1189: Steve Hassan (Started It)
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/05/12
“Mind control is the process by which individual or collective freedom of choice and action is compromised by agents or agencies that modify or distort perception, motivation, affect, cognition and/or behavioral outcomes. It is neither magical nor mystical, but a process that involves a set of basic social psychological principles.”
“I thought I was being my true self, but I was really being a small Sun Myung Moon, thinking like him, feeling like him, walking like him, talking like him.”
“Destructive individuals and cults use deception and undue influence to make people dependent and obedient.”
“Psychotherapy/educational cults, which have enjoyed great popularity, purport to give the participant ‘insight’ and ‘enlightenment.’ Commercial cults play on people’s desires to make money. They typically promise riches but actually enslave people, and compel them to turn money over to the group. None of these destructive cults deliver what they promise and glittering dreams eventually turn out to be paths to psychological enslavement.”
“News items are excellent for eliciting fear and inculcating phobias. Cult leaders like to tell members about floods, earthquakes, fires, famines, plagues, and wars — as proof that the last days have arrived.”
“Certitude is not evidence of truth. Nor does repetition make it true. If anything, repetition should make you suspicious. Truth always stands up to scrutiny on its merits.”
“We also looked at confirmation bias — how our minds filter and select information that confirms our own point of view, and dismiss information that does not fit in or negates it. And confirmation bias is certainly not limited to cults. We basically see and hear what we want to, whether we realize it or not, and rationalize away what does not fit our preconceptions and predictions.”
“So, what we’re talking about with mind control is a creation of a pseudo-self that suppresses your real self.”
“Phobia indoctrination: inculcating irrational fears about leaving the group or questioning the leader’s authority.”
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