Good examples, Aqua. I like reading your stuff. Your writing skill is superb.

Superb comment, Cindy. I’ve observed the truth of this on several levels – with individuals, with families and even countries.

A former friend of mine has been a robot to her common law husband for 50 years. He both depends upon her utterly and controls her utterly, and she would not have it any other way. For many years he has refused to marry her and for just as many years has she accepted this. She’s bright, attractive, perceptive – she has many good qualities but her fatal flaw is that she’s comfortable being under his thumb. Repeatedly she has left him to strike out on her own for a while but it never lasts very long. She has a fling with someone else and crawls back to him. And he takes her back, and still verbally abuses her and invalidates her in general.

Although from widely divergent backgrounds, my maternal and paternal grandfathers were tyrants. The true family stories I could share about each of thei utter selfishness and insensibility to the feelings and well being of their spouses and children would sound to you like the creations of Hollywood writers crafting a retro mini series.

I lived for several years with my father in a 3rd world country; the peasant people, totally uneducated, ignorant and living in terribly poverty adored the “President For Life” (read ruthless dictator) who along with his wealthy circle of friends exploited and suppressed them in every possible way. Unitl his death they revered him, worshipped him, practically, and believed everything he said, no matter how blatant his lies. And when he died they “elected” (read anointed) his son to continue in his name, with the exact same suppressive policies, giving them NO chance to have any kind of decent lives in their own country.

So its not only Scientologists who are prone to robotisem.

LRH had a reference called Robotism. It says that if you are being suppressed for a long time that you get beaten down to where you can only operate on orders. You have to have orders to do anything. And especially need orders from the main person suppressing you. He said if you find robotism, look to find the SP cuz there surely will be one there. He was right about that. I looked and found David Miscavige as the SP and all of us were robots to him. That’s how it goes until something jogs you to look, to listen, to cognite on who the real SP is, and to ultimately leave. Congrats on all here who left!

YEs, as with some other commenters on this post, it’s why you are here and not there!

In theory – IN THEORY – one of the principle purposes of Scientology is to ENHANCE self determinism, to REHABILITATE it, and in so doing, make the BEING “come alive” again.

But in practice, one is continually reminded that in order to “go free” there is a “closely taped path” to be followed, a path from which one must NEVER deviate!

Ok, now, how the hell can someone be self determined AND “follow” a rigid path and never deviate from it?

Here’s how its done: The person gets continually VALIDATED for “following the closely taped path” and CONVINCED he/she is following order solely under his or her OWN determinism!

And when the person DOESN’T follow the path, when he/she wanders from it, well, that’s the reactive mind! That wandering from the path is the reactive mind exerting FORCE on the person to go “out ethics”.

The grooming, the training, the monitoring, the validating (and invalidating) is such that eventually, the person becomes a total compliant robot while at the same time convinced that he or she is doing exactly what he or she wants to do; its ALL self determined, all his or her own independent decisions.

Quite a trick, no?

I mean, there are people who are very dependent upon others’s opinions and orders who need and want heavy control, who like to be bossed and micro-managed, who WANT a blueprint for every major and minor action in their lives – but at LEAST they KNOW that they require this! They KNOW that they like to be controlled, they KNOW that they loathe making decisions on their own, etc., etc.

But how many people are walking around, obeying every order, complying to the letter with every policy as regards all of their activities large and small, while at the same time believing themselves to be totally self-determined?

Quite a trick, right? Well the cult does it with praise. They praise obedience and call it self determinism. When you are OBEYING, you are self determined!

Cute!