On 12 Apr 2001 08:53:17 -0700, Ed Hattaway <Ed_member@newsguy.com> wrote: >I got a message yesterday from a dentist. Last night I gave him a call and
>spent the next hour just listening to his horror story, a la scientology. It
>all started with the Marcus Group, a WISE consulting group. He joined and
>started taking the usual seminars. Then more high priced seminars and
>consulting services. I think they got him for something like 60-70 thousand.
>
>Then they introduced him to the auditing. He got soaked at the local org to the
>tune of 25-30k.
>
>Then the super power reg got her teeth in him. Get this- $100,000 !
Get him in contact with the Lisa McPherson Trust. Chances are good he can get a substantial fraction of this money back with their help. >Now, some of you are probably going, "What an idiot!"
Not me. >THAT is not the case. This guy SINCERELY BELIEVED that he was doing a great
>thing. He really felt that he was helping humanity and the planet.
Ah, not exactly. Sure he "felt" this way, but it was the result of wanting more of the attention rewards he was getting and his rationalizing. Social attention is every bit as addictive as drugs. Addictive drugs use the social-attention-to-endorphin-reward pathway to provide the reward without social attention. AA (more about this later) works to the extent it does by substituting social attention for drugs (alcohol). >This is how they get the docs. They play them. Most docs went through all the
>crap of living broke for years and wading through the litany of mid-terms,
>finals, clinical competency exams and board certification when their friends
>from high school and college were buying homes and making money, for one big
>reason: They wanted to spend their productive years and make their livings by
>helping people.
Hmm. I think you might be giving this class of professionals too much credit. They delay earning, true, but clean up later. I think the more significant factor is that dentist and similar professionals work alone, far more so than doctors who get a fair amount of social interactions at hospitals. Even if they have staff, staff does not provide the kind of social attention rewards they need (but don't know they need) in their lives. >The cultists know this. They also go after professionals because they can
>usually get money.
Dentist, vets, chiropractors and such can certainly be drained of a heap of money. >The sickness of the cultists is that they PREY on the basic goodness in people.
>This man I spoke with last night said that he felt ashamed, embarrassed and
>humiliated by his experience. After this betrayal, it is extremely doubtful if
>this humanitarian will contribute to ANY cause EVER again. And THAT is a shame.
He might feel better with a different model of what happened to him. He was addicted without his knowledge to endorphin release rewards from "scripted social attention." You can perhaps blame someone who knows about this addictive pathway, but he didn't know he was being addicted. >How many people WON’T be helped because of the cult of greed? How many
>worthwhile causes will go unsupported because of Hubbard’s whacked disdain for
>humanity?
>
>I hope he will do a video. I told him I would fly there at my own expense just
>to get his story.
There are empty social rewards like you get in scientology or other cults and real rewards out in the real world. Making a video will not get him the attention rewards and status of winning the Nobel prize, but I can tell him from first hand experience that publicly working on both defeating the criminal cult and making people aware of this threat to their lives has real rewards. He can also ask Tory. >I need to go throw up,
It's just a matter of understanding the vulnerabilities evolution as a social primate has left us with. Keith Henson