Rocky

Mike, have you ever gotten the impression people here were toying with you? If not, at least THEY know they're simply trying to make you go faster on the hamster wheel.

Btw, the comment to which you responded is not about whether or not you respect anyone's opinion. It's about understanding how language works. For you to say you disagree with someone's own story is very much to call the person a liar. You've been posting here for eons. Yet, you apparently don't understand basic language construction.

Write a book. See if people will buy it.

LOL... I never posted to this thread. 1974 to 1986.

I'm confident many former wayfers will recognize nearly identical patterns in the story about Masterson (not known to be related to former way corps members or others in twi). The terms Scientology uses differ, but the coercion is identical.

The following excerpt from Insider dot com demonstrates the pernicious nature of cultic religious organizations. Scientology, of course, is MUCH bigger than twi. Loy should be thankful this wasn't about him. The "meager" $65 million TWI had to play with at the time of the Martindale scandals kept them from daring to go to trial. If they were as rich as Scientology, they might have considered going to trial. As his trial on criminal rape charges kicked off in Los Angeles last week, "That 70's Show" actor Danny Masterson's lawyers presumed that the Church of Scientology would be the elephant in the room throughout proceedings. Masterson is a second-generation Scientologist, and the three rape accusers are all former members of the church. By the tenth day of the trial, witnesses discussed the church every single day. The church's presence was not just a metaphorical elephant in the room — it has eclipsed elements of the trial and reverberated beyond the courtroom. Though the Church of Scientology is not on trial with Masterson, facets of its operation are woven throughout testimony, inextricable from the allegations of rape witnesses have detailed. The trial is demystifying the religious organization, particularly its celebrity allure and hierarchy, in a way many observers have never seen before. "This trial is one of the biggest moments in Scientology history," Tony Ortega, a journalist who has followed Scientology since the 1990s and broke the Masterson story in 2016 for his outlet The Underground Bunker, told Insider. (much MORE at the link provided above)

Mike, you have NO right to "object" to someone else's story. It's not a concordance, or an exegesis or anything with which you would have a right to make an argument against. It's her STORY. It's HER life and experience that's in the book. Nothing more, nothing less. IF you find something in it to take issue with, you STILL have to keep in mind that it is someone else's story, not yours. As such, you just don't get to have ANY say about what's she says was her experience.

I'm confident anyone who wanted to do so, has. OTOH, who would want to? YIKES!

No matter whose responsibility it might be, the READER does interpret what s/he reads. Wierwille just wanted to gaslight, or had no idea who was responsible, PFLAP zombies into delegating the responsibility to him. What happens when the "zombies" so delegate? Confusion and every evil work, perhaps? Not my fault, I was only doing (and believing what I was told... and one can't go any farther than they're taught, right?).

I'm confident it doesn't matter.

You dirty rat!

AKA, a significant emotional event. That would be wonderful.

Sadly, until our good friend Bolshevik experiences a significant emotional event to shake his irrationality loose, he's almost certainly not going to change that particular point of view.

Is it now? How quaint. Btw, I'm not inviting response... bcuz you're starting to sound like you have co-opted Mike's irrational "reasoning" methodology. It clearly appears (so far) you are not engaged in fruitful discourse, and not willing to be engaged in any fruitful discourse. And that's incredibly sad.

Probably that he made mistakes. Everybody does.

Page 234-235, quoting wierwille. When I think of Townsend, I always remember hearing him talk about "your basic simple man." FACTS regarding what we know now, 50 years later (TW:LIL was first published in 1972) about wierwille's claim demonstrates beyond ALL doubt at the time twi could not deal with life's ambiguities and paradoxes.

40 or 50 years of one's life in many cases.

Okay then. Makes sense.

Attempt? Mike often succeeds/succeeded over the last 20 years to do so.

This youtube short from Ryan Holiday (author of several books on Stoic philosophy, including The Obstacle is the Way) stands in stark contrast to the propaganda from Johnny Townsend who I remember expounding on how simple life was for him.

I maintain that it was a form of hypnosis ... not unlike that used by demagogues in contemporary or past times.

Do you know which page? There's no index in the book. I'd love to dig up a quote from Townsend.

IMO, Mike lives in his own very small universe (self-limiting box).

Excuse my rudeness, but I have to take issue with characterizing anything Mike proclaims as "pure." All seriousness aside, I totally relate to the entirety of your comment from which I extracted three words just because I had an overwhelming sense of cognitive dissonance over the first word.

I think also of Johnny Townsend's propaganda claiming he was a simple man who believed simple (gobbledygook). Life is complicated. Ancient cultures and just having one guy to translate "orientalisms" and everything will be just fine... is total BS.