Is TED a Cult?

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I never gave a whole lot of thought to TED. I've seen a few lectures because they went viral. Some were good. Some not so much. I never had the time or inclination to research the organization. But over the past few weeks, they've drawn my attention less because of some of the excellent presentations they've posted than because they've censored that excellent content. So, I'm learning about TED just in time to watch it jump the shark.

As I wrote yesterday, they censored two excellent lectures by Graham Hancock and Rupert Sheldrake. Weeks ago I watched a brilliant talk by Nick Hanauer that I saw posted on a thread with a very high recommendation. But as I was watching the video, I noticed other videos in the sidebar about how it had been censored, and began picking through that morass.

In watching the drama unfold between Hancock and TED, so many of the patterns are familiar. I've seen this with a lot of the big sites through the years: the in-group/out-group dynamics, the condescension and derision from site administration, the accusations that people who complain are basically spammers, the exasperated indifference from site administration, the sense from administrators that they are displaying benevolent largesse by even allowing criticism and discussion of their backroom decision, the refusal to answer direct questions, the bald-faced bullshitting...  I could go on but, really, it's so tiresome.

I've long thought that large web communities were ripe for some sort of study into the psychology of influence. They so rapidly devolve into authoritarian hierarchy. I see a lot of it displayed on the web-based arm of TED. But I have to admit that I was brought up short by the Joe Rogan interview I saw posted last night in response to TED's censorship of Graham Hancock. If this is what's going on at the actual conferences, TED is so much worse than I thought.



Rogan interviewed TED refugee Eddie Huang, who brought tales of cult-like behavior within TED. Huang compares it to Scientology. If you can get past the profanity -- not an issue for me but it merits mentioning -- this is a very interesting discussion. If Huang's experience is even remotely reflective of what goes on behind the scenes, there are some very troubling indicators here:

• TED conferences are closed environments and none of the fellows are allowed to leave the conference
• Forced camaraderie and inability to be alone ~ TED assigns everyone a roommate and won't allow fellows a private room even if they're willing to pay for it
• Sleep deprivation ~ lectures, networking, and forced fun, make for very long days and full participation is overtly demanded
• Exclusivity ~ TED is very, very special and, as part of TED, you can be special, too

Also troubling are the financial elements Huang touches upon. As discussed, TED caters to wealthy donors and, it would seem, censors accordingly.  But the financial architecture indicated here is disturbing. The heavily cultivated audience members -- who are also made to feel very, very special -- shell out thousands of dollars a piece. Fellows -- aka., the people whose lectures are the TED product -- are paid nothing. Their only remuneration is wide exposure -- should TED put their lectures out on video rather then censor them -- and the opportunity to rub shoulders with their wealthy donors.

TED also gives fellows a packet with, ahem, helpful advice, like, "don't just ask them for money," because they apparently think their brilliant speakers are idiots. And, obviously, this is not really about helping out their fellows. It's about not upsetting their big money donors, by plaguing them with crass attempts by fellows to convert their time and energy expenditure into something resembling remuneration.

So what does TED give their talent? Free room and board to participate in a week-long event, which has the possibility but not the promise of advancing their work. What does TED take from their talent? Their time, their ideas, their energy, their names... I'm reminded of Al Franken's warning to users of social media like Facebook and Google: "You are not their client, you are their product."

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Debbie Ford Has Passed

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I am very saddened to announce that I just learned from one of my Facebook friends that Debbie Ford has passed. She fought a long battle with a rare form of cancer -- something I only knew through mutual friends and did not share for some time. She went public last year with her struggle and her reasons for keeping that part of her life private in a conversation with Oprah.

Ford was a tremendous gift to the spiritual community. She introduced the concept of shadow work to a large segment of the new age world and made it accessible; even palatable. As Jung said, making the darkness conscious is "disagreeable, and therefore, not popular."  She was an amazing teacher with the rare courage to call bullshit on herself, repeatedly. She will be profoundly missed.

Here is a little more of Ford, in her own words, on what she learned from her long struggle with illness.

A site is being set up for people to share their thoughts and feelings. It's not up yet but it will become available at rememberingdebbieford.com.

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Pigs in Zen

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I've been so immersed in events erupting from the the scandal-plagued, power-abusing Vatican all week, I missed the news about scandal-plagued, power-abusing Zen teacher Joshu Sasaki. Funnily enough, the latter story broke wide with an article in the paper of record the same day Pope Benedict's resignation was announced. Of course, rumors had dogged the aging leader since the 1970s, but it was in January of this year that an announcement from senior teachers was posted on the Sasaki community website.

In early January, the senior teachers of Sasaki's community admitted in an on-line statement that the community "has struggled with our teacher Joshu Sasaki Roshi's sexual misconduct for a significant portion of his career in the United States."

In truth, to call them rumors is generous. It seems the living legend's inappropriateness was known about and actively enabled for decades. Then, in November of last year,  Zen priest Eshu Martin, who had studied under Sasaki for over ten years, threw down the gauntlet with a post on the Sweeping Zen website. The title, "Everybody Knows – Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi and Rinzai-ji," is an obvious allusion to one of Sasaki's more famous students, Leonard Cohen. This reference does more than point to the fact that Sasaki's behavior was common knowledge. Cohen's masterpiece speaks to the ubiquity of deceit and injustice in this game of life we are all participating in.

Joshu Sasaki Roshi, the founder and Abbot of Rinzai-ji is now 105 years old, and he has engaged in many forms of inappropriate sexual relationship with those who have come to him as students since his arrival here more than 50 years ago. His career of misconduct has run the gamut from frequent and repeated non-consensual groping of female students during interview, to sexually coercive after hours “tea” meetings, to affairs and sexual interference in the marriages and relationships of his students. Many individuals that have confronted Sasaki and Rinzai-ji about this behaviour have been alienated and eventually excommunicated, or have resigned in frustration when nothing changed; or worst of all, have simply fallen silent and capitulated. For decades, Joshu Roshi’s behaviour has been ignored, hushed up, downplayed, justified, and defended by the monks and students that remain loyal to him.

Everybody knows that you love me baby Everybody knows that you really do Everybody knows that you've been faithful Ah give or take a night or two Everybody knows you've been discreet But there were so many people you just had to meet Without your clothes And everybody knows ~ Leonard Cohen

As is so painfully typical in these situations, abused women who complained were shamed and shunned, while the abusive leader was venerated. From the New York Times story:

Many women whom Mr. Sasaki touched were resident monks at his centers. One woman who confronted Mr. Sasaki in the 1980s found herself an outcast afterward. The woman, who asked that her name not be used to protect her privacy, said that afterward “hardly anyone in the sangha, whom I had grown up with for 20 years, would have anything to do with us.”

. . .

Several women said that Zen can foster an atmosphere of overt sexism. Jessica Kramer, a doula in Los Angeles, was Mr. Sasaki’s personal attendant in 2002. She said that he would reach into her robe and that she always resisted his advances. Surrounded almost entirely by men, she said she got very little sympathy. “I’d talk about it with people who’d say, ‘Why not just let him touch your breasts if he wants to touch your breasts?’ ”

Almost more appalling is the blatant subversion of Buddhist teachings Sasaki used to manipulate women and justify his sexual acting out.

In the council’s report on Jan. 11, the three members wrote of “Sasaki asking women to show him their breasts, as part of ‘answering’ a koan” — a Zen riddle — “or to demonstrate ‘non-attachment.’ ”

. . .

“He would say something like, ‘True love is giving yourself to everything,’ ” she explained. At Mount Baldy, the isolation could hamper one’s judgment. “It can sound trite, but you’re in this extreme state of consciousness,” she said — living at a monastery in the mountains, sitting in silence for many hours a day — “where boundaries fall away.”

Not the first time I've heard a spiritual leader reinterpret the surrender to spirit as a surrender to himself. If you don't surrender to his ego, you're just too much in your ego. Get it? But most appalling was this gem:

One monk, whom Ms. Stubbs said she told about the touching, was unsympathetic. “He believed in Roshi’s style, that sexualizing was teaching for particular women,” Ms. Stubbs said. The monk’s theory, common in Mr. Sasaki’s circle, was that such physicality could check a woman’s overly strong ego. [all emphases mine]

Uppity bitches. Someone had to knock 'em down a peg or two. The irony here is the implicit admission that sexual abuse is not about sex. It's about power and dominance.

Grace Schireson, who was on the "witnessing council" that issued a report on the problem in January, cites the Westernization of a Japanese practice. Interviewed by the Times, she claimed that the Japanese view their teachers with a healthy dose of skepticism and are less inclined to put them on a pedestal. Personally, I find it hard to believe that the Japanese are less deferential to authority than Westerners. I think that basic problem is more a facet of human nature than culture (See Milgram). I put the question to my husband who has spent years studying martial arts, and is fairly well acquainted with Japanese teachers and customs. Leave say, he did not find that to be so. If anything, he found that Japanese teachers are more expectant of deference and that his own teachers were surprised by the "many questions" American students ask.

I have little knowledge of Japanese culture, but I do know that it is notoriously male dominated and incredibly sexist. Groping women on trains is so common in Japan that women-only cars had to be established. Such violations are fetishized, pornogrophized, and popularized in manga.

That said, the report offers a very insightful take on the dynamics that allowed this problem to go on for decades.

When ongoing questions of misuse of sexuality or power unfold in a spiritual community, it is rarely a matter of one person’s actions. Reading through the painful and heartfelt accounts documenting Joshu Sasaki’s sexual relationships with students at Rinzaiji down through the years, we see how, knowingly and unknowingly, the community was drawn into an open secret, and people’s ability to practice the dharma suffered. Despite individual and collective attempts to address boundaries, repentance, and rectification, these behaviors appear to have continued over more than four decades. We have reports that those who chose to speak out were silenced, exiled, ridiculed, or otherwise punished.

Understanding that our practice is to bear what is unbearable and not to turn away from reality, how could this be so? We suggest it has something to do with a view of spiritual authority and “enlightenment” that we in the West have created in the name of Zen. To be fair, this is not just a problem of Zen. It arises in various Buddhist communities, and more widely in other religious congregations. We are unfortunately susceptible to enthrallment, which is hardly "seeing things as they really are." There are certain problems that may arise when one sees a teacher as comprehensively enlightened and fails to deal with the certainty that he or she, like oneself, has a shadow or deluded aspect. We imagine that “enlightenment” is separate from or outside of ourselves. The community may attempt to protect the teacher, the seeming embodiment of enlightenment. If we hold such a model, it is often impossible to recognize or admit that there has been an abuse of power. We fear the loss of our enlightened teacher and thus the opportunity to become enlightened ourselves.

It is not about a single individual, but about a very toxic synergy of power dynamics that can arise in any hierarchical structure. Even a deeply pathological leader cannot maintain a grip on a community unless he is enabled by followers. And even leaders who start out with the best of intentions can be seduced and subverted by the adulation of their followers. (See Zimbardo.) The search for enlightenment is subject to any number of pitfalls if we aren't keeping track of the shadow. (See Jung.)

This scandal put me in mind of a similar one at the Kripalu Institute many years ago -- not because these things are uncommon. They aren't. But because I was a fly on the wall for some of the aftermath of the Kripalu scandal. I spent a week at the Massuchusetts ashram shortly after the whole thing went down. I was just there for some yoga, rest, and relaxation, but it ended up being quite a lesson in the dynamics of disillusionment.

I did a little googling to refresh my memory on some of the details and I came across some interesting perspectives. But first, for those unfamiliar with the particulars:

In 1994, [Amrit] Desai resigned after admitting to having sex with followers.^[2][5][7][8] Kripalu paid $2.5 million to settle a purported class action lawsuit brought by more than 100 former residents who had served as unpaid staff. Kripalu financed the payment partly by selling its adjacent Foxhollow property, which it had acquired to provide housing for its most senior members.^[5][9]

One New York Times article pointed to yet another, more recent yoga scandal. The author manages to completely miss the point.

But this is hardly the first time that yoga’s enlightened facade has been cracked by sexual scandal. Why does yoga produce so many philanderers? And why do the resulting uproars leave so many people shocked and distraught?

One factor is ignorance. Yoga teachers and how-to books seldom mention that the discipline began as a sex cult — an omission that leaves many practitioners open to libidinal surprise.

Hatha yoga — the parent of the styles now practiced around the globe — began as a branch of Tantra. In medieval India, Tantra devotees sought to fuse the male and female aspects of the cosmos into a blissful state of consciousness.

The characterization of Tantra as a "sex cult" is extremely reductive, but that's not the dumbest part of the article. The author goes on to explain that Hatha increases circulation in the pelvic area and heightens the passions, which is true. Of course the same could be said many forms of physical exercise.

Where the article really enters the realm of the absurd is in the suggestion that sex scandals like the one at Kripalu were simply the result heightened sexual appetites. The idea that this was just a bunch of sexually adventurous people doing what comes naturally is absurd. Heightened and spiritualized sexuality could just as easily enhance committed relationships and increase closeness and intimacy between partners, as is, indeed, often the case.

The problem is one of dynamics and abuse of power, not human sexuality. In the case of Kripalu and similar scandals, many women claim to have been intimidated and coerced. Victims who complain are ostracized. Many lies are told and secrets kept. This is not about consensual sexual activity, openly engaged in by willing participants.

More to the point, as the subject of this post illustrates, these scandals are hardly unique to the world of yoga.

Finally, I read some excerpts from a book that addresses the Kripalu crisis. Steven Cope's Yoga and the Quest for the True Self speaks brilliantly to the group dynamics and larger lessons learned when people are ready to take their power back.

It was not the scandal that forced the death of the old forms of yoga at Kripalu. Quite the opposite. It was the impending death of the old paradigm that required the scandal. It is clear that the fact of Amrit Desai's affairs had been in the unconscious of the community all along. It was not new information. Quite a few individuals held the secret. It was simply information that could not be brought to the light of consciousness until the community was more or less ready for it.

In 1994 when the scandal erupted, Gurudev had not suddenly changed. In fact, the sexual misconduct was by that time many years old. Amirt was who he had always been -- ambitious, brilliant, sometimes a sincere yogi, sometimes just a smooth performer, too often a teacher who was too charming for his own good. It was the community's own capacity to see and bear the truth that had changed.

The bonfire was just as much a sign of success as of failure.

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Religious Abusers in Prison Maintain Strict Authority

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Incarcerated FLDS leader Warren Jeffs is maintaining an iron grip on followers even as his prophetic proclamations fail to manifest. I say that only because it's 2013 and the world hasn't ended.

“The consensus seems to be that Warren is indicating that by the end of the year, the end of the world will be here," Brower said.

A CNN reporter dispatched to the community's main enclave in Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah, was rejected by FLDS members who refused to speak to him. Meanwhile, the abrupt closing of the area's only grocery story and "central gathering" point for the community has added to fears Jeff's followers are gearing up for doomsday, according to the report.

The global cataclysm appears to have been rescheduled after an earlier prediction that would have ended the world on December 23rd also failed to pan out.

There is nothing exactly new about Jeffs's apocalyptic prophecies. As his former FLDS follower Isaac Wyler points out, it's one of his best techniques for ramping up fervor in his followers.

“They are all supposed to make these grey or blue backpacks, 2x2x1, pack them with essentials,” Wyler said. “Be ready to go at a moment’s notice.”

Wyler said he’s heard it all before: “it’s just Warren whipping them up into another frenzy to gather money.”

And when the end doesn’t come? Wyler said Jeffs will still be right and blame his followers for not having enough faith for it to happen.

Yes, Jeffs seems to have hit on a winning formula for maintaining control. All of his failures can be blamed on his followers for not being obedient enough. They become more submissive than ever and Jeffs's inaccuracy is explained away.

The mutability of doomsday prophecy is hardly unique to Jeffs's FLDS. It's long been known that such spectacular failures can increase rather than decrease loyalty in cult followers. Originally published in 1956, When Prophecy Fails described the seminal research of Leon Festinger, et al., who infiltrated a UFO cult as they awaited alien rescue from a global flood. When neither event occurred at the appointed time, a new revelation from their prophet explained that by their demonstration of faith they had averted the world-ending cataclysm. The group's faith was not only renewed but intensified.

Festinger pointed to this case study as validation of his "cognitive dissonance" theory. As discussed here, when our thoughts, feelings, and actions, are in conflict, we need to resolve the disconnect and regain our equilibrium. When people have sacrificed much of their material lives -- jobs, families, education -- to wait for a prophesized UFO rescue that doesn't come, they are highly motivated to find validation for the tangible commitments they've made, rather than upend their lives again.

In the case of FLDS followers, the commitment is multigenerational. This is the only way of life these people have ever known and they are materially dependent on the continuation of the larger community. They're thoroughly acculturated to the beliefs and morés of the church. To let a little thing like the continuation of a world that was supposed to have ended overwrite the belief and commitment that not only defines but dictates their lives would be far more complicated than simply accepting Jeffs's explanations and trying harder to follow his edicts.

As discussed, FLDS has been subject to increasingly demanding edicts and called to dramatic demonstrations of devotion. FLDS schools now do almost nothing but indoctrinate fanatical devotion to their incarcerated leader.

You may have heard how the FLDS have been told their righteousness and faith will free their prophet, Warren Jeffs, from prison.

Attorney Roger Hoole on Wednesday showed reporter Jim Dalrymple and me a drawing that illustrates the point well. The drawing is of a rose with six words written across it.

"Uncle Warrens Deliverance Depends Upon Me!" The last word is underlined. And, yes, there should be an apostrophe before the final letter in "Warrens."

Hoole says he found the drawing in the Holm School, where many FLDS sent their children until the private school’s leader was excommunicated on Dec. 15, 2011.

As Jeffs becomes more and more demanding, the potential for just how far his followers go to resolve whatever disequilibrium has resulted from his continued incarceration has surrounding communities and law enforcement on high alert.

While much of Jeffs' predictions [stet] seem like the mere rantings of a man who will not have the opportunity for freedom until his 93rd birthday, former member Wyler said the continuing obedience of some in the FLDS community is unpredictable and frightening in its strength.

“There’s always that fear that Warren would see how far he could take them,” Wyler told KUTV. “I’ve got a brother-in-law who once told my sister ‘if the prophet told me to I’d slit your throat without even thinking about it."

Meanwhile, in the Amish sect that people have similarly compared to a potential Jonestown, followers await the sentencing of the unfortunately named Bishop Mullet and his merry band of haircutters. A number of the men and women convicted last October remain free on bond until sentencing but are busily making arrangements for their many, many children should they receive jail terms. As per the New York Times, it looks like sentencing was pushed back to February 8 -- I had recorded a date of January 24. They are praying for miracles like short sentences and probation for some members.

One hopes that Bishop Mullet at least will go to jail for a very long time. It seems likely. Judge Dan Aaron Polster has wide discretion due to the kidnapping charges and he has shown little inclination towards leniency with these defendants. He recently refused to grant Sam Mullet a new trial and affirmed his certainty that jury's verdict was correct.

“Suffice it to say, the evidence at trial conclusively established that defendant, as bishop of Bergholz, ran his community with an iron fist,” the judge wrote in a ruling on Dec. 6. “Nothing of significance happened without his knowledge and approval.”

Sam Mullet continues to claim that his only error was in not stopping the attacks once he learned of them. He now even claims that he might have been victimized by his own parishioners if he'd protested their behavior.

“I guess I didn’t want my beard cut off, and that probably would have happened if I had tried to stop them,” he said. “The only thing I did wrong was that I didn’t tell them to stop.”

The suggestion is risible. But Sam Mullet has been casting himself as a hapless victim from the beginning. To hear him tell it, he and his entire community were treated unfairly by all the other Amish, by the police, and now by the criminal justice system. But when push comes to shove, the Bishop is more than willing throw his followers under the bus. He is a victim among victims.

What strikes me over and over with Bishop Mullet is how not characteristically Amish he is. When I was reading up on the disturbing prevalence of sex abuse in Amish communities, one of the things I found most fascinating was the willingness of perpetrators to come clean when pressed. And not just within their own process of repentance and reconciliation. Even police have found them to be surprisingly open about these utterly shameful crimes against children. The Amish consider all sin forgivable and don't seem to see any reason to lie. Coming clean about transgressions is part of their process and part of their culture.

Sam Mullet, on the other hand, lies shamelessly, even when the evidence against him is overwhelming... which it was. He still claims that he did not endorse the haircutting attacks, despite having been caught on tape laughing about future raids and warning followers to keep their mouths shut. He relegates claims that he slept with other men's wives to "lurid rumor" by "rival Amish" despite the fact that when the FBI arrested him, he was in his bedroom with one Lovina Miller, whom he may have impregnated.

Sam Mullet is a "you gonna believe me or your own lying eyes" kind of a guy.

I was surprised early on at the Bishop's willingness to appear on camera. And as the above video demonstrates, his followers are also very open to being filmed and photographed. It seems the surrounding Amish are very aware of how far from traditional Amish values and practices the Bergholz clan is, and find them terrifying. But Bishop Mullet and his followers are convinced that they are the ones who are truly Amish and that it is everyone else whom "God is not with."

The Bergholz community is in a mutually reinforced version of reality that is very much at odds with the world outside of it. And that, even more than the degrading punishments, the sexual exploitation, and the attacks on "sinful" outsiders, is reason for concern in the months and years ahead.

It's very clear from the New York Times coverage that they are sticking by Sam Mullet and are still taking orders from him even as he regales them with sad stories about the horrors of prison life.  Daughter Wilma explains, “No matter if he gets life in prison, he will still be our bishop here.”

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The Problem Is Choice

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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Where the writer ends, the director begins. Where the director ends, the actor begins. Where the actor ends, the audience begins.

That old adage -- no I don't know the source -- is a reminder of something crucial that extends far beyond the world of theater. Put simply, you can't control other people. Worse, if you try, you suffocate both life and art.

That fundamental truism popped into my head today when I read a post in The Awl entitled "Advice is Futile."

After editing an advice column for two years, I’ve decided that there is no such thing as advice. There are only problems and the ways people handle them. Advice, on the other hand, is when you hear a description of someone else's problem and then tell the person something about yourself. Hopefully whatever you say is funny or interesting, but it has little to do with actually helping anyone. It may seem or feel like it does, but there are always more variables than we'll ever be able to see or understand, and best case scenario you’re pressing on the problem a little bit in a way that engages the problem-haver.

. . .

Because either the asker doesn't take the advice, since everyone just does what they want or are otherwise going to do anyway, especially if it's cheat on their boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, or wives (oh my god, you should see the inbox; at first it was sad but now it's actually kind of comforting that everyone’s the same), which can create a rift between the advice-giver and the advice not-taker. Or they take the advice, except that's not particularly helpful, either, since it strips them of the opportunity to learn the lesson first-hand (presuming there is one), which you already have (again, presumably). And telling someone to trust you blindly can come off as condescending. Or like wrapping a finish-line ribbon around someone’s chest instead of encouraging them to run the race. Kind of. Maybe? I don’t know. More on how little I know in a moment.

Now, one could fairly argue that I give advice for a living. I do, after a fashion. But I learned, long before I started working as a reader, effectively what columnist Edith Zimmerman has learned. Most people won't do what you tell them to do and, much of the time, that's probably for the best. So one thing I have always emphasized with my clients is that anything I say is my opinion based on my interpretation and that I would never tell them what choices they should make. Anything, anyone tells you -- whether they're human, spirit, angelic, or... other (???) -- is really just food for thought. I tend to put a lot more stock in what my guides tell me than mere mortals, but I still give it all fair consideration.

Shaman Christina Pratt talks about our "truth cord" -- a fiber of inner knowing -- against which new information must be "bounced." I've always found that a useful illustration. One way or another, we all need to evaluate for ourselves if recommendations from others, whether we've asked for input or not, feel right.

Neo: But if you already know, how can I make a choice? The Oracle: Because you didn't come here to make the choice, you've already made it. You're here to try to understand *why* you made it. I thought you'd have figured that out by now. ~ The Matrix Reloaded

The consequences won't always be pretty.

Many years ago I was at a gathering. There was a man there I'd never met before who shared with his friends that he hadn't been around for a while because of an incident. He had gone to a psychic some time before who'd warned him to be very careful crossing streets and to always look both ways before stepping off the curb. She saw a horrible accident if he failed to heed that advice. She also gave him a time-frame. He'd forgotten about that part of the reading, but he had plenty of time to contemplate it during the months he spent in the hospital, in traction, wearing a full body cast.

I've thought about that story many times since as my clients regaled me with stories of things that went horribly, horribly wrong, because they'd forgotten things I'd said or, simply, went another way. I've had clients who barely, but thankfully, escaped situations I'd advised against with their lives. I've had clients who've been emotionally, or even physically scarred, in relationships I've warned them about. But I've also had clients who did things I did not recommend that saw the evolution of other opportunities that turned out very, very well. The one thing I'm very certain of, is that whether their choices turned out badly or well, they've learned very valuable things that they might not have if they'd followed my advice to the letter.

I understand the frustration of psychics, therapists, well-intended friends, family, and everyone else who has given great advice only to see it ignored. I also learned long ago that, in many cases, when people ask for advice, they really just want someone to listen to them far more than they want recommendations. We just don't have much of a framework in our culture for anyone to ask for that -- simply to be heard without judgment.

If you can't stand having your advice ignored, I would advise against the advice business. More often than not, when someone is going one direction, where you would go another, the truth probably lies somewhere in between. And it's never our place to tell other people what to do.

When you try to control other people you take away their power. Our ability to choose IS our power.

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White Noise: The Fragrance

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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There are a few fun facts that I learned in aromatherapy school. Our sense of smell, or olfaction, is one nerve synapse away from the limbic brain and clicks rapidly through the amygdala and hippocampus. So smells trigger memories and powerful emotional responses. Olfaction does not go through the neocortex, so there are no words that exclusively describe smells. We borrow adjectives from other sensory stimuli to describe them, like colors, sounds, and tastes. For instance, scents can be green, or loud, or fruity. Now comes a newly created scent profile called "white noise."

Another thing I learned in aromatherapy school is that, while this is a fascinating discovery about our sense of smell, the study described here does not constitute aromatherapy. Aromatherapy is the use of pure plant essences and offers numerous therapeutic properties above and beyond the psychoactive effects of scent. The fragrance industry relies heavily on chemically replicated scents and other derivatives of natural essences and I suspect that is the case here as well. Still. Fascinating.

Mixing multiple wavelegths that span the human visual range equally makes white light; mixing multiple frequencies that span the range of human hearing equally makes the whooshing hum of white noise. Neurobiologist Noam Sobel from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and his colleagues wanted to find out whether a similar phenomenon happens with smelling. [7 New Flavors Your Tongue May Taste]

In a series of experiments, they exposed participants to hundreds of equally mixed smells, some containing as few as one compound and others containing up to 43 components. They first had 56 participants compare mixtures of the same number of compounds with one another. For example, a person might compare a 40-compound mixture with a 40-compound mixture, neither of which had any components in common.

This experiment revealed that the more components in a mixture, the worse participants were at telling them apart. A four-component mixture smells less similar to other four-component mixtures than a 43-component mixture smells to other 43-component mixtures.

. . .

In other words, our brains treat smells as a single unit, not as a mixture of compounds to break down, analyze and put back together again. If they didn't, they'd never see mixtures of completely different compounds as smelling the same.

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Has Judge Hatch Read The Secret?

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Robb Gary Evans ~ Former Cop

Stop me if you've heard this one. A drunk cop walks into a bar. There's a cover charge but he flashes his badge instead. He sees some women in the bar. The first one he pinches on the ass. The second is a friend of a friend. He walks up behind her, sticks his hand up her skirt and fondles her private parts. The woman doesn't care for it so she complains. When the bouncers throw him out of the bar he tells them he's a cop and they'll be arrested. Later, a jury of his peers finds him guilty of sexual abuse. It's a class 5 felony, so he's facing up to 2 1/2 years in prison. But the judge thinks he's a pretty swell guy and lets him off with probation. He doesn't have to register as a sex offender, says the judge. Then the judge turns to the victim of the assault and gives her, wait for it... a very stern lecture about how young ladies shouldn't be hanging out in bars. The punchline? That judge is a woman.

Said Judge Jacqueline Hatch:

"If you wouldn't have been there that night, none of this would have happened to you," Hatch said.

. . .

"I hope you look at what you've been through and try to take something positive out of it," Hatch said to the victim in court. "You learned a lesson about friendship and you learned a lesson about vulnerability."

Hatch said that the victim was not to blame in the case, but that all women must be vigilant against becoming victims.

"When you blame others, you give up your power to change," Hatch said that her mother used to say.

Oy vey.

There is certainly nothing new about blaming women and girls for getting themselves molested. It would be nice to think that Judge Hatch's shaming of a woman for going to a bar would make her a rare relic of a bygone era. I only wish it were that simple. Subjecting sexual assault victims to judgment and scrutiny no other crime victim ever has to endure never seems to go out of style.

But there are a couple of elements that elevate Judge Hatch's sentencing and remarks above your typical, misogynistic, "she had it coming" miscarriage of justice. One is that there is a level of expectation that a woman would be a tad less mind-meltingly sexist. The other is that her comments smack of that special brand of blame the victim idiocy one expects to hear from devotees of The Secret. I don't think those two things are unrelated.

It is commonly assumed that a woman would be more sympathetic to female victims of sexual assault than a man in a similar position. But people in the business of prosecuting rapists know otherwise. In fact, they will generally attempt to stack juries with men because female jurors are more likely to blame the victim. It seems counter-intuitive.

However, female jurors frequently do not side with the female complainant. Indeed, according to a Newsday article, “The most sympathetic juror a rape victim can hope for… is not a well-dressed, educated working woman, but a stocky, conservative, middle-aged Italian man. The Italian man, the researchers reason, regards women as fragile and in need of defense and will usually side with the accuser” (Tyre, 1991, p. 10). The article also quotes Barbara Eganhauser, a lead sex crimes prosecutor in Westchester County, who believes “women, even young women with contemporary lifestyles and values, often reject another woman’s accusation or rape and sex abuse out of their own fear” (Tyre, 1991, p. 10).

Several other authors also note that female jurors often do not accept as true the testimony of complainants. Attorney Julie Wright (1995) argues that these jurors distrust the complainants because they do not want to believe that something horrible could happen to “good people”. Such women subscribe to the “just world hypothesis,” that bad things do not happen at random, but rather everything in the world occurs for a reason. According to this theory, misfortune strikes only those worthy of hardship (Wright, 1995). Wright cites Elaine Walster’s research study, in which undergraduates were told of increasingly horrible things that happened to another person. The worse the event, the more likely the subject assigned blame to the other person, as it was “reassuring if the person [could] somehow blame the victim, taking the loss out of the realm of the uncontrollable” (Wright, 1995, p. 20). Using this logic, female jurors do not wish to imagine that rape could happen to them, and therefore the more they identify with the complainant, and the more hideous the crime, the more they need to deny the complainant’s claim. Wright notes that “Linda Fairstein, Chief of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Sex Crimes Unit, has observed that ‘for many women, the need to shield themselves from their own vulnerability to sexual assault is paramount. If they can insist that the victim engaged in behavior that they would never engage in, such as visiting a bar or going to a man’s apartment, they can convince themselves they are not at risk’” (Wright, 1995, p. 22). Thus, it is so frightening for the female juror to identify with the complainant that she needs to deny the complainant’s testimony, in order for the juror to feel safe in the world.

Furthermore, Gloria Cowan (2000) contends that women often disbelieve other women’s tales of sexual violence out of their own internalized oppression. She writes that many women are hostile to their own sex, and internalize negative female stereotypes. These women are more likely to “blame the victim” in the case of rape or sexual harassment. Cowan’s research study, using questionnaire responses from 155 college women, found a correlation between women’s hostility towards other women and women’s toleration of men mistreating women. While Cowan’s article does not specifically apply to jurors in rape cases, it does provide a persuasive argument as to why females may be disinclined to believe the victim of sexual abuse.

Yes. Women are more likely to blame other women for getting raped, not in spite of the fact that they identify with them, but because they do. It's all part of that reflexive need to create emotional distance from misfortune and convince yourself that you can make yourself immune. It's the same type of "over there" thinking that permeates the new thought movement, as discussed here and here. If you believe that other people are solely responsible for their own misfortune, you can convince yourself that it won't happen to you. This is a) demonstrably false, and b) cruel to victims of adversity.

This "just world" thinking was also evident in the James Ray fiasco. The dead, the injured, and those who were immobilized by physical incapacity and Ray's psychological tyranny were repeatedly blamed by Ray apologists. How could Ray possibly be at fault just for subjecting people to inconceivably high temperatures and berating them if they tried to crawl to the exit? Surely it was their own fault for not leaving. And that molestation victim in Judge Hatch's court? What was she doing leaving her house like that? Women go outside, they just bring rape on themselves. Bad things just don't happen to good people!

One of my favorite examples during the sweat lodge trial was the Ray defender whose words of wisdom were to be found in the strange pile of letters pleading with the court for leniency. I wrote it up here:

The support letters run the gamut. I haven't read them all but what I've read raises considerable concern. One, for instance, contains the following paragraph:

I've had a personal saying that I've shared with both of my children throughout their lifetime and it is exactly as follows:
"If you come home dead, I don't care who's fault it was!"
and what I use as an example to each of them is this: If you are walking down the street and you stop at a intersection, when the light turns green do you walk? NO! You wait, You look around, When it's clear you then walk! Then I remind them how many people see a green light and they start walking (with absolutely no regard for cars or buses). When I am out driving my own car with my children and we are sitting at a light, I'll often point out a stranger and we will make a game of it as we each take a guess ahead of time if a given person will look or walk. Can you guess what happens in most cases? They walk! (without looking). To me personally, it seems like such a common sense thing to do (to look around to make sure it is safe to walk.) I can hardly believe myself that people don't feel the need to do this.

Get it? If some driver runs a red light and hits you, it's your fault, kiddo, because you trusted that they'd be law abiding and pay attention to traffic signals. "Walk on the green, not in between," just isn't gonna cut it. Driving and walking defensively is certainly good advice, in and of itself, but Charlene D of Toronto, Ontario takes it about ten steps further. If her children fail to take responsibility, not only for their own behavior, but for irresponsible, drunk, or otherwise errant drivers, it's their own damn fault if they get hit. And she won't be bothering to seek justice for the vehicular homicide of her own children. So don't expect it.

That a sitting judge said virtually the same thing to a molestation survivor is, well... terrifying.

Does Judge Hatch's new-agey belief in the personal responsibility of crime victims only pertain to women who are sexually assaulted? Or is it more general? Taken at face value, Judge Hatch's statement about how blaming others is giving up personal power -- if we give her the benefit of the doubt that she's not just a sexist dirtbag -- makes her thoroughly unqualified to be a judge. By that logic no one is guilty of any crime, ever. Why bother with a criminal justice system? All crimes are just, in their own way.

Responding to outrage and a petition for her removal, Judge Hatch issued an apology which the crime victim has graciously accepted. Judge Hatch claimed her comments were "poorly communicated." They weren't. She made her opinions quite clear. Women shouldn't be in bars and if they put themselves in harm's way like that, they shouldn't blame their assailants. It was the ideas that sucked, not the wording.

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Religious Abuse: The Amish Hair-Cutting Trial

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

The trial of the Amish hair-cutting ring is set to start next Monday, August 27th. And prosecutors will be able to present evidence of Sam Mullet's abuse of his own parishioners: sex with other men's wives, paddling, the chicken coop, all of it. The government's argument is that these things are evidence of Sam Mullet's control over his flock, making him culpable for the hair-cutting raids on other Amish communities.

"His ability to convince those women, as well as their husbands and parents, to permit him to do so, establishes the extent of defendant Mullet's control over the community," the government said.

Based on that, the government said, the jury can conclude that Mullet was aware of 2011's attacks and approved.

In addition to the sexual conduct issues, alleged paddling rituals and punishing members by sending them to a chicken coop "are not inflammatory; they are undisputed facts" that the jury should hear, the government said.

Defense attorneys had moved to have much of this information excluded on the basis that it was unproven and prejudicial. But Judge Dan Aaron Polster has largely agreed with the prosecution. He found that Mullet's treatment of his own people is an element in the crime in question and testimony about that treatment can be heard by a jury. He did agree with the defense that prosecutors not use prejudicial language to describe the Bergholz clan which has been characterized by many as a cult. Witnesses, however, will not be so constrained.

Federal prosecutors will be allowed to question witnesses about Amish leader Sam Mullet’s sexual activities when the hate-crime trial of Mullet and 15 followers begins next week, a federal judge ruled Monday (Aug. 20).

U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster also agreed to allow testimony about Mullet’s use of corporal punishment to control followers, but forbid prosecutors from describing his group with words such as cult, sect, clan, band, schism, faction, offshoot, breakaway, renegade, rogue or splinter group. Witnesses, however, can use any terms they choose.

Judge Polster also upheld the request by defendants that they not be required to swear an oath, in deference to the Amish prohibition against swearing oaths. They will have to verbally affirm their truthfulness.

This is shaping up to be a very interesting case. Once again, what we're looking at is the psychology of influence and how evidence of that can and can't be used in court. As with the James Ray trial, testimony is being presented about a charismatic leader with a sadistic streak about a mile wide. And, once again, we have a defense team arguing that it's not a cult and that the word cult should not be used. Of course, the punchline in the Ray case was that it was the defense which kept using the word and battling a straw man that was never actually argued by the prosecution.

The cult question seems to be coming up a lot, not least in the political sphere, where Mitt Romney's Mormonism has raised concerns about how independent his choices might be were he to become president. I just watched The Mormon Candidate on Current, which asks that question of Mormons and disaffected ex-Mormons, alike. Many, including Mitt Romney's own second cousin, Park Romney, have deep concerns about the hold the Church of Latter Day Saints has on its members' psyches. Says the outspoken ex-Mormon, "I don't really think they understand the degree to which they are engaging in brainwashing. These are masters of mendacity."

Therein lies one of the trickiest bits when it comes to the psychology of influence. Not only don't followers realize they are being manipulated, many leaders don't realize they are participating in manipulation and that their own thoughts are not, in fact, their own. This, of course, raises larger questions about how all of our thoughts are influenced, by whom, and the point at which that becomes dangerous -- let alone a possible element in a crime. As I've said repeatedly, these are very tricky First Amendment questions.

The upcoming trial looks not to be just a trial about a hate crime that arose out of a sectarian conflict. Sam Mullet's crime is being framed as a case of religious abuse, whether or not that terminology ever becomes explicit. The charges against the senior Mullet will only really stick if it can be proven that he either actively or tacitly encouraged his followers to assault the members of other communities with hair clippers.

Religious abusers are dangerous and concerns have been raised by the local sheriff and some of the local Amish that there are shades Jim Jones in the Berghoz community. But I would also caution against the common assumption that religion is a necessary element in this kind of psychological tyranny. Bear in mind that the two landmark studies into the psychology of influence, the Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment, had nothing whatever to do with religion. Abuse of authority can arise in any case of leaders and followers.

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Goateed Easter Island Head Tony Robbins

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

The Colbert Report
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Stephen Colbert's take-down of Tony Robbins and his firewalk fiasco is a must see. Hilarious!!! I do have one small concern: That James Ray will see this -- when he gets out of jail -- and steal some of Colbert's ideas. Can't you just hear Ray telling people that they need to "play full on" as they're rolling in a pit of broken glass? I know I can.

But you know what strikes me? Tony Robbins charges less for seminars than James Ray. And he apparently offers a range of rates based on different levels of access. I also found this which shows a top rate of about half of what James Ray charged for the Spiritual Warrior seminar which was about half as long and killed three people. I'm sure Robbins's income is greater -- many, many more people. James Ray, on the other hand, groomed a substantially smaller following and used a variety of mind manipulation techniques to soak their credit cards for vast sums. You know what else I noticed looking at Robbins's website? He has a clear refund policy... as opposed to a strict no refund policy. If you don't like a Robbins event, you can turn in your materials and get a refund. Compare that to being constantly reminded that you paid a lot of money if you don't want to participate in an activity or you choose to leave. No one got a refund from James Ray. Not even the people he cooked to death.

I say none of this because I think Tony Robbins is a really great guy. And I'd rather roll around in broken glass than go to one of his events. I say it because it puts into such sharp relief what a horrible, awful, dangerous person James Ray is by comparison.

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Following Orders: Monsignor Lynn Gets 3 to 6 Years

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Monsignor William Lynn was sentenced this week to just shy of the maximum sentence. He will serve a minimum of three years in prison for failing to protect children from known pedophile priests. There is no question that the harsh sentence is meant to send a message to any church officials who would participate in the cover-up of sexual abuse.

There seems to be something of a sea change in terms of how we deal with the crime of sexual abuse. Sweeping it under the carpet has, at long last, become unacceptable. Monsignor Lynn's sentence is intriguingly synchronous with the NCAA's smack-down of Penn State in light of the Freeh Report.

Prosecutors challenged, not only the cover-up mentality, but the culture of blind obedience to authority on which the Catholic Church relies.

Ann Casey, who attended the sentencing and said she had been a friend of Monsignor Lynn for 36 years, said she believed that he was a scapegoat and a victim of his intense faith in the leaders of the archdiocese. "It was his vow of obedience to the church that landed him this morning in jail," she said.

During the trial, Monsignor Lynn's lawyers argued that he had tried to protect children, but that his powers were limited and that he had followed the instructions of the cardinal at the time, Anthony J. Bevilacqua. But prosecutors argued that Monsignor Lynn played a central role in deciding how to handle complaints against priests and that "following orders" was no defense.

We have got to stop thinking of obedience as a universal good. It can lead to disaster. As I wrote here, that emphasis on obedience leads inevitably to abuses of power. From Monsignor Lynn, who never dared question the late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, to the child who is terrified to disobey both priest and God by refusing sexual acts. The poor little boy in the central case of the Lynn trial, for instance:

Monsignor Lynn's conviction was for lax oversight of one former priest who had a known history of abuse, but was allowed to continue in ministry. The former priest, Edward V. Avery, now 69, spent six months in a church psychiatric center in 1993 after an abuse episode, and doctors said he should be kept away from children. But Monsignor Lynn, though aware of this history, sent him to live in a parish rectory and did not warn parish officials.

In 1999, Mr. Avery undressed with a 10-year-old altar boy, told him that God loved him and had him engage in oral sex. Mr. Avery pleaded guilty to the assault just before Monsignor Lynn's trial began and was sentenced to two and a half to five years in prison.

Meanwhile, am I the only one who sees some horrible irony in the abusing priest receiving a lighter sentence that Monsignor Lynn? Two and a half to five years for molesting a ten year old? Seriously? Two and a half to five?!

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Tony Robbins's Firewalk Goes Awry

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Oh boy. Here we go again. Tony Robbins, the man James Ray wants so desperately to be, has landed himself in a little hot water of his own. At least 21 people suffered bad burns while attempting one of his firewalks at a seminar in San Jose, California. Most had second and third degree burns. Three went to hospital. The screams of "agony" were described as sounding like people were being "tortured." So, pretty horrible.

To his credit, unlike Ray, Robbins had medical staff on hand in case of emergency. There was also a fire inspector on scene and the proper permitting had been done. And when the medical staff became overwhelmed, the fire inspector was able to call in the fire department for additional support. So no one died. People were treated promptly. No one, to my knowledge, was told it was all "mind over matter," that they were "better than that," or that they were having a "breakthrough," as the blisters formed on their feet. It was treated like the medical emergency that it was. Robbins has been doing these things for thirty years without major incident. So that's all good.

Also, to be fair, Robbins Research International claims that 6,000 people walked the coals Thursday evening. Twenty-one out of 6,000 is practically decimal dust. But I still have to wonder what the point of this little exercise is.

Walking across hot coals on lanes measuring 10 feet long and heated to between 1,200 to 2,000 degrees provides attendees an opportunity to "understand that there is absolutely nothing you can't overcome," according to the motivational speaker's website.

What's the message, then, when you end up in hospital with third degree burns? That you're not so good at overcoming things?



Henry Guasch, who got burned at another event, blames his state of mind.

"Overcoming something like that, it's a breakthrough," he said, adding that he did slow his pace in the middle of the field and got a minor burn.

Guasch and Andrew Brenner, another fire walker, both said that the keys to not getting singed are faith and concentration.

"I did it before, didn't get into the right state and got burned," Brenner said. "I knew I wasn't at my peak state. I didn't take it as serious."

But the success or failure of a firework really comes down to simple physics.

David Willey, a physics instructor at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown in Pennsylvania, has published a text and video on the physics of firewalking and stated that it "does not need a particular state of mind."

"Rather, it is the short time of contact and the low thermal capacity and conductivity of the coals that is important," he wrote. He added that ash that builds up on coals can provide further insulation.

Guash slowed down. He got burned. It's really that simple. Robbins could just as easily tell people that wood is a bad conductor and that if they walk quickly, they'll be fine. But I don't think he could charge as much money or call it a personal empowerment exercise if he did.

In most cases, firewalks are safe, and Robbins took the appropriate precautions to deal with the outliers. But he's selling a placebo as if it were a real drug.

San Jose Fire Department Capt. Reggie Williams, who oversaw much of the emergency response, was reported as saying that they do not recommend firewalks.

"We discourage people from walking over hot coals," Williams said.

That's probably sound.

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Religious Abuse: Animal Cruelty Edition

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

The Banality of Evil

Nearly a year ago, after Warren Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison, I wrote something about the phenomenon of religious abuse and speculated that Jeffs's incarceration would not stop the cycle of abuse. Obviously, I was proved right. News of Jeffs's continuing influence keeps trickling out. But I really wasn't prepared for some of the horrors that are occurring under the control of this megalomaniacal pederast. Colorado City and other FLDS communities remain as Jeffs's fiefdoms, with a substantial membership acting as brutal enforcers. The latest casualty? A kitten. Yes, that's right. Some follower -- or followers -- of Jeffs tortured a kitten to death simply to send a message. (This link contains graphic images. Click with care.)

Controversial Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Days Saints (FLDS) leader Warren Jeffs’ polygamous sect is accused of sending a cat buried alive in a bucket of concrete to a former church member as a threat. Jeffs was convicted last year on felony charges related to sexual relationships with underage girls, according to The Blaze. A dangerous fast landed the FLDS leader in the hospital in critical condition after his incarceration began. The fundamentalist church once again made headlines after a cat in concrete was sent to a man who had “abandoned the radical sect” as a warning.

AZ Family notes that other former FLDS followers claim to have received similar shocking threats. Isaac Wyler was excommunicated in 2004. He recently discovered the kitten buried in a concrete bucket inside a pipe in his yard. Wyler considers the incident a “threatening message” to “encourage” his silence about the FLDS. Since leaving the FLDS, Wyler has been very outspoken in his opposition to the polygamous sect.

Isaac Wyler has been a thorn in Jeffs's side for years and has been on the receiving end of a lot of threats and intimidation by FLDS enforcers. One of the more telling details in this atrocity points to the scope of the problem. (This link contains graphic images and video. Click with care.)

Chatwin, who left the FLDS 13 years ago, believes the cruel act was done by members of his former church. He claims both the threats and the animal killings have been going on for years.

Chatwin also claims that when he reported the cruel act to Colorado City sheriffs, they didn't seem too concerned.

"[The officer] kind of chuckled and laughed a little bit and then he said that if it was up to him, he'd just throw dirt on [the cat]," Chatwin said. "And this is coming from a city marshal who's a member of the FLDS Church."

To be clear, the kitten was not yet dead. It died later under veterinary care. It was suffering, with most of its body stuck in hard cement, and their "solution" was to "throw dirt" on it. This is not the first indication that the police and other civil authorities, in FLDS strongholds like Colorado City, work for Jeffs, not the citizens of those communities. The problem has gotten bad enough to require intervention from the federal government. In June they filed lawsuits against two FLDS dominated towns.

According to the Justice Department sect members in Colorado City, Ariz., and Hill Dale, Utah have been forcing nonbelievers out. The feds call it discrimination and they want it to stop.

They say it's happening because FLDS members control everything that counts in these places from the town hall to the tap water.

. . .

"The police force in Colorado City is, without a doubt, the most crooked police department in the country," said private investigator Sam Brower.

Arizona's legislature had attempted to deal with the problem of Colorado City by passing a bill that would have dissolved any police department that had lost half its membership to legal problems. Six of twelve Colorado City cops were decertified for crimes like bigamy and child abuse. The bill passed the State Senate but died in the House when reps from the area defended the FLDS community. Said reps seem to have no idea what actually goes on in Colorado City and spend their visits there at invisible little league games in a town that has no such thing.

Armed with the Justice Department's legal action, Arizona's Mohave County last week added its own police patrols to Colorado City.

The patrols come after a complaint was filed by the U.S. Department of Justice against the Colorado City government and local marshal’s office alleging civil rights violations.

The complaint, which was announced on June 21, alleges the Colorado City Marshal’s Office “routinely uses its enforcement authority to enforce the edicts and will of the FLDS; fails to protect non-FLDS individuals from victimization by FLDS individuals; refuses to cooperate with other law enforcement agencies’ investigations of FLDS individuals; selectively enforces laws against non-FLDS; and uses its authority to facilitate unlawful evictions of non-FLDS, among other unlawful conduct.”

Apparently, that includes conduct like laughing off the torture of small, defenseless animals.

The involvement of federal authorities puts me in mind of another ongoing dispute I've been watching unfold with no small degree of fascination, in a region not far from where I grew up. The FBI recently became involved in a local fracas within the seemingly quiet Amish community. Federal prosecutors brought hate crime charges against Bishop Samuel Mullet and a group of his enforcers for cutting the hair and beards of Amish citizens in other local communities. Thus far, those charges have stood up to legal challenge.

It's dicey. At what point does this become a church/state issue? This is exactly what the Amish defendants are arguing -- that both the local and federal governments are intervening in religious matters. But the crimes are horrible, even sadistic. Cutting of hair and beards violates Amish religious custom. And there are reports of Bishop Mullet putting his own male parishioners in chicken coops and sleeping with their wives as punishment for various infractions.

We're back to the conundrum that always arises when dealing with mind control cults. Are people exercising freedom of religion when their decisions are manipulated or coerced by a charismatic leader? What legal intervention is fair in those circumstances and how much of the internal process of any religious group is protected under the First Amendment? In both of the above cases, however, the crimes affected people who were not directly under the religious authority of the religious sects involved, which would seem to open up a pretty clear legal path. And other legal interventions have occurred when crimes were committed that are clearly not First Amendment protected. The sexual abuse of minors has been a prominent feature in both instances and landed Warren Jeffs in prison, most likely for the rest of his life. Fairly, I think.

Sex abuse and other thoroughly degrading offenses are at least as typical in cases of religious abuse as in an any top-down, authoritarian, insular, environment. And, of course, the seamy underbelly of the Catholic Church, continues to be exposed in one horrible revelation after another.

One of the biggest embarrassments for the Vatican has been the Legionaries of Christ, whose charismatic leader Marcial Maciel Degollado turned out to be a pedophile and drug addict with multiple mistresses and children under a false identity. He was most likely a psychopath. They can be so charming. But the entire enterprise had to be brought under Vatican control when what was long known by Church insiders became public. Just recently it was learned that their new leader Rev. Thomas Williams had fathered a child. Now come new charges of horrible abuses at a Legionaries facility here in the US.

Dozens of women who attended a high school run by the disgraced Legion of Christ religious order have urged the Vatican to close the program, saying the psychological abuse they endured trying to live like teenage nuns led to multiple cases of anorexia, stress-induced migraines, depression and even suicidal thoughts.

The women sent a letter this weekend to the pope's envoy running the Legion to denounce the manipulation, deception and disrespect they say they suffered at the hands of counselors barely older than themselves at the Rhode Island school. For some, the trauma required years of psychological therapy that cost them tens of thousands of dollars.

The Immaculate Conception Academy in Wakefield, RI, is one of a number of Legionarie feeder schools. It's numbers have now dwindled to the point where it has had to be blended with a sister school in another state. Very few girls had the dubious honor of graduating and moving on to the "consecrated" level. For many who were rejected the shame was intolerable. One shares that for her it was tantamount to rejection by God. But this was after a long process of psychological softening.

A number of the former students have compiled a blog to tell their stories. The most intriguing insight into what happened at the school comes from one of the counselors who tortured these girls.

Those of you who were told you didn’t have a vocation probably did not feel the mold of the perfect 3gf or you weren't easy to brainwash - you thought for yourselves and were not "docile." If any of you had an obvious best friend, we got really scared and concluded you did not have a call. If you had a “particular friendship,” you would be asked to leave, or we would be overly strict with you so you would decide to leave on your own. We all definitely thought we were doing God's will. Sometimes something we said to a PC came directly from a vicedirector or director who asked us to mention it to a certain PC, sometimes we didn´t even know why, but we trusted... No one saw you as an END, only as a MEANS to benefit the Movement and enlarge the numbers for the consecrated life.

. . .

We had very clear guidelines on our role and on how to lead you, but authority was given too much power and too little responsibility. Everyone was taught to treat those in authority like little gods and never to question them, correct them or doubt them. That was unbalanced and made our defects, flaws, mistakes and egotism influence our actions and attitudes. No one consciously thought she was damaging the PCs, but I bet many of us did question if those means were right.

. . .

Once upon a time, a territorial director came to visit. The topic of one of the meetings was that we realized we had divided PCs in 3 groups (accidentally): "future formators" (leaders, good recruiters or very obedient PC's who influenced others), trouble/issue/always sick/reluctant PCs and THE NORMALS!!! hahahahaha We realized we were not dedicating time or attention to the normals because we had our hands full with all the goals they gave us to form the FF and trying to make peace with the trouble PCs. So we had all these resolutions to attend to the "normals". Believe it or not, if you were on the "normals" list, you are probably not hurting much now, did not feel pressure to leave or stay, we did not worry if you never went for dependence and we did not inform much about you. [All Emphases Added]

Identified by the Associated Press as Lourdes Martinez, the former counselor fleshed out the details in a press interview. She is forthright about the wrongs she had committed and how they fit into a pattern of overall abuse. She also drops a bomb about some of the "informing" counselors did. It included giving intel to the priests who heard the girls' confessions and used the confessional as God's own echo chamber.

Often, information from the weekly reports written about each girl's development would be shared with the priests who heard her confession – a striking violation of privacy. The priests could then reinforce the directors' decisions in confession with the girls, she said.

"So she's hearing this from everyone and thinks it's the Holy Spirit talking. And we would say `Yes, of course,'" Martinez told the AP in a phone interview from Monterrey, Mexico.

Martinez described an almost "Lord of the Flies"-like situation in which the counselors were barely older than the girls under their care, with no experience in adolescent development. The counselors themselves lived with the fear that they must obey the rules and their superiors or risk violating God's will.

And that last is what makes Martinez's honest recounting so fascinating. She seems like a well-meaning sort but she participated in horrible abuses that she and others knew weren't appropriate when they were doing them. And this is how abuse, including religious abuse, becomes institutionalized and becomes part of a self-sustaining system that subsumes identity and diffuses individual responsibility. It's the bulwark for the banality of evil.

Banality of evil is a phrase coined by Hannah Arendt in the title of her 1963 work Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.^[1] Her thesis is that the great evils in history generally, and the Holocaust in particular, were not executed by fanatics or sociopaths, but by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal.

Explaining this phenomenon, Edward S. Herman has emphasized the importance of "normalizing the unthinkable." According to him, "doing terrible things in an organized and systematic way rests on 'normalization.' This is the process whereby ugly, degrading, murderous, and unspeakable acts become routine and are accepted as 'the way things are done.'"^[2]

Marcial Maciel didn't need to be in Rhode Island and Warren Jeffs can cause a kitten to die even as he's babbles incoherently away in a prison cell. Once these systems are in place, the tyranny pretty much runs itself. This is because a) the fish rots from the head down, and b) any hierarchical system can become an abuse factory. Let me repeat that: Any hierarchical system can become an abuse factory.

The fact that anyone can devolve into an abuser is the reason that Phillip Zimbardo had to abort the Stanford Prison Experiment. He, himself, began to act in an aberrant manner, despite the fact that he was a brilliant educator and researcher who knew the objectives of his own study. He was seduced by adulation. He fell into the trap of power. Very fine people can and do become abusers when they receive enough encouragement to do so. What both Stan Milgram and Phil Zimbardo have demonstrated clearly with their work is that human beings have some pretty dark impulses and when the power of a system absorbs the responsibility and gives us permission, we tend to play them out. And when you have a charismatic leader sitting at the top, setting the tone for sadistic behavior, all bets are off.

As an experiment, try reading Martinez's post in full and then watch the video I've posted below, which contains footage from the study and Zimbardo's commentary. (Warning: It's graphic and disturbing. I've seen the documentary. I don't want to watch it again. Chilling.) The parallels are hard to miss. For instance, near the end of the video, Zimbardo explains how when a new participant was brought in midway, who hadn't been conditioned the way the others had and displayed resistance, it became the singular objective of the "guards" to break down that "prisoner." As Zimbardo says, "He should have been the hero." It is exactly what Martinez describes in her blog post -- the students who weren't "docile" were targeted. In any hierarchy conformity and submissiveness to leadership are the goal. It's only a matter of degrees.

It is easy to blame the people who carry water for dangerous, charismatic leaders. They're responsible for their actions, for sure. And when they have integrity, they come forward and make amends, as Lourdes Martinez has done. But we're kidding ourselves if we think we'd do better. Except that I know, that I know, that I know, that I would never pack a live kitten in cement. That's unbelievable. Just unbelievable.

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