First, how to educate the world?
One way is via [
www.Craigslist.org]
Craigslist is a free bulletin board that has franchises in most major cities.
Note to people who use Craigslist in New York City
Hope and I put cult alert warnings on Craigslist in both SF and NYC. *We only do this with groups that have a documented track record of abuse.
But warnings about worrisome groups are often flagged and removed from the NYC board within a few hours. It appears that New Yorkers are easily offended.If enough people who use the board vote to flag, the post is removed. (Kind of like Survivor).
In NYC if people dont like your post they do not counter-post. Instead, they flag your post. When enough of them do this, your post is removed. *No one gets to read your information and decide for themselves what to do with it.
Thus an informal censorship dynamic exists on Craigslist in NYC that does not appear to exist other CL city boards. *The webmaster has nothing to do with this.* It is a quirk in the behavior of the people using the various websites.
This 'trigger happy' response does not appear to be tied to any one group. The NYC attitude seems to be, if you dislike someone's post, you kill it because it should not exist.
BTW Hope has been through this too. She reports the same problems you have.
But, every time she and I get tired and are ready to give up educating the public, someone thanks us.
So, dont give up
Peony, I had that same 'not-in-the- same-tribe' feeling while sitting in on a lecture by a big superstar in the human potential movement.
IMO he was a snob, lacked empathy, yet his audience doted on his every utterance. Later, when I fact checked a lot of the things he mentioned, the guy turned out to have lied about some very important things.
At one point the guy mentioned Carlos Castaneda--either knew him or claimed they were friends.
Everyone in the room (this was spring, 2002) went 'Ooooh!!!'
I sat there and thought, 'But Castaneda's work has been exposed as fabrication and that he got his Ph.D on false pretenses. Doesnt anyone here know about any of this or care?'
This was a audience mostly composed of psychotherapists and other types of healers who were mostly in thier 40s and 50s.
But--despite having academic degrees, most of them apparently did not care about rational thinking, scientific method or the use and evaluation of evidence. Inspiration and experience were all that mattered. Despite thier age and social sophistication, and the time they'd spent in school, this was a group of people who looked like adults but and seemed to still hunger for magical parent figures. People like this are easily led if you know how to find their fantasies and tweak them.
When you've rejected (or never came to terms with) rational thinking and objective reality and instead crave a magical fix, you're fresh, ripe meat for New Age sharks and piranhas. Without rational thought and a willingness to do your own fact checking, you're as defenceless as a baby. And there are people out there who are ready to prey on you.
The 'New Age' is a profitable niche market. Out in the New Religions thread there's scary info about a bogus tantra master. He targets women in the alternative healing arts, studies their biographical info using their brochures and websites.
Then he calls them up, claiming to have a psychic connection. And lots of them have fallen for it.
The ones he's exploited are the ones who are excited about all things psychic. They dont think to ask 'Maybe he learned all this about me from my website.'
My hunch is a lot of people sincerely believe that being spiritual means rejecting rational thought and regressing to a blissful child's state of mind.
If you regress to childhood and ditch your adult reasoning, you are easily manipulated by someone who has the mentality of a child molester and is smart enough to target people who are children in adults' bodies.