One can risk being co-opted into the guru role, even one starts with the most sincere intention not to be anyones guru.

There is something I private term the Stanford Cookie Experiment which illustrates the hazards of being assigned randomly to a power position, even if for a few hours.

Quote

Quote:
Gaining power puts the powerholder at increased risk of misdoing.
Let us look at the Stanford Cookie Experiment.

I first learned of this experiment from reading a book, written by Robert I Sutton, a professor of management and engineering at Stanford University, entitled The No Asshole Rule:Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't.

let us look at Professor Deborah Gruenfeld's experiment--what I term the Stanford Cookie Experiment. I believe that scholars of cults and dysfunctional organizatins need to place this experiment alongside Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority Experiment and Philip Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment.

This experiement demonstrates how a leadership role, randomly assigned, has a tendency to trigger swinish bad manners in otherwise normal persons.

The way the experiment worked (and it was replicated a number of times)
subjects were assembled into a group to do a shared task.

*At random, one subject in each group was assigned the role of overseeing and evaluating the others' work--randomly assigned to a leadership role.

During the experiment, a plate of cookies/biscuits was brought in.

Time and again, those subjects randomly assigned to the leadership role, tended
to do the following:

Took more cookies (greed)
Chewed with mouths open (lapses of ordinary good manners)
Got crumbs on their faces and left crumbs on the table (messes for others to clean up)

Thus, random assignment to a brief, time limited leadership role had a potent effect--increasing the probability that the promoted subject's manners would deteriorate.

Now...these were persons who had not sought the leadership role. By contrast, the persons who interest us are those who are driven to desire power, desire fame, spend years seeking ways to market themselves, hone their persuasive skills, and once they become leaders of personality centered groups, are waited on, insulated from consequences, and have enablers making excuses for them.


Imagine the Cookie Experiment going on for ten years or more.

The experiment was done by Professor Deborah Gruenfeld of Stanford University--her
speciality has been researching the effects of putting people in positions of power where they lord it over others.

Read more about the Cookie Experiment here:

[www.google.com]

Adult power relations are immensely interesting human phenomena.

Oprah has power only because her audience allow her that power. Similarly, a person can be randomly assigned a power postion--as in the cookie experiment--but cannot be randomly assigned to hold power. Nominating a person to a power position does not automatically confer power on that person. The person can only gain power when the second party to the interaction acknowledges the nominated leader as a leader. Withholding that acknowledgement does not prevent the 'leader' from acting like an arsehole, the notion of power can corrupt, but the leader has no power until his authority is accepted and acknowledged by those he wishes to wield power over.

Power is an artifact of human interaction, is always inter-relational between two parties and requires two willing participants--the power holder and the one who acknowledges the greater power, strength, superiority of the power-holder.
There are nominated persons of power in all societies and cultures, the military, policemen, teachers, politicians etc--but they all hold power by vitue of the mass acceptance of the idea of power that we allow them. (The weapons on open display help too but in reality power is always a function of the relation between two people, not more.)

In reality power is endlessly shifting, unless we allow the idea of power to become immovably entrenched in our idea of the other person.

There is a childhood game that we all played that illustrates this, we called it "rock, paper, scissors"
Two children each hide one hand behind theirs backs and form the shape of one of the rock, paper or scissors. The rock can smash the scissors, the paper enfold the rock and the scissors cut the paper. The game is endless and circular with first one child then the other in the winning position. If there were only two options winning would be easy every time. It is the introduction of the third that allows the win to be up for grabs each time.

Coming from a background of very skewed and dysfunctional power relations, as I did and as all those who have been ensnared in cults have experienced, I had forgotten this game until a Korean friend, who called it something else, showed it to me again. It exists as a childhood game in every culture.

At the time I was grappling with the notion of interpersonal power and totally unable to grasp the shifting nature of power between two people, because I had never seen it demonstrated in real life. The cultural milieu dictates that we accept the trappings of power--authority, weapons, wealth--as the reality of power but this is false.
Playing that childhood game again allowed me to see the reality of power differently.

Where this is relevant to those who have cult experience is the undeniable truth that a 'leader' remains a nobody until one person acknowledges and accepts that leaders power. Withdraw the acknowledgement and acceptance and any power that the leader held dissipates.

There was a short TED film recently that extols leadership but it also illustrates my point about the ephemeral nature of power and can be used to show the dynamics of cult formation:

[www.ted.com]

Knowing this stuff as an idea is worthless, seeing it in action around us and playing with the potentialities of the concepts is essential.

Oprah can be lauded as a leader and opinion-former by millions and benefit enormously in a financial sense, but if I don't watch her programme or buy into her opinions, she has no power over me at all.
Oprah also has vulnerabilities and can be toppled from her position of power--- rock, paper, scissors.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 08/18/2010 04:47PM by Stoic.

Incidentally, I found the TED clip courtesy of this blog from from Bob Sutton, the author of the book 'The No Asshole Rule':

[bobsutton.typepad.com]

but had it been posted by a dyed-in-the-wool new-ager (as Derek Sivers may well be, for all I know of him) the clip would still have merit and something to teach if the viewer approached it as a neutral piece of information.

As a final thought on this, I find the fundamentalist position of attempting to wipe out all assholery to be a non-starter in terms of a pragmatic approach to real life.
Assholes, like the poor (a relative term), will always be with us, and no amount of railing against them will make an iota of difference.
As Barnum said about customers although it is usually repeated as 'suckers': "There's one born every minute"

What does make a difference is an understanding of the dynamics involved and a corresponding understanding of my own vulnerabilities.
I am a sucker for (among other things) a kind word or gesture and probably always will be and am immensely suspicious of gratuitous kindness for that reason. It is so very rarely offered in a genuine and no-strings-attached fashion.
Recognising a gratuitously proffered trojan horse or an asshole as he hoves into view and having the option of taking evasive action (ie. walking rapidly in the opposite direction) makes more sense to me than attempting the Herculean task of converting or eradicating assholery.
Anyway, the only assholery over which I ever have any control is my own.

The notion of an ideal future that is free of assholes is just that, an ideal, a dream, which can never correspond with the waking reality that we all live in.

From Bitch Magazine: How stuff from Eat Pray Love, Oprah and Chick-Targeted Self Help messes with women's heads

An anonymous life coach is quoted in here as admitting that if you want to stay in business, you cannot assist a client to actually remedy her situation--she will leave and not need you anymore.

[webcache.googleusercontent.com]

Trying to Live by Oprah's Principles for a Year

This article in Navy Times book review section

[www.navytimes.com]

The author of the book, Robyn Okrant said some of the principles were good. But, significantly, she is quoted as saying this:

Quote

The one tip Okrant could never master, however, was dressing as Oprah says. She says she felt as if she were “pressed into a mold.”

and

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So, does Okrant think she came close to her “best life”?

“I think I eventually found it when I stopped working on it,” she says. “It wasn’t until I was able to rest, a couple of months after the project, that I found myself in my pajamas and very happy.

"I was at ease in my own skin.”

Here is a story from her year of living Oprah

Quote

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Tag. You're It.

I did receive many helpful messages during my year of Living Oprah that I will continue (I hope) for my lifetime. And while I learned lessons for which I'm grateful, there were less positive ramifications for me.

The one that looms over me, even though the experiment is over, is that I continue to be really self-conscious about my physical appearance, my body, my clothes.

Everytime I get dressed, I can't help but think, "Does this make me look old, or fat, or out of style?" and "What must other women think of me? Could I be ambushed on the street today for what I'm wearing, urged into a head-to-toe makeover?"

The weird thing is, I love watching many of the makeovers on Oprah. They're fun. The people who are transformed seem to glow afterward.

And yet, without realizing it, I've been feeling less and less confident.

[www.livingoprah.com]

and

an interview in Forbes.com Living Oprah For a Year

[www.forbes.com]

[www.amazon.com]

Robyn Okrant has a blog, livingoprah.com

According to the Navy Times review, Oprah has been on break and unavailable for comment.

Am not sure how to interpret this. Is this a venue where people try to audition to get onto Oprah's main TV show?

[myown.oprah.com]

YOUR OWN SHOW Oprahs Search for the Next TV Star

Genpo's Audition

Quote

Genpo Roshi's Big Mind Big Heart

The Big Mind process, led by Zen Master Genpo Roshi, is a lively interactive group method that is both effective and empowering. It is a way to study psychology and spirituality as a beautifully interwoven fabric of life. This video provides just a glimpse. Check it out. Experience your heart mind as one beautiful reality. Unlock the power and grace within you. Learn how to use the Big Mind process to understand your life and how you can help others to understand theirs. How often do you have the chance to work directly with one of greatest Zen Masters on the important issues of the Self and the Transcendent, be on the cutting edge of integrating Zen for the western mind, and learn practical and effective ways to tap into the infinite power and love you were born with? A TV show on OWN would offer this experience to millions of people. Together, the world will change exponentially!

Quote

Your OWN Show is a trademark owned by OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network.
Oprah's Search for the Next TV Star is a trademark owned by Harpo, Inc.
© 2010 OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network. All Rights

From what I have gleaned online Oprah has an open invitation for those wanting their own shows on her new channel/network? to send in audition tapes, these are posted online and voted upon by the masses.
Genpo is taking his shot at the big-time.
I wonder what will be his version of 'How's that workin for ya?'

James Arthur Ray had them brainwashed. A typical seemingly harmless cult leader,...yet look what happens. Not one person spoke up when it got too hot?! James is somewhat accepted by mainstream and able to get away with this. The people that died no longer had their critical thinking abilities. The law of attraction teaches you against your own thinking ability that is meant for your survival. Law of attraction says that 'your thoughts will protect you from everything and make you healthy.'


Apparently they can't protect you from a psycho guru at a sweat lodge.

It's scary...and speaking of Jenny McCarthy...


I feel Jenny McCarthy is brainwashed having bought the whole new age scam and is now going to deny science for autism.
I bought into it at one point and I am so happy that I left that stuff.

I hope the news and media sheds more light on the dangers of new age.
I know I will.

Genpo Roshi is no longer Roshi, rather Genpo Merzel and he's no longer wearing his robes. Caught cheating on his wife with a successor. We knew it. Sex seems to be an important part of cult leader's motivations. I wonder if he's still trying to get an Oprah network show. He's still going to teach "Big Mind" whatever that is. [www.bigmind.org]