Cameron Cope:
I found your profile online and you seem to be an educated man.
See [
edufire.com]
Of course having an education doesn't preclude cult involvement.
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh/Osho was a notorious cult leader, reportedly 85% of his followers were college graduates, 25% had a post-graduate degree and 15% had doctorates.
See [
www.culteducation.com]
And it was a medical doctor that mixed the "kool-aid" at Jonestown.
See [
www.culteducation.com]
You have come here to defend Destini, apparently out of self-interest, due to your business concerns.
Bernard Poolman has identified Destini as not a nonprofit, but rather a for-profit privately controlled business.
You have taken pains to separate "Destini Education," which is your business concern, from Destini in South Africa, though you sat that you "agree" with "the directive principle of Destini...personally" and admit that "Bernard [Poolman] offers [you] his advice from time to time..."
The fact that both businesses share the same name is supposedly because you "chose the name desteni education because [you] like it.
OK.
Regarding the claims of Sunette, the trance channeling young woman at Destini, who supposedly speaks for everyone from Hitler to Audrey Hepburn through the use of a purported "InterDimensional Portal," you vacillate back and forth seemingly attempting to please/placate everyone.
You stated, "I do not believe in Dimensional Beings." And admitted, "I do not believe that the beings you mentioned have communicated through Sunette."
Then incredulously added that somehow Sunette nevertheless shared "much useful information."
Please understand that when someone is not who they claim to be, which is the basis of their "information," its usefulness crumbles and dissipates. In this sense Sunette becomes self-referentially incoherent and her information is without any meaningful substance to support it.
She may be a fraud running a con or perhaps simply a disturbed young woman under undue influence within a questionable group. But whatever she is, the rambling communications she presents have no real value, as they don't represent authentic communication, which you have admitted.
In other posts you go back and forth between "I prefer not to hold beliefs about things that I cannot see directly. Therefore I have no belief about dimensional beings. Then advise, "I am not saying that I believe that dimensional beings are not real and that Sunette is lying, but rather that i cannot say because i have no scientifically available method for forming a testable hypothesis."
It seems like you want to have it both ways. That is, to be a credible educator, but not displease the Destini devotees and/or Mr. Poolman.
You said, "Just saying that Desteni uses language to control people's minds is irrelevant because everyone does this."
Not exactly.
There are different forms of persuasion, such as education, advertising, propaganda, indoctrination and thought reform.
And the criticism of Destini is that it uses "loaded language," which comes under the heading of thought reform, commonly called "brainwashing."
Note the distinctions between the various gradations of persuasion as outlined in a chart by noted psychologist Margaret Singer.
See [
www.culteducation.com]
Loaded language as defined by psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton as follows:
See [
www.culteducation.com]
"The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis. In [Chinese Communist] thought reform, for instance, the phrase "bourgeois mentality" is used to encompass and critically dismiss ordinarily troublesome concerns like the quest for individual expression, the exploration of alternative ideas, and the search for perspective and balance in political judgments. And in addition to their function as interpretive shortcuts, these cliches become what Richard Weaver has called "ultimate terms" : either "god terms," representative of ultimate good; or "devil terms," representative of ultimate evil. In [Chinese Communist] thought reform, "progress," "progressive," "liberation," "proletarian standpoints" and "the dialectic of history" fall into the former category; "capitalist," "imperialist," "exploiting classes," and "bourgeois" (mentality, liberalism, morality, superstition, greed) of course fall into the latter. Totalist language then, is repetitiously centered on all-encompassing jargon, prematurely abstract, highly categorical, relentlessly judging, and to anyone but its most devoted advocate, deadly dull: in Lionel Trilling's phrase, "the language of nonthought."
Throughout this thread Destini devotees have used what can be seen as thought-terminating cliches. For example "integrity," "position of integrity," "Self Forgiveness," "Self Honesty," "Self Responsibility," "polarity" and the Destini definition of "common sense."
See [
forum.culteducation.com] (ThomDarc entry February 26, 2010)
In my opinion Destini seems to fit within the category of a "cult-like" authoritarian group, which uses thought reform techniques.
I would not recommend Destini to anyone for anything and see it as potentially unsafe.
Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 04/10/2010 01:45AM by rrmoderator.