In the context of LGAT's and culty Guru's on this, the answer is a big NO.
Because the "ideas" are not given in an honest way. The reason is that these folks are highly skilled at deception.
Any professional liar will tell you, the best way to lie, is to tell mostly truth, and then just slip the lies in. Or to tell the Big Lie.
The example of Hitler actually proves that, as its due to his lies, that he duped the British and started WWII.
So lying matters.
Character matters.
Once you are caught in a series of lies, that's it, game over. Everything has to be verified first.
Again, many of the expert LGAT and culty New Age people, go to great efforts to act all buddy-buddy with people, but its being done as a SALES-TACTIC.
For example, Stever Robbins must be called out, and made to explain his hypocrisy in criticizing the book SHAM and giving it 1-Star for not having enough references, but giving Byron Katie 5 stars, when she has ZERO references.
Why?
Stever Robbins claims to be a personal "friend" of Byron Katie. Is he?
Was he hired by Byron Katie to teach her some advanced techniques? (he'll never tell anyway).
Why didn't he disclose his bias?
So this "make them feel like your friend" is very dangerous, as its a deliberate tactic. Its related to the Love-Bomb used in cults.
One could post in this thread, the specific text from various NLP based manuals, that show you EXACTLY how to make strangers feel like your Best Friend, or even "Soulmate".
Its all written out and carefully studied, and the public doesn't know anything about it.
It would not be surprising to find Stever Robbins is selling that exact product, one will have to take a look to see if that is the case.
Quote
iwrotesham
While I do agree that "befriending" is both possible and potentially dangerous, I have to admit that I've never quite understood why we naturally form some sort of identification between the speaker and what is spoken. ...
Another thing I don't understand--and this may rankle some of the folks here--but if Adolph Hitler or Charles Manson were to show up ...
--how is it even relevant that the speaker is Hitler or Manson? Who cares? Why do we get so hung up on the personalities? Even if the idea put forward is totally out of character with the way the person lives his life, or, hell, even if the person is actively stabbing someone as he writes his comment...again, who cares? Judge the idea for its own sake. Yes? No?
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/01/2009 02:47AM by The Anticult.