Hi,

After educating myself somewhat about LGAT's, i came across this article by Richard Ofshe on this site. It's about 10 A4 pages long, but it's the best article i have read to date on the subject. Though it is not specifically written about the LGAT groups, it nails them!


[www.culteducation.com]

Quote
orangeperuviscacha
Hi,

After educating myself somewhat about LGAT's, i came across this article by Richard Ofshe on this site. It's about 10 A4 pages long, but it's the best article i have read to date on the subject. Though it is not specifically written about the LGAT groups, it nails them!


[www.culteducation.com]

This paper is in line with the work of Margaret T. Singer and the DIMPAC task force report in 1987. Unfortunately, these theories were never really endorsed by the American Psychological Association. You can read all about it here:

[www.cesnur.org]

This was a major victory for cults in America, and the situation remains unchanged today. Another major blow was the declaration of Dr. Fowler about Landmark not being a cult. I cannot understand this nonsense. Was the APA infiltrated? We know what happened to the Cult Awareness Network, don't we?

Dr. Singer and Dr. Ofshe (the author of the paper you have referenced above) later claimed that the APA and leading scholars of new religious groups (e.g. Scientology) were all part of a "Conspiracy", but their case was dismissed in court (State of California 1994). In the District Judge's statement, it is said that the "best remedy ... remains not with conspiracy theory... but in continuing to maintain that their theories are sound within appropriate scientific and legal fora". I haven't seen any recent publications in scientific journals about the topic. Who is going to take the lead now?

"La Lotta continua ..."

Quote

This was a major victory for cults in America, and the situation remains unchanged today. Another major blow was the declaration of Dr. Fowler about Landmark not being a cult. I cannot understand this nonsense. Was the APA infiltrated?! We know what happend to the Cult Awareness Network, don't we?

The usage of the word "cult" is a semantic glue trap, and cults, or whatever they should be called, are at their most devious when it comes to semantics. They'll enmesh you in an esoteric debate about whether or not they are actually a cult, a non-cult growth experience, an para-cult, a meta-cult, or waaay beyond any of that unevolved cult stuff... and like the tobacco industry 40 years ago, they will marshall their panel of experts to lead you straight to the "what is the definition of a cult ?" quagmire.

The greatest of the anti-cult thinkers was Plato, especially in his early to middle dialogs, before he too began to demonstrate what might today be perceived as a cultish streak in his personality.

What we have today is a continuation of a struggle between philosophers and sophists that has been raging since at least the 4th century B.C.E. This cult business is nothing new. The Hellenistic period was saturated with them. At the end of the Roman empire, Rome was full of nutty mystery religions, probably aided and abetted by epidemic lead poisoning in the food supply (lead oxide, or plumbago, was widely used as a preservative) and a breakdown of the traditional order.

I wouldn't pin all the blame on the cults, or to use a chunkier turn of speech, regressive sophistic magicalists. Much of the responsibility for these wretched absurdities is the direct consequence of bad education, the inability to reason through a line of argument, oversimplified worldviews projected by television, a sense of anomie that leaves people burbling inconsequential crapola all day on their cell phones...

Sure, so a ham sandwich walks into whorehouse...

I mean, c'mon, all day long your mind is feasting on the congnitive equivalent of M&Ms and you walk into a TRAINING, and you're swamped with all this deep sense of communication, authenticity, meaning, and community... never mind that getting a clear fix on the real ideas behind this compelling psychodrama is like trying to carry monkey piss in a
soup strainer.