@SGBye

Why disjoin if you legaly have never been a member?

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Rothaus

Why disjoin if you legaly have never been a member?

I, for one, don't like SGI bragging about how many millions of members they have, when in reality they have many less than they claim. All of us and so many other former SGI members continue to be counted as members. Even people who fill out a membership card but never practice are counted as active members.

@ quiet one they may be counted as members inactive or active. fact is that for example the german legal memebership counts little more than 11. Guess it will be roughly the same in the US.

I'm not sure what a "legal member" is. What constitutes a legal member vs. a regular member?

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quiet one
I'm not sure what a "legal member" is. What constitutes a legal member vs. a regular member?

well its the board of directors that are the legal members. we were told once that this was for our protection - as a matter of fact though this sort of construct keeps them clear from legal claims.
for example when some SGI youth have nothing better to do than to apply super glue to the lock of a door of a lets say nichiren shohsu priest, sgi can always claim that none of their members were involved.

SGI is very sneaky!

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quiet one
SGI is very sneaky!

well is that not reason why we come together here? to just disclose that?
hope some of those just reading the mesages would stpep forward. in this information age at least no one should say that they did not know.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/05/2009 05:35AM by Rothaus.

I once had a hotmail email account years ago that I wanted to close. My husband was on the phone with IT support for hours. My husband got no where and he himself is an IT professional!

All this to say that hotmaol never closed my account. It was too much for them to figure out how to do close the email account as the account was historicallt connected to our old phone bill from many years ago (from a previous phone provider).

Why do I mention this? Sometimes SGI is not as organized as one would expect.

I remember a member calling when I was doing toban (receptionist/administrative help) years ago to get information on someone to begin an official district transfer. The SGI employee was on the phone with her for an hour trying to tell her that they didn't have records for all the members. My own experience is that if there exists a paper membership card out there in the universe it is a) usually only a paper membership card b) usually not entered on a central database c) it is impossible to have the card destroyed because they don't know where it is most of the time.
I used to ask my district to let go of old cards/shred the cards etc. I was told it was better to make cause for the person on the membership and keep them "connected." I do remember that there were a lot of people who had gone taitan, or moved to an unknown location, disconnected numbers, inaccurate addresses, the list goes on and on.

I honestly don't think SGI is capable of getting rid of a paper membership card. Its too much work. However, if someone asks that they not be contacted and threatens legal action I'm sure SGI would make it a point to "cease and assist."

SGI publications were centralized many years ago. The publications people always send us paper renewal reminders to the address they have on file. It used to be that the members would be up all night at the kaikan till all the publications were accounted for. I spent many a night in the kaikan along with countless other kids. My parents would pull all nighters and I would go at home around dawn. I know the central list for the publications are highly organized but the paper membership cards are stored in district/local leaders' homes. Its like they say the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. Of course whenever one uses "my lawyer" in the communication to SGI maybe that will get things done.

One of the interesting things about SGI is that on the bottom level, it does seem to be quite disorganized and chaotic, and it is. SGI for the bottom rung of membership in the US is somewhat of a deliberately loose organization.

But this is clearly done intentionally by SGI-USA, because frankly they don't care. What they care about gets handled very carefully, and it seems to be mainly money and property. All of SGI's money gets handled quite carefully, as the billions pile up.
But they leave all the local stuff to "volunteers", and they don't care if its sloppy.

Even Ikeda has openly said he does not trust people who have not been SGI for a very long time, so on some level SGI probably has contempt for many of the bottom level US SGI members, and just use it as a revenue stream, and a numbers game.
They then recruit from the bottom level to get volunteers to run their offices and work them many hours a week, but even those people are not trusted with anything.

But they do seem to seek out those with family money, and give them "special treatment" and keep them in the local SGI office many times a week.

But that chaos at the local level, should not be used to point to chaos at SGI headquarters, where they follow the dollars very carefully.
But a paper membership card should be able to be destroyed.
That being said, all of these sects/groups have moved to computer databases, which are far easier for them to manage.

But to get off mailing lists of these groups, one can send a "cease and desist" letter. If that doesn't work, a letter from even a paralegal should do it, as those are treated differently. One just has to keep turning up the heat.

Interesting views on the membership situation. I just simply don't like being one of the numbers that they trumpet on their website, in their pamphlets, or boast about at their meetings.

The SGI is pretty obsessed with taking tabs on how many people attend each meeting. Whenever there's a big meeting there's always a sign-up sheet where you have to put down your name, the specific gender group you fall into (mens, women, young mens, young women), and your geographical locale. For the smaller district meetings, someone is always quietly taking attendance. I know because I was one of those people. I'd have to write down what specifice gender group everyone fell into and then report this number to the leader above me, who would then turn it in to the leaders above him. This obsession they had with quantity over quality (so to speak) was a major point that drove me away.