Broken Arrow

I'm glad he shares it with the rest of us, though.

Every institution has its rankings. Businesses have their executive parking spaces for "Mr. Big" and "Mr. Just About as Big"; the military has their stripes, bars, birds and stars (rhymes); religions have their different robes, headdress etc. depending; TWI had nametags unless you were really really big. BOT members never wore nametags. All organizations, and I mean all organizations abuse the lower ranks. "Sh___ rolls downhill" is true. The question isn't whether an organization is abusing, it's how bad is it. Some organizations and individual leaders live just for the power trip of controlling others. Others do it inadvertantly just because the human spirit is flawed. These same people are open to criticism. Organizations are necessary for mankind to exist in some sort of particular order. Therefore pick your organizations and associations wisely. Are they accountable? How well do they handle criticism? Do they have an axe to grind with every single person they come across? Do they always have to be right?

I meant to combine this quote with the one below. Please erase the line in your mind :)

Just a thought. Do you think that may be yet another TWI teaching that should be brought under scrutiny? I dunno...I'm just asking out loud. I've never heard anyone else but TWI teach this.

Your mind works a lot differently than most, doesn't it?

Yeah, it's even more appalling when you realize many of us were just a bunch of kids, we didn't stand a chance. Very sad that a full-fledged adult would exploit young people like that. One of the things from Kristin Skedgell's book that incensed me was when V.P. advised her to drop out of college and come into the Way Corps. He said it was her only hope. Can you believe that? Can those of you in your 50's, or even 30's, see yourselves telling a 20-year-old kid who has the brains, talent and opportunity to quit pursuing a higher education to come into the Corps? And it was Johns Hopkins University!! That's one of the best schools in the nation! (Or was it Brown University? That's a top school too.)

Or the DaVinci Code.

Is the statue of limitations also located in New York Harbor?

If you were Corps you already knew you were going to be the coordinator. That is because we were spay-cial. God's crack troops, God's Green Beret (or Marines in your case). We were the, "guardians of the Mystery". Elitist? Us? No way!

Unfortunately you just described any number of Limb Coordinators at any time in TWI. I don't know the answer to your legal question. There is certainly a moral obligation to one's employees.

Yeah, well, I was a, um, coordinator myself. It was of the W.O.W. variety, I was also Interim and Graduated Corps...went twice because pain is my thing. Anyway, I would like to say that...YOU'RE RIGHT!! Most of us WERE narcissistic, megalomaniacs!! Today, I'm embarrassed about the whole thing, and no, I didn't need to "go to grow". I needed to leave to breathe, but I didn't, I stayed.

Hey man, that's his bag. It jives with me. In fact it's outtasight! Peace, man.

One of the reasons VP was "deified" is because of his and our relative ages. Ever notice how, with few exceptions, he did not surround himself with men his own age and status? I used to study martial arts. I had an instructor who I believe was a 4th or 5th degree black belt. That's a pretty high rank for those of you not familiar with ranking. He started practicing as a young man, I came across him when he was in his late 30's. In other words he had practiced martial arts for quite some time. In his case, he devoted his entire life to the practicing and teaching of martial arts. We students thought he was amazing, which he was. I would watch him, and I would just marvel at what he could do with his body. To me it looked almost super human. It wasn't super human. It was the result of someone who had done something day after day for several years. Wierwille was in his 50's when most of us were in our early and mid-20's. We weren't very seasoned, we were kids really (not "keedz" yuch!). So Wierwille could sound real educated, academic, and he could sell his arguments to us easily. What the Hell did we know? People who talked to him would be amazed at how "detail-minded" he was; how "organized" he was, "disciplined" etc. He said things we thought were so insightful and wise. Well,duh! He had 30 years of adulthood behind him, of course he seemed "amazing" to us! I'm telling you, if we ran across him or someone like him now at our ages, we would do what most of our parents did which was to go, "Who the heck are you?" And we wouldn't do that as a result of having been in TWI, we would have picked it up because of our maturity. That's why there were almost no 50+ aged people around at that time.

Yeah, I thought of that a lot myself. Kind of makes you understand how a lot of the Nazi's became the way they were (not the top leaders) with their unquestioning loyalty and all. Looking at Nazism from the outside one becomes appalled at the insanity of it all. We would like to think that we would never be so fooled. But, if you're in the middle of something like that yourself, you see how people slowly become conformed to the groupthink one small step at a time. In time, people are giving their money their bodies, their futures, hopes, to the group, or the party, or the gang, or whatever. Then, when the whole thing falls to pieces, when it becomes apparent that, "the emperor has no clothes", one defends it for a time. Then maybe tries to replicate it, then hangs onto parts of it until one realizes that the whole thing has been a ruse. That's hard to take, but it's necessary to realize if one is to move on healthily. That's my opinion anyway.

Marxist Minstrels! Wow! That's a blast from the past! Yeah, actually that was in the Advanced Class early on. Then later on, much later on, they got that guy to speak live at Emporia and they recorded it. I think the speaker was a John Bircher. He taught that the commies were behind rock music and were inserting lyrics to brainwash our young people. That was my generation at the time, by the way. John Birchers, in case you haven't herd of them, were reactionary anti-communists. They saw communism everywhere. I don't think they're around anymore, but I could be wrong.

That's really funny OldSkool! Genius! Agreed! I actually had fun in TWI sometimes before I went in residence.

Thanks Chockfull! That was very freeing for me, seriously.

Ageed!

I thought Ringo was Craig's favorite Beatle. Maybe Ringo was saved, and everyone else was "seed". Or, maybe he only got by with a little help from his friends.

I still speak in tongues when I don't know what to pray for. Even if it is not authentic, and believe that there is something to lettting go of something and not trying to control an outcome. One area of concern for me is that with all the error in TWI, can I be sure that I really speak in tongues like they did in the 1st century? I dunno, I just do it every now and again. Speaking in tongues has not been "rest to my soul" or most of the other stuff Wierwille taught in the class. When I was "in" and I would confess that to someone, the answer was always that I wasn't believing enough. Well, if the benefits of speaking in tongues rest in believing, why bother with the speaking at all? Just cut to the chase and believe.

I know, I apologize. You said "critical thinking". I edited my post.

Well now Gen, that's clear thinking which has no place here so stop it! This, imo, was one of the hallmarks of TWI. They would take a subject that basically was of no consequence like this one, or "Four Crucified", "The Day Jesus Christ Died", and others, and then dissect the crap out of it. I believe it was an attempt to impress people with how "scholarly" they were as well as how concerned they were with detail. If anyone would question the relevance of the teaching, they would be scoffed at, or accused of not caring about the Truth.

That's right! (if it were true)

No, not in those words. You said that doing so lowers one's resistance to suggestability. That is, reduces one's ability to think on a critical level. That at least sounds like advice to not speak in tonges. I'm going to join you on the other thread.