Ran across this on the subject of cult mentality:Cult Mentality with Jon Rappoport (Apr 17, 2013) —
This mentality applies to government and follows the three stages of cult development. By development, I mean deterioration.
I think this mentality also applies to religious cults such as the SGI.Take a federal agency—FBI, ATF, FDA, CIA, NIH, CDC
(or the SGI). Each organization starts out with great enthusiasm, upon its creation. It announces big goals and makes an important mission statement. The ideals are high-flying. The personnel are filled with hope and energy. Stage one.
That corresponds with the Makaguchi's era.In remarkably short order, something takes shape out of the fog: the leader is far more important than anyone realized.
He not only sets the tone. He sits at the apex of a structure. At first, the structure was merely assumed to be whatever was necessary to forward the objectives. But now, in stage two, it assumes primacy. The leader informs the members (personnel) that the structure must survive. In order to do that, it will have to grow.
There is no going back to the beginning. Widening the organization is a mandate of great priority. And for growth to happen, the members must assert extreme loyalty to the overarching goals, yes, but actually to the organization and the leader.
The leader personifies the structure. He is the monarch. He issues the marching orders to his major minions, and they pass these orders, through the command-and-control apparatus, down to each member.
That corresponds to the Toda era.Through repetitive brainwashing, realities are impressed upon the minds of the adherents (members, personnel). No one can wander off the reservation. Initiative and independent action, while seeming to be useful, are actually counter-productive and even dangerous. This the party line—exactly what would, for instance, keep a police officer from following his nose and his innate curiosity in politically charged investigation like the Marathon bombings.
There are rules, and the burgeoning number of them are there to ensure the survival of the group. The rules have been carefully crafted. They are “for the greater good.” “We’re all in this together.” “What one person does affects everyone.” “Don’t go rogue.”
In this stage two, a transformation is taking place. The idealism of the early days is being squashed, in favor of the collective.
The survival of the collective is hammered, again and again. at the members. Without extreme obedience, the whole structure would fall apart and wash away. And who wants that kind of death?
That corresponds to the Ikeda era begining in 1960.Stage three makes it appearance with pronouncements about external enemies. The leader carries that essential freight; convincing the members they are under threat is the mind-control glue that holds everybody together.
These enemies want to destroy (or de-fund) the organization. They want to denigrate the group’s objectives. They want to defame the leader.
The enemies, real and imagined, are named. It only matters that they seem to proliferate. Their threatening presence further tunes up the members. “We’re under attack. Don’t waver now. Only the strong survive. Take heart. We will win this war. Obedience is more important than ever.”
That corresponds with the split with the priesthood.It’s an easy step from external to internal enemies. That is the cherry on the cake. “We have a mole. There are traitors among us. Someone has leaked proprietary information. We’ve been infiltrated.”
Now, an atmosphere of secrecy, suspicion, and paranoia spreads like poison among the members. The leader orders internal investigations, to root out the turncoats.
Soka Spirit much?At the same time, the organization is committing crimes. They are lying, they are stealing, they are making alliances with “influential people from the outside.”
This is happening at the highest levels of the structure.
Gone are the high-flying emotions of the early days. Life in the organization is grim.
Yes, but the money has flowed to the top of the pyramid very nicely for decades.The structure has become large enough and criminal enough that some members are secretly looking for ways to game their own system. Others have gone passive and simply do what they’re told.
The leader is pictured as a heroic embattled figure, standing on the parapet, directing his troops against invaders.
Ah yes, Dear Leader.Defectors from within the ranks are multiplying. But to a degree, the brainwashing holds.
Membership is down, but the bucks are still rolling in.“In these dangerous times, your work is more important than ever. Deserting your post could defeat our objectives. We’re the good guys. Only we know how vital our goals are. We hold the key to survival. Your leader needs you. We all need you. Don’t back out now.”
There is another level of brainwashing inside big government
(and relgious) cults (departments, agencies). “Government is good. Without it, society would collapse. The larger government is, the better it is. The purpose of government is to serve. We need more government, not less. Never do we need less.”
Members are now told, are made to understand, that lying and cheating are absolutely necessary. “For the greater good.” “Ends justify means.” This becomes the cultural imperative.
Dont let being rational get in the way!As time passes, and these government cults continue to expand, the language of criminality filters down from the high echelons, where it has been “the royal speech” for a very long time, to the lower levels.
The pretense is stripped away. “Do what you need to.”
"Kosen rufu - no matter what!"In retrospect, a true investigation would show that any one of these big government cults has been colluding with outside criminal forces for a very long time, even perhaps from its beginnings.
Over decades, cult leaders come and go. They assume new qualities. They are now the faceless soulless ones. They run their machine organizations according to the principle of caution and plausible deniability.
Endless "New leader appointments" to replace the cult casualities.Each one of the cults employs a balance of androids, game players, and true believers. They are all finally ground down to a fine mixture of particles. It no longer matters what the members believe or feel. They fill posts and positions and they do their jobs. Lying, cheating, stealing, and even killing are ordinary aspects of the jobs.
That is how a cult endures.
This is what author Hannah Arendt was talking about when she coined the phrase, “the banality of evil.”
The hive, the nest, the group, the cult, the collective weaves a fairy tale about its vital contributions, but underneath it all, it assumes all the features of a mafia.
May I present a fine example of this - the Sgi cult!Within the cult, an air of unreality pervades. The astonishingly sharp division between its announced aims and its real practices produces an acrid stench which, through its public relations people, is blown across a sanitized air conditioning system, in hopes of achieving a neutrality that will escape attention.
The cult is a double-decker psyop aimed at the outside world and its own members.
SG cult has this down to an art!In typical bland fashion, government cults present a determined face to the public. “We do our jobs in a systematic way. We know the best methods and we employ them. We get results.”
Therefore, when independent researchers and investigators discover gaping holes in the way these cults go about their business (Aurora, Sandy Hook, Boston), the official response is: conspiracy theorists; nuts; crazies; obstructionists.
Backsliders, devils, malcontents, slanderers.You could call this the fourth stage of the cult. It no longer looks like a devoted band of followers with a leader. It no longer looks like an organization composed of individual humans. It looks like an army of units. It looks like an apparatus. It looks like a computerized set of functions.
It looks like mindless zylots regurgitating cult speak while endlessly repeating the same mind-numbing rituals.On closer inspection, it resembles a fungus. Individual cells reproduce, and their offspring in turn reproduce. The overall organism moves out in every direction, developing strategies to attach itself to organic and inorganic matter.
Any Something can be a host.
Watching this process, outsiders who have surrendered their own souls as independent individuals begin to realize this is the apotheosis of their dream. To promote and somehow belong to the advancing mold, the spreading decay.
This, they believe, is power. The only power.
Perversely, the original stated goals of the cult, the high-flying ideals, are reintroduced.
Now, in their new incarnation, they are grotesque cartoons.Welcome to your new cartoonish identity - enjoy and obey!But as Nazi propagandists knew, the bigger the lie, the greater the likelihood of it being believed.
Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, the father of modern public relations, and the cadres of psychological warfare specialists who followed in his wake, understood that, by speaking to the masses over and over, by addressing the collective, by building up stereotypes of human beings, they could wipe out and reprogram a significant number of individual minds on the planet.
In doing so, they vastly multiplied the supply of potential cult members.
Walk into the headquarters of any government agency or large corporation
(or large religious cult) and you will see the result.
They are inside the hive dream.
We
(the cult survivors) are outside.
Believe it or not: our platform is stronger.
Coming to understand that fact in your blood, muscles, brain, mind, and imagination is the key to the door that opens into the river, the river of unbounded energy, where freedom is the future. (by Jon Rappoport)
A great article on cult mentality.
SGIcult and its propagandic "World Peace" lies are indeed grotesque cartoons of real world peace. May the Sgcult (and all cults) quickly rot away beyond the 4th stage and into oblivion.Spartacus