Loaded Language is a term coined by Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, a psychiatrist who did extensive studies on the thought reform techniques used by the communists on Chinese prisoners. Of all the cults in existence today, Scientology has one of the most complex systems of loaded language. If an outsider were to hear two Scientologists conversing, they probably wouldn’t be able to understand what was being said. Loaded language is words or catch phrases that short-circuits a person’s ability to think. For instance, all information that is opposed to Scientology, such as what I am writing here, is labelled by Scientologists as “entheta” (enturbulated theta—“enturbulated” meaning chaotic, confused and “theta” being the Scientology term for spirit). Thus, if a Scientologist is confronted with some information that opposes Scientology, the word “entheta” immediately comes into his mind and he/she will not examine the information and think critically about it because the word “entheta” has short-circuited the person’s ability to do so. This is just one example, of many, many Scientology terms.
Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.
The next step is TR-0 “bullbaiting” where the partner says things to the indoctrinee to get them to react. This is called finding a person’s “buttons”. When the person does react, he is told “flunk” and what he did to flunk and then the phrase that got him to react is repeated until the person no longer reacts. This is very effective as a behavior control method to get the person to blank out when someone starts saying negative things about Scientology.
Hm, this actually sounds like it could be useful...
I wonder if it would be valuable to get partway in to Scientology, then quit, just to observe the power of peer pressure, groupthink, and whatnot.
I wonder if it would be valuable to get partway in to Scientology, then quit, just to observe the power of peer pressure, groupthink, and whatnot.
Part of scientology program involve sharing personal secrets. If you quit they can use those against you. Scientology is set up in a way that makes it hard to quit.
A lot of people still do, though. Last time I looked into this, the retention rate (reckoned between the first serious [i.e. paid] Scientology courses and active participation a couple years later) was about 10%.
It’s not a question of whether they do leave, but whether they do come out ahead.
Scientology courses aren’t cheap. If you are going to invest money into training, I would prefer to buy training from an organisation that makes leaving easy instead of making it painful.
Oh, I’m pretty confident they don’t. But if you had strong reasons for joining and leaving Scientology other than what Scientologists euphemistically call “tech”, then in the face of those base rates it seems unlikely to me that they’d manage to suck you in for real.
There are probably safer places to see groupthink in action, though.
Part of scientology program involve sharing personal secrets.
More precisely, sharing personal secrets while connected to an amateur lie detector. And the secrets are documented on paper and stored in archives of the organization. It’s optimized for blackmailing former members.
Scientology uses semantic stopsigns:
http://www.garloff.de/kurt/sekten/mind1.html
Interesting. Reminds me of Orwell’s “crimestop”:
Hm, this actually sounds like it could be useful...
I wonder if it would be valuable to get partway in to Scientology, then quit, just to observe the power of peer pressure, groupthink, and whatnot.
Part of scientology program involve sharing personal secrets. If you quit they can use those against you. Scientology is set up in a way that makes it hard to quit.
A lot of people still do, though. Last time I looked into this, the retention rate (reckoned between the first serious [i.e. paid] Scientology courses and active participation a couple years later) was about 10%.
It’s not a question of whether they do leave, but whether they do come out ahead.
Scientology courses aren’t cheap. If you are going to invest money into training, I would prefer to buy training from an organisation that makes leaving easy instead of making it painful.
Oh, I’m pretty confident they don’t. But if you had strong reasons for joining and leaving Scientology other than what Scientologists euphemistically call “tech”, then in the face of those base rates it seems unlikely to me that they’d manage to suck you in for real.
There are probably safer places to see groupthink in action, though.
More precisely, sharing personal secrets while connected to an amateur lie detector. And the secrets are documented on paper and stored in archives of the organization. It’s optimized for blackmailing former members.
Relevant, in case you hadn’t already seen it.
A therapist specializing in exposure therapy will be more useful than a cult for this purpose.
And also more expensive. But yeah, easier ways to get it than going in to scientology.