Rocky

I have now listened to the entire hour long YT clip. I sped it up to 2x. It was still very clearly understandable. Most importantly, I believe this is one of the best discussions I've heard about UNDUE INFLUENCE in the 35+ years since I left TWI. Hassan and Boyle-Laisure parse out some VERY important legal and psychological/behavioral issues that clearly implicate Victor Wierwille and Loy Craig Martindale as cult leaders.

Robin Boyle Laisure teaches at St. John's University School of Law https://www.stjohns.edu/law/faculty/robin-boyle-laisure On her faculty page, she lists her books and articles. This one got my attention: Undoing Undue Influence: How the Doctrine Can Avoid Judicial Subjectivity by Omitting the Vulnerability Element The YT video also mentions things that have been taught in Way Corps training and sexual coercion by way of drugs. For example (but NOT limited to this practice), having trainees write autobiographical information (i.e. from Birth to the Corps) that to be used for psychological manipulation (e.g. shaming).

Steven Hassan interviews law professor Robin Boyle-Laisure. Witnessing and Undershepherding? Cults CAN purchase prospect information on young adults online. Does anyone have any inside information on whether TWI has, openly or in a clandestine manner, tried do this kind of prospecting?

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55271743-forgery-and-memory-at-the-end-of-the-first-millennium

Recognizing the complexity of life and the fact there's more answers or ways of looking at the matter doesn't mean I know what other options might be. Life is complex despite with Johnny Townsend claimed 40 to 50 years ago. I can tolerate that complexity even if I'm uncertain of the paradoxes enough to articulate them. Townsend, IMO, was spouting cult propaganda back then to present shiny objects to distract young people like us (well, we were young then) to keep us from thinking outside of the overly simplistic box that Victor Wierwille had us confined to at the time.

Sorry, my response in my previous comment is the closest I can get to "assessing the accuracy" thereof.

I have framed my answers to several questions/comments/posts on GSC the last few years thus: the bible is an anthology of stories. Do I take those stories literally? Definitely not. Do I believe I understand... anything... adequately or fully? Of course not. The closest those stories come to factual truth, IMO, is taking them as human records of the times (histories) of humans in the context of the lives and cultures (anthropology and archeology) at the time they were recorded.

You present that question as if it is factually true. Why do you think it's true? I'm not so sure. I'm more inclined these days to think that humankind made God in its own image rather than the other way around. Bottom-line: I don't take your question as a true premise.

I don't see your question as being a problem, but demanding (or even mildly suggesting) I should only answer with something from the bible is not something I'm willing to do. However, my go to (favorite) scripture now and for a long time up to now is Proverbs 2:1-5. My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, 2 turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding— 3 indeed, if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, 4 and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, 5 then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. So, take it or leave it. As an addendum, I found this article on Scientific American's website today on the topic of curiosity. Take it, also, or leave it. What you accept is not in my control. One is either curious and wanting learn, or not.

I'm not speaking for WW, only myself. Those two options are not nearly the only choices available. Aren't YOU, dear Charity, responsible for using your critical thinking and analysis skills to make judgments as to what you should believe? As WW noted, we don't have a textbook we can open that provides simple, clear ideas on how to cope with or balance life's complex problems, whether philosophical problems or practical, everyday living problems. Isn't that kinda what traps a lot of people in dogmatic life situations these days?

Not necessarily an exhaustive list, but those are very real factors. Thanks WW.

That's not mutually exclusive with/from young people believing they know-it-all and/or take risks they shouldn't.

I fell into Victor's trap at age 19. That was 50 years and about 5 weeks ago. Young people don't have as much of a data base between their ears from which to draw on to combat cult seduction, even if they've been taught critical analysis/thinking skills. It's no wonder young adults have often been those most vulnerable. We think (at that age) we're both invulnerable, and all-knowledgeable. Sometimes it takes a lifetime of lessons in the School of Hard Knocks to begin questioning those easy solutions for complex problems.

A life well lived. Sad that she's gone.

The 7th and 9th corpses were in residence when it happened. I remember Loy having a lot to say about it. Of course, Waysider, you're correct. The essence of the message at Emporia was mainly that WE were NOT a cult. As one of those 9th corpse people, we didn't have access to what was being said in the news. We were only fed what TWI, and mainly Loy Martindale thought about any of it.

YES, it was a rationalization. You didn't hurt my feelings. You can't make a "reasonable determination" about my posts/comments without actually knowing what said comments are.

At least from the mortal human perspective.

Deconversion will become massively more rampant as AI advances.

If you feel the need to "VET" something I post as political, freakin' ask me for clarification.

Isn't that what's called rationalization? Again, Yuval Noah Harari isn't a politician. Isn't a pundit. Isn't a journalist. He's an historian. His latest book is Nexus and it's about the history of INFORMATION NETWORKS. He HAS called attention to the urgency figuring out how to deal with the implication and ramifications of AI. Rightly so. That I mentioned the urgency for guardrails to be established for development of AI is a universal concern. Get over yourself, Raf. Not everything that people actually SHOULD pay attention to is politics.

Harari does NOT get political. He's a historian. I was not asked for clarification about any potential political post I may have made. It simply disappeared without comment. While public policy decisions WILL need to be made regarding regulation of AI, and done soon, the only possible political implication was whether or not humanity would allow for AI to build further generations of AI that would/could reduce our capacity for self-determination.

Why don't you question God's reasoning... ANYONE? Because we accept/trust the canon? WHY should we accept the canon? Who says so? Deconvert this: Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millenium. Why do I say this? Because I distrust the framing of reasons/reasoning of claims as "God declared" this or that as truth. I now point you to Noah Yuval Harari's latest book, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI Harari's thesis goes directly to whether or not the canon of the bible is trustworthy. This YT discussion (featuring Harari) might be too long for you to view the entire clip. However, Information systems, including AI, are things that humanity needs to decide ethical and moral guardrails for VERY soon/quickly. Whether or not you will continue to believe the canon of the old or new testaments of the bible are trustworthy is a key question for each of us. I can't answer it for anyone but me.

Who says it is God who determines who gets to live and who "is allowed to die?" Modnote: Although this responds to a post that got political, we're letting it stand because it digresses enough from the political content and gets back into the subject of the thread.

From Goodreads, a blurb about Levi Roach's book An in-depth exploration of documentary forgery at the turn of the first millennium Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium takes a fresh look at documentary forgery and historical memory in the Middle Ages. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, religious houses across Europe began falsifying texts to improve local documentary records on an unprecedented scale. As Levi Roach illustrates, the resulting wave of forgery signaled major shifts in society and political culture, shifts which would lay the foundations for the European ancien régime. Spanning documentary traditions across France, England, Germany and northern Italy, Roach examines five sets of falsified texts to demonstrate how forged records produced in this period gave voice to new collective identities within and beyond the Church. Above all, he indicates how this fad for falsification points to new attitudes toward past and present―a developing fascination with the signs of antiquity. These conclusions revise traditional master narratives about the development of antiquarianism in the modern era, showing that medieval forgers were every bit as sophisticated as their Renaissance successors. Medieval forgers were simply interested in different subjects―the history of the Church and their local realms, rather than the literary world of classical antiquity. A comparative history of falsified records at a crucial turning point in the Middle Ages, Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium offers valuable insights into how institutions and individuals rewrote and reimagined the past.

Stormy today/tonight on Terceira.