Originally published at: "Good Cult" podcast explores the Lifespring movement | Boing Boing
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I like the title, which in and of itself promises that once again we’ll find out that there’s no such thing.
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That’s the group that Ginni Thomas broke away from.
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She went from a self help cult to conspiracy cults.
They did a shit job on her deprogramming.
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Well, obviously deprogramming as practiced when she went through it was not a real thing, but even with something like CBT the tools only work if you rigorously apply them and interrogate your thoughts and feeling regularly. It’s hard work because it involves controlling your impulses, your thoughts and your responses to those feelings and thoughts. I just wish that people in her situation got real help instead of falling down these abysses.
That said, Ginny has the resources to get that help and repeatedly chooses not to, so she can go hang out with Ye on the curb in front of Sketcher’s HQ
Attended a couple of their seminars in the mid-eighties, started out pretty well with some valuable insights into personal accountability and honest communication, but then turned into a really hard-sell culty-cult atmosphere and I was outta there.
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I’ve seen that happen. They might have removed the cult, but they left a gaping hole that something else was going to crawl in and occupy.
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I think that’s how cults do it generally speaking. They offer people something that feels common sense, or communal, or radical, or the like - exploiting the very real sense of isolation that modern society often creates in us - and then they do a bait-and-switch… But that sense that we need community that’s all too often lacking is what gives them the ability to do that.
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If the deprogramming was run by Xtians, then the hole was meant to be filled by Evangelical Jeesus. It’s the same attitude they have towards drug rehab.
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The more successful cult leaders and self-help guru grifters understand the value of taking things slow and letting the trite and anodyne “insights” subtly transition into the culty and scammy stuff. That’s how you identify and then draw in the most damaged, desperate, and/or dumb (and therefore most valuable) marks. Rushing things is a sign of greed and impatience or lazy complacency, all of which make for a short career for a scammer (at least one that isn’t established enough to afford to spend millions of dollars on lawyers and politicians).
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It is… and mental health. I suspect that the reason why Herschel Walker believes he’s “cured” of his mental health issues is because he “came to Jesus”…
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This sounds a lot like Landmark Forum which itself came from the EST movement. I’m glad I’m not into these things.
This is a great series about the Human-Potential cult scene which includes Landmark/Forum, NXIVM and others.
As an activist my heart sank at the Podcast’s finale, however, this was a healthy move for the investigator.
The EDUCO Cult follows a similar model; it has a 50-year history of Sexual & Financial abuse. Since a group-of-followers found oil in Belize 20 years ago (although all surviving members bar-one sued the chairwoman) EDUCO has access to 1% of Belize oil revenue.
EDUCO has been recruiting in it’s native Ireland, the UK and America (Colorado, New York and Florida)
Last year Frank Parlato of the Frank Report website (who helped bring NXIVM down) compared NXIVM with EDUCO.
There’s a very good wikipedia page on the EDUCO Cult. Sadly, possibly because it is Irish in origin, no criminal action has been taken.
Of note is one member has ties to someone embroiled in the Kinahan Cartel who were sanctioned in April by the US Treasury, blocking Tyson Fury’s access to the States as he’s now on a No-Fly-List. Lots of information online; the authority of this cult is Dialogue Ireland
Not sure what being in Ireland has to do with it, as plenty of cults run unimpeded all over the world…
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