WordWolf

*falls over laughing* It is true that making the cover of Time indicates some sort of impact, at least at the moment the cover was chosen. What's funny is the idea vpw made the cover. He once was mentioned in part of an article about cults. They made him sound like a crackpot, and included a photo in the story of him riding around on a motorcycle. I read the article when I was in college, and even printed it out at the time. He wasn't made to sound significant at all. Although, he could have been said to have influenced the people in his group. (IIRC, it was 1971, not 1970.) We disagree there. We were TOLD that was true. I believe we were lied to OFTEN in twi. Well, a lot of the best people were not allowed to do what they did best, which was a shame. I think twi was organized to prevent that since it would make those people actual people and not ciphers, which would have diminished the image of vpw as the sole mover.

The thing is, John, your "explanation" of twi failed to distinguish between it, Jonestown, bowling teams, fraternities, militants, Sherlock Holmes fanclubs, or anything else. Whether you meant to or not, it only served to dodge the question so you could change the subject. At least it's not LITERALLY true that you "HAD TO CONSTANTLY REMIND PEOPLE OF THAT"? If that were true, someone would be, say, holding members of your family at gunpoint and requiring your posts keep to one unvarying topic and one unvarying position no matter how boring and uninformative you get at it. Instead, the "feel like" means that this is just something that you feel on a personal level that affects nobody but you and you feel the need to inflict it on everyone else here and are unable or unwilling to stop yourself before hitting the "reply" button. It certainly would partially explain why you tend to interrupt threads on ONE subject to change the subject rather than just make up a new thread on the subject you actually want to talk about. The rest of us do that whenever we want. Which, invariably, many of us would agree to. We felt pride in our positions. Then again, that's no guarantee of truth- political radicals of every stripe and terrorists are committed to their causes and proud of them right this minute. You're missing the point. Then again, you've admitted you don't read some posters' posts, so there's no surprise you'd miss any points they made while you were scrolling past and insisting on being unchanging. On a national scale, let alone international scale, twi IS "insignificant" and is barely a footnote, if that. It was big-but not enormous- for a handful of years. It was almost nonexistent until about 1970, when the House of Acts Christians and other legitimate Christians were diverted into it from doing "their own thing". By 1985, at its height, it was still not as big as most national churches. By 1990, 80% of THOSE people had all left or been kicked out. Over the next decade, both twi and the splinters lost people steadily, so both twi and its legacy groups, statistically speaking, are "insignificant and "irrelevant." A lot of failed religious groups existed in the 20th century in the US, and twi fits among them. Go ahead, try and find a history of the 20th century where it sounds like twi made a significant "impact" that wasn't written by twi or ex-twi people. Historians that don't specialize in cults have never heard of it, and many now may not have, either. Worldwide, I suspect more people discuss the "carbonari" than twi, including discussion right here. That having been said, was twi "evil and dangerous"? Yes, and it still is. For example, in 2010 in the UK (to pull some statistics), 5 people were killed by stinging insects. Statistically, that's an insignificant number. However, that's poor comfort if your loved one was one of the 5 people. So, people like us would continue to warn people about being careful around stinging insects no matter how statistically insignificant they are. Stinging instects are "dangerous". They aren't "evil" because they're not INTENTIONALLY trying to benefit from people at expense of the people. Twi, however, does- or, as you say, the people making the decisions of twi do. If all of Christianity was represented by twi or ex-twi, I'd have fled it just as many ex-twi'ers did. They had good reasons, as they see it, to consider Christianity as a whole to be harmful and not provide a benefit. And you're grossly inflating how much of a positive contribution twi's had to the US, "spiritually and culturally." Getting our attention is no guarantee of truth. Jim Jones drew the attention of a lot of people, and is better known than vpw despite having had a much shorter career. That's more than a little ironic coming from a guy who scrolls past posts, pauses to cherry-pick a few items to complain about, then claims there's only negatives at the GSC. John, if all you come to do here is complain, all you'll find in the threads ARE negatives. So, John, the question on the table, is how you define what twi is. How do you define it so you're not describing every organization in existence, preferably accurately?

In theory, I could have watched most of them. They were usually not on at convenient times for me. (I avoided "TekWar" on purpose.) I've no memory of hearing of "Odyssey 5", and Mrs Wolf's got no memory of hearing of "Jake 2.0". So you might have never heard of some of these.

"If you should find you miss the sweet and tender love we used to share. Just go back to the places where we used to go, and I'll be there."

I called in Mrs Wolf for the Charlotte Bronte thing. By the time we were done, we came up with "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane Eyre?" So, was it right?

To complain about people who complain about everything, thus becoming part of what he complains about. Which gives him something else to complain about. Naturally, once that's been pointed out, he'll complain about that, too. There's even a diminishing return of chasing people off. The biggest groups to chase off were in the beginning. Each group gets progressively harder to scare away. The last handful will either die in twi or have to be scraped off like barnacles. But I really think the lawyers insisted they change tactics.

Mrs Wolf said that #3 was "the Sentinel." (Please name or letter them for easy reference, I will request.) They all sound very interesting, though.

Never gonna fall for MODERN LOVE. Walks besides me MODERN LOVE. Walks on by, MODERN LOVE Gets me to the church on time....

Is the VR realm one something called "HARSH REALM"? How about "FIRST WAVE" for the first one you posted?

" Out of order — I'll show you out of order! You don't know what out of order is, Mr. Trask! I'd show you, but I'm too old, I'm too tired and I'm too f#in' blind. If I were the man I was five years ago, I'd take a FLAMETHROWER to this place! Out of order? Who the hell you think you're talking to?! I've been around, you know? There was a time I could see! And I have seen- boys like these, younger than these, their arms torn out, their legs ripped off! But there is nothin like the sight of an amputated spirit. There is... no prosthetic for that. You think you're merely sending this splendid foot-soldier back home to Oregon with his tail between his legs, but I say you are executing his soul! And why? Because he's not a "Baird man." Baird men. You hurt this boy, you're going to be Baird bums, the lot of ya."

Demagoguery and fanaticism are not exclusive to religion. People should think for themselves when approaching LIFE, not just religion. That means they should be careful about POLITICS as well as any other interactions.

Star Trek- First Contact

I think he DISCOVERED it by accident- then set out to do it on purpose after that. Broken Arrow's shown it's possible it was by design the first time. The evidence can support either possibility. That's up there with the times they chewed people out, kicked them out, then immediately gave them orders and had the nerve to be surprised when they were told to go f themselves since the person was now out and not subject to twi's ordinances.

Sometime in the 90s, lcm went off on one or more rants about how "the abundant life" was spiritual and was never supposed to be physical. That was after saying the opposite all across the 80s, of course. The man just got crazier as the 90s progressed until even twi had to put a stop to it-or, more to the point, twi's lawyers put a stop to it.

"Friends, we've got trouble! Right here in River City! With a capital 'T' and that rhymes with 'P' and that stands for Pool!"

My SUSPICION is that it was discovered BY ACCIDENT. vpw was a LAZY student who cut corners and BS'ed his way through things, and had an inflated sense of self. (He shows signs of Sociopathy as well.) We know he did this to the "Zero Corps." He got mad at them and kicked the whole group out. Then he turned around, and offered to let them return, provided they rededicate themselves to him. Many of them accepted this "offer." So, I think vpw did that one out of pique, as an impulse, then as covering his @$$ and getting them to pay tuition again. Then he realized he could make this a financially successful maneuver and worked out variations of it. This would then lead to the versions we were talking about.

Mel Brooks' "History of the World, Part I."

"But I'm funny how? I mean, funny like I'm a clown? I amuse you?"

I think we just saw 2 different variations of the same thing- the manufactured butt-chewing. In one case, one leader turned to one guy he'd never met, and made up a chronic problem with him, and let him have it. In another case, one leader took an entire local program's participants, made up a chronic problem with them, then let them have it. Neither had any basis in reality, but both had a sociological basis in control mechanisms used by toxic organizations looking to exert control over their followers. Each one was actually sort-of standard operating procedure for such groups.

Please don't. You can substitute a character or two and still leave him easy to identify. That's still GSC policy. Yeah, blamed the people on the field FOR THE CONDITIONS OF THE FIELD. Try that outside of twi programs and see how far you get. He probably helped other people besides you to distance themselves from that program- those honest enough to admit they couldn't "believe up" a bunch of steaks with no money- especially when the tough talkers aren't on the field, demonstrating how to make the steaks appear with no money but only The Power of Believing. That sounded like a "commercial" for doing anything BUT enter the program. Yeah, no "coordination" between leadership, whether as to goals or as to execution. Otherwise, they would have been on the same page. lcm was shouting one thing, the other guy the opposite. Frankly, I preferred lcm's "commercial" of the two. lcm was being more honest that people out on the field in the program were out on their own with no support from HQ. In fact, at times, they were subject to being made LESS capable from HQ with no assistance. That happened once I'm aware of- when wow's on the field had their roomie/ rent partner kicked off the field for not swearing an oath to lcm while being in the corps. The remaining roomies contacted their next higher-up, saying how they now were stuck for the current month's rent, and asking for help with that month's rent. They were told they would get it, but the next month, they were on their own. It never arrived. So, one contacted a believer back home. They said they were getting ready to send twi their monthly protection money-but would send it to them instead since twi said they would and should have anyway. I'm sure that was only one such story that year, and that only one year. So, it was FAR more appropriate to brand the wow program as "it will be tough and there will be lots of problems to overcome" because it was designed and executed to be difficult and for problems to be solved entirely on the field. With their approach, this "and if you think hard enough, the problems vanish on their own and it becomes an easy program" thing would have made it worse on the participants. Blaming the participants for eating what they needed to because it wasn't more than they could afford....what a weiner. Sounds like the kind of guy who was "always making friends." *rolls eyes* Accusing you of "talking about the word" (what you were supposed to do) "but not on the same page as me" (not reading his mind) was actually pretty typical for what SOME of the corps learned. There were some nice people, but some saved up chewings and waited for an excuse to say them, or just plain made up stupid things to complain about without warning- like happened to you. "Again." Well, he hallucinated you'd done it before- possibly because he imagined everybody was doing it to him all the time and figured he'd had that out with you before because he'd been having it out with everyone. This "wow czar" sounds unqualified and inexperienced, and pretty much the epitome of how top dogs sounded with their training solely in twi. In other words, this isn't really shocking considering what came out of the mouths of some of the others. lcm was "trained" like him and often came out with similar nonsense, and was fine with this guy in that position. Guy probably knew the drill- suck up to the higher-ups, then vent all over the people downhill.

It's not verbatim. But it is "the Princess Bride."

That's it.

"If you take a jar of pickles, and write "apple butter" on the outside, that still doesn't change the pickles on the inside." I imagine he said it differently on a number of occasions. IIRC, that version was straight from the class.

IIRC, someone once posted about that. The experience was common enough that a slang term was coined for it: "STUMP COORDINATOR." That was a person (generally corps) who was put in charge of an area, and effectively killed it off. ================================== As for me, NYC was an area targeted for growth, which it did. Before I ever heard of twi, they'd sent a lot of people to NYC in a few areas, and ran then through classes as fast as they could get them. That's how we ended up with a lot of Intermediate Class grads, and people "qualified" to run a twig. We had a Corps grad assigned as the Territory Coordinator, and everyone else was just us schmoes. I heard of things right after vpw died- which is when HQ was stumbling through things, and that was actually a great time to show up, since the locals were left alone for a few years while HQ and all the Corps and leadership hashed out all the craziness with POP and so on. We actually had steady growth during that time, and "my" Territory effectively went to 1/2 its geographical area, since it grew enough that it was split. Where it was previously labelled as 2 counties, each county was made into a separate Territory. Then 1989 came, and lcm demanded an oath of loyalty to himself personally, to follow him blindly (he confirmed to a poster once, who knew him, that this was exactly what he was expecting from this oath of allegiance- to "follow him blindly." Altogether, about 80% of twi left within a timeframe of about a year. In the case of NYC, most of us left together and kept on meeting locally and doing stuff- just without lcm's approval. After that, twi had continued to hemorrhage members until now it's almost nonexistent, and those of us who left locally actually increased in numbers for a few years, but too much of the stereotypical Corps stuff plus weirdness from Gartmore plus weirdness from the "Limb Coordinator"(State Coordinator) eventually meant that a lot of us just wandered off, sick and tired of being sick and tired. So, that's how it affected me.

"Yes, but why is the rum gone?"