the journey - the journey to recovery from twenty five years in a cult.

It's as natural as figuring out that you are stuck in a hole after digging one and figuring out how to stop digging the hole and get yourself out, then actually getting out.

Others may have lied to you and done other things that have something to do with your circumstances. But you need to effectively stop digging the hole and figure out how to get out and then do the work to get out yourself.

It may not be fun to face or do, or reflect well on you but it has to be done or you simply ain't getting out of the hole." 

I have already made some efforts at this by explaining my own personal journey and approach to a degree, but I am sure other people know a lot I don't and have a lot offer that I have not. And if they step up and provide their own ideas I think it has a lot of potential to help people and even improve the understanding of the subject overall. 

If you were in a different group you are likely far more qualified than me to describe references for ex members of your group and related groups, which I may never have even heard of! Or a person never in a cult certainly can know things that I don't know as an academic, or journalist, or psychologist, or therapist, or self taught cult expert or attorney or expert in any number of fields. 

You could be a comedian and have a great series of jokes on Scientology that describes it in a way that my work never could, my point is that if you anything to bring forward to contribute to this work, then I eagerly invite, implore you, to please do so!

I really hope this encourages a lot of responses by a lot of people, because I know a lot of people have lots to offer. 

I earlier attempted to write posts that in part explained the references that helped me to start my own journey and get out of Scientology. I also partially described my own rough guidelines for writing posts and trying to act as a librarian, giving descriptions of references and then clearly listing those references for those who come after me. 

Though this is very far from the product I seek now. I think a more polished and graduated product is in order, meaning you could, for example, if you are an ex Jehovah's Witness that knows a lot about the history and practices of the Jehovah's Witnesses that you can share then you could have a list that describes great references for ex JWs in particular and another description of references for people who were never in any cult to understand cults in general and JWs in particular if they wanted to. 

You could be from a field I never even studied like religious studies as a scholar or an attorney who specializes in these cases and you could bring something to the table that I would not even know about - like the legal history of court decisions that affect cult cases. 

The point is you can say "okay, here is a list that is for someone who just left a cult and will read a half dozen books - which ones are likely to be most helpful if I have no other information about the person? Or if I know they were in Scientology what would I say? Or if they were a Hare Krishna?

Or if they are going to try to get a more well rounded education with more subjects what gets added? Or if they want to focus on the nature of human predators and exploitative relationships and cults what gets added?

You could simply say if you are going to read one book , read X and if you are reading six add these five and if you are gonna read twelve read Y, or if you want the master's program read all this. 

That might really help some people as they may start with your first recommendation, like it and benefit from it then add another and another, then five years later realize they read fifty books you recommended and really benefited from it but would have never imagined it happening or agreed to it if asked directly to take on the whole curriculum.

(Here are my two posts that partially took on this idea)

• Getting Into and Getting Out of Scientology - The ...

My Road Out of Scientology