Perry:

Thank you for your very candid response.

Based on your response, I strongly recommend you reread "1984." I read several books after leaving the cult to try to gain some perspective on what happened to me and other than Wallis' sociologically-oriented "Road To Total Fredom" (an excellent book, actually), I found "1984" to be the best "duplication" of what I endured. That it was not about "cults" and was published about the same time as DMSMH only made it more chilling. It is certainly no exact parallel but it is so close that it is like a deja vu experience. I had to keep reminding myself that it was written BEFORE Scientology and BEFORE the Sea Org. Otherwise, to the uninitiated, it could easily be passed off as a novel written by a former Sea Org exec who wanted to fictionalize the account of his/her life.

And forget the movie with Richard Burton. Stick with Orwell. He is doubleplusgood.

RVY

Perry Scott (perry@fc.hp.com) wrote:

Robert Vaughn Young (writer@eskimo.com) wrote:

Let's try "1984" as the example. Would the apologists call what happened to Winston to be "mind control" that he comes to love Big Brother? What do THEY call "doublethink"?

Move it away from Hassan, me , Singer, whoever. Put it on Orwell. Is there "mind control" in that novel for THAT is the world that one can find in Scientology's Sea Org.

As one of the "mind control apologists", I would concur that 1984 is a closer, more understandable model for what happens in Scientology. From day 1, the words are redefined, new thought structures overlay the older more familiar ones, behavior shifts to The Party. I'd have to read 1984 again; my perceptions of a book read over two decades ago is somewhat foggy.

Heh, I remember that doubleplusgood groupspeak sounds like a duck quacking - reminds me of what it sounds like listening to Hubbard spouting Hubbardese. I mean, listen to this snippet from the Introspection Rundown: ".. an auditor .. corrected the last severe point of wrong indication. Subsequent times of wrong indication in his life were cleared up, the person came out of the psychotic break and into present time." Quack! Quack! Quack!

It's strange that I never put the two together; I joined Scientology about four years after reading 1984. OTOH, I only stayed in a couple years, so maybe I was immunized.

Perry Scott
Co$ Escapee