Free Radicals by Zeke Teflon

Free Radicals: A Novel of Utopia and Dystopia, Zeke Teflon. Tucson AZ: See Sharp Press, 2012. e-book, 245 pps.

     Kel Turner is suddenly exiled off of planet earth. He has to make his way around a new planet. In his travels, he encounters a variety of religious cult-like communities and problems. There is much more to Free Radicals but I don't want to give it away.

     The cult-like community that I laughed at the most was a variant of Alcoholics Anonymous. The adherents refer to their founder as Will B. Their rituals are outrageous.

     
sapphoq reviews says: Zeke Teflon had me hooked from the dedication. I love Anonymous and was very glad to read the inclusion of both Anonymous and the surviving members of LulSec.
     Free Radicals is witty. I enjoyed the off-beat qualities of it-- the star travel, the hooded references, the anarchists. Zeke Teflon is right up there with Cory Doctorow. Highly recommended to fans of well-written adult dystopian fiction.

Banished by Lauren Drain

Banished: A Memoir, Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church, Lauren Drain with Lisa Pulitzer.  New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2013.  e-book, 267 pps.

Lauren was a regular teen in Florida who was doing regular teen stuff.  She had a little sister, a mom, and a dad.  Her mom was a Roman Catholic and her dad was an atheist.  Lauren's parents had an early bout with a fundamentalist religion when she was young and her sister had just finished a successful treatment for a rare childhood cancer.  That lasted for a short time.  Dad had a falling out with his Christian Bible Study buddy over the idea that Christians will live forever.  Lauren's dad then became a sort of hippie and continued being a professional student.  Her mom was upset over financial debts incurred from this and also over his friends, especially the younger women.  Lauren's dad finally completed a Master's degree.  

In high school, Lauren made the dance team but her dad refused to allow her to do this.  He used the word "slutty" in his description.  That was rather upsetting but she continued to excel academically and on a softball team.

Dad decided to do a docu film on the Westboro Baptist Church.  He objected to their intolerance of homosexuality.  He figured that he could get exposure through such a film.  So he went off to D.C. and came back in the throes of some sort of religious fervor.  He was then invited to Topeka to interview some members of the church and he went.  When he came back, he got each member of the family a King James Bible.  There was now family Bible time on Sundays.  Lauren wanted to date and her dad said no dating.  He wanted Lauren to report straight home after school and dump her friends.  Her dad became verbally abusive.  Then he pulled her out of school and enrolled her in a home school sort of thing on the Internet.  He cut off Lauren's internet privileges and began slapping her around in addition to calling her names.  Lauren became isolated.  Her little sister Taylor was still allowed to attend public school and to have friends.  Through her dad's intercession, Lauren became pen-pals with some of the W.B.C. girl teens.  Then her dad decided to move the family to Topeka to a small house on church property.  So off they went.

In order to survive, Lauren had to buy into the ideology of the people around her in Kansas.  Most of the folks at the Westboro Baptist Church were related to Fred Phelps, the pastor.  Under his tutelage and the guidance of various others, Lauren began to go on pickets.  She hung out only with the other girl teens from the Church enrolled in the high school-- who all happened to be Phelps'.  But she got in trouble anyway because she like any regular teen wanted to date.  After high school, Lauren was told that she could study to be a dental hygienist or a nurse.  She picked nursing and went off to college.  Two more kids were born in the family and she took on much of the day to day care of them.  After college, Lauren got a job in the hospital and a long distance boyfriend.  The Church decided to dis-fellowship her and Lauren was forced to live on her own.  Similar to dis-fellowshipping in the Jehovah's Witnesses faith, Lauren was cut off from her mother, father, sisters, and brother.  She was not allowed to talk with anyone still in the church.  She had a difficult time adjusting to not being told what to do or think, or where to go and how to get there.

In spite of everything, Lauren managed to move away and get a new job in the new state.  She met some regular Christian folks.  She studied the Bible with one woman in particular.  She remained a Christian but successfully broke away from the beliefs of the Westboro Baptist Church.

sapphoq reviews says: Banished was an easy but interesting read.  Although Lauren didn't go much into the cultish aspects of the W.B.C., the signs were clearly in evidence throughout the book.  Her dad also fit the profile of an abuser, something which his conversion to fundamentalism did not help at all.  Not all fundamentalist Christian faiths are cultish and not all fundamentalists are abusive.  But Lauren's dad was.  And so was the W.B.C.  The culture of abuse surrounding the Westboro Baptist Church was most evident by the treatment Lauren got at the hands of folks that had been family and friends to her after she got dumped.  Recommended.  

 

The Cult That Snapped, by Karl Kahler

The Cult That Snapped: A Journey Into The Way International, Karl Kahler.  self-published? 1999.  e-book, 410 pps.

Karl Kahler has written a fairly comprehensive book dealing with both some history of The Way, International and his own personal experiences as a W.O.W. [Word Over the World ambassador].  Kahler had dropped out of high school and was seeking his fortune working at his dad's business when a co-worker insisted one day that a hitchhiker be picked up.  Her name was Valencia from Connecticut.  She was cute and sexy and drank and shot pool. It was a walk across the street to meet the rest of the gang, self-styled quasi-teachers of the Bible a la V.P. Weirwille, the leader of The Way. 

V.P. had some erroneous notions-- the biggest one being that the Bible-- the part starting with Matthew at least-- was written in Aramaic, not Greek.  His followers smoked cigarettes, cussed, drank, and were as free with having sex with anyone that moved, just like he was.  His empire fell apart with the advent of his death and L. Craig Martindale's assumption of the mantle of leadership.

Kahler was around for the last part of V.P. and the first bits of Martindale.  [Martindale is out now.  According to the official website of The Way, International, the new leader is a woman who was a vice president when Kahler was around].  Martindale was intent on having his own witch hunt.  So he dumped a bunch of people, including folks who opposed him. 

Kahler had been having doubts about the teachings, lots of doubts.  He studied Joshua and Judges and found internal inconsistencies and stuff not substantiated by the historical record.   A trip to Israel cinched it for him pretty much when he found that the story of Jesus casting a bunch of demons into some swine was cited in two of the gospels as happening in "the country of the Gadarenes" and in "the country of the Gergesenes" were two really different places some miles apart during the tour.

At any rate, Kahler found that he no longer believed the stuff he had been taught in V.P. style classes and biblical study groups.  He left, but Martindale kicked him out officially by letter three years later.

sapphoq reviews says: The Cult That Snapped includes a lot of history of the movement started by V.P. Wierwille and how the cult operated to recruit members.  I applaud Kahler for getting out after he found that he no longer was a Christian.  I suspect that this book won't have the same appeal to others that some of the other "losing my religion/leaving my former cult" books I've recently read because of both the historical content and the scriptural exigeneses in its' pages.  Still and all, The Cult That Snapped is worthy in its' own right.  Recommended. 

The Guru Looked Good by Marta Szabo

The Guru Looked Good: A Memoir, Marta Szabo.  Woodstock N.Y.: Tinker Street Press, 2009.  344 pps., e-book.

Marta Szabo got herself a guru.  Well, two in fact-- one at a time.  The first guy was called Natvar.  He was abusive.  It took seven years to leave him.  But she left her boyfriend, apartment, life, and dreams for Natvar's former guru-- the one he himself had before he went bad.  She was a woman by the name of Gurumayi and she was associated with a large center in the Catskill Mountains of New York State [which I believe has been since sold] and with one in Ganeshpuri, India.  Gurumayi is, as far as I can tell from looking through various Internet sites, the head of the S.Y.D.A. Foundation ®. .  And there are bunches of other ashrams around which are also Siddha Yoga ashrams.  Unfortunately, the guru Natvar's guru-- Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, the Gurumayi of Szabo's book stands accused of improprieties.  Gurumayi Chidvilasanda's guru-- Baba Muktananda-- is dead now but has been similarly accused.  These alleged improprieties are documented on such sites as the one put up by Pendragon and now maintained by Daniel Shaw, the introduction being http://leavingsiddhayoga.net/ where a link can be found to more info at http://leavingsiddhayoga.net/frames2.htm .  But Szabo's memoir does not go into the accusations as she has some of her own to make.

Szabo spent a decade on staff at the Fallsburg ashram in the Catskills and chronicles how she had put her writing life on hold in exchange for someone else's "I know better how to do your life than you do."  Szabo's words on page 341 have the ring of truth:
    
     I began reading books on cults and recognized what
     I saw.  Over and over, people doing what in their
     heart of hearts they didn't completely believe in or
     support, but doing it because they thought someone
     else knew better.  Doing it because they were afraid
     to speak up.

sapphoq reviews says: The Guru Looked Good is an excellent book with a crisp writing style that is authentic and clear.  Highly recommended to those who are in Siddha Yoga, were in Siddha Yoga, survivors who have left cults, and anyone who is comtemplating "finding a guru."  I am looking forward to reading more from Marta Szabo.

Adele, et. al., by Adele R. Fors

Adele et. al.,: Jehovah's Witnesses, Hells Angels, Serial Killers, Dissociative Identity Disorder... and a 14-year-old Run-Away.  2011: Smashwords Edition ebook, 165 pps.

Adele grew up in a Jehovah's Witness family.  There were problems.  Her father was undemonstrative and pre-occupied with Kingdom Hall Elder matters.  Her mother was unhappy with this and also unable to reach Adele emotionally.  When Adele was fourteen years old, she was disfellowshipped.

For several years Adele hung out with various outlaw bikers, hooked up with a few men, and became a prostitute of her own volition.  At seventeen, she turned up pregnant and went crawling back to the Kingdom Hall to beg forgiveness.  She progressed into adulthood and pointedly identified that she had other personalities inside of her.  She got into psychiatric treatment and a bad marriage, had jobs and lost the last one, was in University.  And she was once again disfellowshipped.

sapphoq reviews says:  I've known a few folks who were diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder [what used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder].  Although Adele alluded to this diagnosis in her ebook and named several members of her system, I was unable to get a good feel for what her different personas were like nor for the transition between them.  This is vastly different from my experience with D.I.D. acquaintances.  Their personas had distinct personalities and not just distinct ages.  The other memoirs that I've read about D.I.D. folk were convincing in their descriptions of their alters.  Adele's descriptions were not.  
     At the same time, I must admit that I have zero professional qualifications in respect to dissociative disorders and I've never met Adele.  After M.P.D. became a controversial diagnosis, its' name got changed.  Even so, the arguments over it did not cease publicly or privately.  Forgive me audience if I am somewhat skeptical over the whole D.I.D. thing.
     I do know that it is an act of bravery when anyone talks about their psychiatric symptoms.  Adele certainly is brave, and a survivor of a bunch of really traumatic stuff like multiple rapes.  I was saddened to discover that she was disfellowshipped [the first time] at the age of fourteen and therefore effectively thrown out of her parents' home.
     Adele et. al. did not totally sustain my interest.  Thus I find I cannot recommend this book.

The Cult Next Door by Elizabeth R. Burchard and Judith L. Carlone

The Cult Next Door: A True Story of a Suburban Manhattan New Age Cult, Elizabeth R. Burchard and Judith L. Carlone.  Bergenfield N.J.: Ace Academics, Inc., 2011.  ebook, 345 pps.

Elizabeth R. Burchard grew up in Manhattan.  Her parents divorced.  Her father was stable but died when Liz was twelve years old.  Her mother was whacked out and verbally abused Liz frequently throughout her childhood.

Liz was smart and was in college pursuing her childhood dream of becoming a shrink when she met George Sharkman, a biofeedback technician during the course of his work.  He was a charming talker and roped both Liz and her dysfunctional mother in with his words.

He started what is referred to as "The Group," a quasi-therapy group at his home.  He had a bunch of women there and a few men, and his two kids and a dog named Ben.  He charged the women and the few men forty bucks an hour and his form of therapy devolved into mass marathons and his pick of sex partners.  He encouraged everyone to have sex with each other.  The author found herself married to a man that she didn't care for.  After that broke up, she still stayed in The Group.  George Sharkman began to channel "God's Light" but then he began to refer to his own self as God.  He started doing a lot of shaking so the group did too.  The dog died and George got the group to hang around and sort of hope for the dog's return to life.  Ben's decaying maggot-infested corpse was hidden behind the couch and brought out when The Group was in session.  The Group was in session as often as George could arrange it-- at forty bucks an hour per participant for as many hours daily as possible, it was worth his while to make it so-- and George also offered individual therapy as he saw fit to add to his income.  One day, the Black Dog Cult members were presented with a bunch of pebbles laying on Ben's body and told that Ben had birthed these stones.  This started The Group on sucking rocks.

Liz began a photography business as she had become a college dropout and her inheritance from her father went to George Sharkman.  She was hoodwinked into taking on George's daughter as a partner and also lived with her for awhile as roommates.  She met Judith L. Carlone and Judith's husband.  With Judith's gentle questions and friendship, Liz made her escape from all things Sharkman good.  Unfortunately, her mother remained behind.  George Sharkman died.  The dog never was brought back to life.  He was returned to his grave near the woods.

sapphoq reviews says: The Cult Next Door shows how easily it is for someone to decide to join a cult.  Liz was highly intelligent but she capitulated.  Her writing is crisp and she keeps her memoir moving.  Highly recommended to any who wish to understand more about how a talkative con guru can seduce folks into joining up.

Blown for Good by Marc Headley

Blown for Good: Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology, by Marc Headley.  Self-published, BFG Books Inc., at Smashwords, 823 pps. on e-reader.

 It is because of this book that I recently refused to attend a talk by an inspirational speaker that some of my TOPS [Take Off Pounds Sensibly] pals were waxing enthusiastly over.  I looked up the speaker's name on the Internet.  When I found that he listed himself as having worked "in the film industry in Hollywood" for some years, I became suspicious.  The clincher was the overflowing with happiness tone to his writing on his website.  Is he a Scientology?  I don't know.  Blown for Good informed me that Scientologists who worked for the Headquarters were told to say they worked in film if asked by outsiders what they did for a living.  I wasn't willing to take a chance that the speaker might be a sneaker stumper for Scientology who just might have worked at Golden Era Productions just as Marc Headley had.

Marc Headley grew up in a Scientology family.  His parents got divorced and remained Scientologists.  His mother's steady stream of new boyfriends were Scientologists.  Marc attended Scientology schools as a kid-- with an occasional break of public school or no school at all if his mother couldn't afford the tuition at times-- and hung out with other kids also growing up in Scientology.  After his living arrangements repeatedly fell apart, Headley signed up to work for Sea Org.  He was sixteen years old.  There were kids in Sea Org who were even younger than he was.

During his initial training in Sea Org, Headley first ran into a crew of folks who were being punished and were doing indeterminate stints on the Rehabilitation Project Force (R.P.F.).  The folks assigned to R.P.F. got the nastiest foulest jobs, went everywhere at a run, slept in separate R.P.F. "dorms," and were threatened with being assigned to the R.P.F.'s R.P.F. which was even worse.

Headley passed his training and then spent fifteen years working at Scientology Headquarters in Gilman Hot Springs, California-- also called Gold, for Golden Era Productions.  He had enough contact with Scientology's leader David Miscavige to recognize that Miscavige seemed to get pleasure out of humiliating and punishing people.  Headley even had a punching session with Miscavige in which Headley's face served as Miscavige's punching bag.

Headley had worked for Headquarters for fifteen years when he was falsely accused of embezzlement.  He was sentenced to go to R.P.F.  He decided to blow [leave].  Some folks tried to get him back and even ran his motorcycle off the road in the process.  The upshot was when Headley began to make a scene in the road, they backed off and left.  He was escorted to the town and made his break.  His wife blew shortly thereafter.

sapphoq reviews says: Blown for Good is an excellent book for anyone interested in this subject matter.  Most highly recommended.  I wish Marc Headley, his wife Claire, and his children much happiness as they walk in true freedom.

Freedom of Mind by Steven Hassan

Freedom of Mind: (Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults, and Beliefs), Steven Hassan.  Newton, Mass: Freedom of Mind Press, 2012.  approx. 266 pps. inc. extensive footnotes.

N.B.  Steven Hassan has a website at
http://www.freedomofmind.com which is very much worth checking out.


At age 19, Steven Hassan was recruited into the Moonies.  After he got out, he began to help others to exit cults.  He has developed a system which does not involve kidnapping cult members and keeping them locked up in hotel rooms with one or more programmers.  He offers counseling which goes beyond "exit counseling" for former cult members who are endeavoring to live their lives free and apart from their cults.  Steven Hassan is a recognized authority regarding cults and their negative influences on their members and on the non-cult families of their members.  

I really learned a lot from this book.  I have a close friend who is currently heavily involved in a pseudo Hindu cult.  The biggest takeaway for me was to listen respectfully to her telling of her mystical experiences and to gently help her tap into her non-cult self memories when able.  Freedom of Mind taught me how to distinguish movements that rob folks of their free will from those that don't.  [N.B. Many religions are not cults].  Through the website, I was able to identify specifically which group she belongs to.


I myself in younger days narrowly avoided being sucked in by The Children of God a.k.a. The Family a.k.a. The Family International but I did spend a couple of years seesawing between drugs and fundie Jesus.  Several kids in the high school I attended were heavily involved in C.O.G.  One had taken me to a commune in a dark rambling warehouse somewhere in lower Manhattan.  She showed me some Mo letters and talked about flirty fishing.  Flirty fishing was too much for me.  I couldn't see how screwing horny businessmen for fundie Jesus was Biblical [It's not].  And I didn't buy the argument that once a businessman from a foreign country slept with a C.O.G., his soul would automatically become ripe for the picking.  Another classmate killed herself after her family had painted over the Psalm verses she had stenciled on her bedroom walls.  A third one learned Chinese in order to "disappear behind the Iron Curtain" and win souls for fundie Jesus.

In Freedom of Mind, Steven Hassan carefully reviewed the four major types of cults-- a religious cult is just one of the four types-- and the signs that a given group may have some cultish features.  He explained several varied approaches to the loved one who is involved in a cult.  Instead of "deprogramming", Hassan urged his readers to treat their family member or friend with respect and love.  Hassan suggested a series of mini-interventions which are far more casual than those popularized on television to get someone suffering from addictions to agree to go into treatment.  I was able to forgive his frequent mention of his own availability as a professional.  Folks who are worried about a loved one being under the control of a toxic leader need someone to say, "Hey there is help for this and I can help you."

sapphoq reviews says: Freedom of Mind has information and clear illustrations which make this book a valuable addition to the library of anyone who has a loved one in a cult.

BONEWITS CULT DANGER EVALUATION FRAME, as written by Issac Bonewits

The Advanced Bonewits’ Cult Danger Evaluation Frame (Version 2.6) Copyright © 1979, 2001, 2004 c.e., Isaac Bonewits Introduction Events in the last several decades have clearly indicated just how dangerous some religious and secular groups (usually called “cults” by those opposed to them) can be to their own members as well as to anyone else whom they can influence. “Brainwashing,” beatings, child abuse, rapes, murders, mass suicides, military drilling and gunrunning, meddling in civil governments, international terrorism, and other crimes have been charged against leaders and members of many groups, and in far too many cases those accusations have been correct. None of this has been very surprising to historians of religion or to other scholars of what are usually labled “new” religions (no matter how old they may be in their cultures of origin). Minority groups, especially religious ones, are often accused of crimes by members of the current majority. In many ways, for example, the “Mormons” were the “Moonies” of the 19th century — at least in terms of being an unusual minority belief system that many found “shocking” at the time — and the members of the Unification Church could be just as “respectable” a hundred years from now as the Latter Day Saints are today. Nonetheless, despite all the historical and philosophical warnings that could be issued, ordinary people faced with friends or loved ones joining an “unusual” group, or perhaps contemplating joining one themselves, need a relatively simple way to evaluate just how dangerous or harmless a given group is liable to be, without either subjecting themselves to its power or judging it solely on theological or ideological grounds (the usual method used by anti-cult groups). In 1979 I constructed an evaluation tool which I now call the “Advanced Bonewits’ Cult Danger Evaluation Frame” or the “ABCDEF” (because evaluating these groups should be elementary). A copy was included in that year’s revised edition of my book, Real Magic. I realize its shortcomings, but feel that it can be effectively used to separate harmless groups from the merely unusual-to-the-observer ones. Feedback from those attempting to use the system has always been appreciated. Indirect feedback, in terms of the number of places on and off the Net this ABCDEF has shown up, has been mostly favorable. For example, it was chosen by and is now displayed on the website of the Institute for Social Inventions, who paraphrased it for their “Best Ideas — A compendium of social innovations” listing. The purpose of this evaluation tool is to help both amateur and professional observers, including current or would-be members, of various organizations (including religious, occult, psychological or political groups) to determine just how dangerous a given group is liable to be, in comparison with other groups, to the physical and mental health of its members and of other people subject to its influence. It cannot speak to the “spiritual dangers,” if any, that might be involved, for the simple reason that one person’s path to enlightenment or “salvation” is often viewed by another as a path to ignorance or “damnation.” As a general rule, the higher the numerical total scored by a given group (the further to the right of the scale), the more dangerous it is likely to be. Though it is obvious that many of the scales in the frame are subjective, it is still possible to make practical judgments using it, at least of the “is this group more dangerous than that one?” sort. This is if all numerical assignments are based on accurate and unbiased observation of actual behavior by the groups and their top levels of leadership (as distinct from official pronouncements). This means that you need to pay attention to what the secondary and tertiary leaders are saying and doing, as much (or more so) than the central leadership — after all, “plausible deniability” is not a recent historical invention. This tool can be used by parents, reporters, law enforcement agents, social scientists and others interested in evaluating the actual dangers presented by a given group or movement. Obviously, different observers will achieve differing degrees of precision, depending upon the sophistication of their numerical assignments on each scale. However, if the same observers use the same methods of scoring and weighting each scale, their comparisons of relative danger or harmlessness between groups will be reasonably valid, at least for their own purposes. People who cannot, on the other hand, view competing belief systems as ever having possible spiritual value to anyone, will find the ABCDEF annoyingly useless for promoting their theological agendas. Worse, these members of the Religious Reich and their fellow theocrats will find that their own organizations (and quite a few large mainstream churches) are far more “cult-like” than many of the minority belief systems they so bitterly oppose. It should be pointed out that the ABCDEF is founded upon both modern psychological theories about mental health and personal growth, and my many years of participant observation and historical research into minority belief systems. Those who believe that relativism and anarchy are as dangerous to mental health as absolutism and authoritarianism, could (I suppose) count groups with total scores nearing either extreme (high or low) as being equally hazardous. As far as dangers to physical well-being are concerned, however, both historical records and current events clearly indicate the direction in which the greatest threats lie. This is especially so since the low-scoring groups usually seem to have survival and growth rates so small that they seldom develop the abilities to commit large scale atrocities even had they the philosophical or political inclinations to do so. The Advanced Bonewits’ Cult Danger Evaluation Frame (version 2.6) Factors: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Low High 1 Internal Control: Amount of internal political and social power exercised by leader(s) over members; lack of clearly defined organizational rights for members. 1 _________________________ 2 External Control: Amount of external political and social influence desired or obtained; emphasis on directing members’ external political and social behavior. 2 _________________________ 3 Wisdom/Knowledge Claimed by leader(s); amount of infallibility declared or implied about decisions or doctrinal/scriptural interpretations; number and degree of unverified and/or unverifiable credentials claimed. 3 _________________________ 4 Wisdom/Knowledge Credited to leader(s) by members; amount of trust in decisions or doctrinal/scriptural interpretations made by leader(s); amount of hostility by members towards internal or external critics and/or towards verification efforts. 4 _________________________ 5 Dogma: Rigidity of reality concepts taught; amount of doctrinal inflexibility or “fundamentalism;” hostility towards relativism and situationalism. 5 _________________________ 6 Recruiting: Emphasis put on attracting new members; amount of proselytizing; requirement for all members to bring in new ones. 6 _________________________ 7 Front Groups: Number of subsidiary groups using different names from that of main group, especially when connections are hidden. 7 _________________________ 8 Wealth: Amount of money and/or property desired or obtained by group; emphasis on members’ donations; economic lifestyle of leader(s) compared to ordinary members. 8 _________________________ 9 Sexual Manipulation of members by leader(s) of non-tantric groups; amount of control exercised over sexuality of members in terms of sexual orientation, behavior, and/or choice of partners. 9 _________________________ 10 Sexual Favoritism: Advancement or preferential treatment dependent upon sexual activity with the leader(s) of non-tantric groups. 10 _________________________ 11 Censorship: Amount of control over members’ access to outside opinions on group, its doctrines or leader(s). 11 _________________________ 12 Isolation: Amount of effort to keep members from communicating with non-members, including family, friends and lovers. 12 _________________________ 13 Dropout Control: Intensity of efforts directed at preventing or returning dropouts. 13 _________________________ 14 Violence: Amount of approval when used by or for the group, its doctrines or leader(s). 14 _________________________ 15 Paranoia: Amount of fear concerning real or imagined enemies; exaggeration of perceived power of opponents; prevalence of conspiracy theories. 15 _________________________ 16 Grimness: Amount of disapproval concerning jokes about the group, its doctrines or its leader(s). 16 _________________________ 17 Surrender of Will: Amount of emphasis on members not having to be responsible for personal decisions; degree of individual disempowerment created by the group, its doctrines or its leader(s). 17 _________________________ 18 Hypocrisy: amount of approval for actions which the group officially considers immoral or unethical, when done by or for the group, its doctrines or leader(s); willingness to violate the group’s declared principles for political, psychological, social, economic, military, or other gain. 18 _________________________ A German translation of the 2.0 version of this is available at: Isaac Bonewits’ Sektengefahr Checkliste. A French translation of the 2.6 version is available at: Grille avancée de Bonewits pour l'évaluation du danger potentiel d'une secte. An Italian translation of the 2.6 version is available at: Documento Avanzato di Isaac Bonewits per la Valutazione del Pericolo del Culto. A Polish translation of the 2.6 version is available at: Zaawansowany Kwestionariusz Bonewitsa Oceniajacy Niebezpieczenstwo Sekty A Portuguese translation of the 2.6 version is available at: A Ferramenta Avançada de Bonewits para Avaliação de Seitas. Other translations will be posted as they are done. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Low High Copyright © 1979, 2001 c.e., Isaac Bonewits. This text file may be freely distributed on the Net, provided that no editing is done, the version number is retained, and everything in this notice box is included. If you would like to be on one or more of Isaac Bonewits’ emailing lists, click here to get subscription information. Note: this is one of his most popular essays, so if you want to mirror it, that’s fine with him, but please check back regularly for updates. If anyone wants to translate this or others of his essays into other languages, he will be happy to post them on his website. Is having access to this material worth a few dollars, punts, pounds, or euros to you? Click either graphic to make a fast and secure donation to Isaac Bonewits, so he can afford to keep his website going and growing! Or you can suggest to your local Occult/New Age bookstore that they bring him out for one of his colorful presentations, or you could just send money to him at PO Box 1010, Nyack, NY, USA 10960-1010. Back to the Contents Page of Isaac Bonewits’ Homepage Isaac & Phae say: We use PayPal and we recommend it! Back to the T.O.C. of Isaac Bonewits’ Homepage Pagan T-shirts ~ Mousepads ~ Coffee Mugs ~ Wall Clocks Take a look at the graphic designs Isaac has available at his CafePress store! (P. E.) Isaac Bonewits, Adr.Em./ADF Email: ibonewits@neopagan.net Snailmail: PO Box 1010, Nyack, NY, USA 10960-8010 This webpage is copyright © 1979, 2001 c.e., Isaac Bonewits Most recently updated: August 5, 2006 c.e. (advertising) This page’s URL is http://www.neopagan.net/ABCDEF.html My Homepage URL is http://www.neopagan.net . . . . !

Pasted from Issac's site and under the terms of his conditions, I have included the entire page including the box above. sapphoq reviews