Apologies

Dear Children,

The subject of apologies is vast and overwhelming. It is probably easier to try to sift out the few things I did right from the haystack of wrongs. But that wouldn't be an apology. 

Although I have apologized privately to you and to other young people I have known over the years, I would like to make a public statement. For what it's worth, I am deeply sorry for the following:

• raising you in a toxic cult with twisted sense of normalcy
• subjecting you to reading—and memorizing—Mo Letters and the Bible in lieu of more useful books and information
• not ensuring your safety from abusive treatment
• failing to provide you with a carefree childhood
• having you pass out tracts, sell posters and tapes, and other embarrassing "witnessing" ventures
• leaving two of you as nursing babies to go away for "training," per leadership orders
• striving to be a Bible woman and thus setting a terrible example as a mother
• remaining with a man who was physically and emotionally abusive to my children, necessitating walking on eggshells to try to avoid his tirades over petty perceived offences, angry outbursts, and beatings
• raising you in a dysfunctional stressful household
• dodging confrontation instead of facing and working through the conflict
• not allowing you older ones a normal opportunity for socialization
• not ensuring you got the education you deserved
• limiting your opportunities by raising you in a foreign, rural backwater
• allowing one of you to go work for evil cult overlords who subjected you to unwanted sex, and for not insisting you come home immediately when you called me upset about being there
• and to all the young people who grew up in TFI, I am sincerely sorry for closing my eyes in denial and remaining in a cult that advocated pedophilia, child abuse, and medical and educational neglect

There are probably more things that you deserve an apology for, but they escape me now. 

In spite of me and all my failures as a mother, you have all overcome your difficult childhoods, pulled out of dark places, and have grown into mature, good-natured, intelligent adults that I am deeply proud of. 

Love,

Mom

More on Anonymity

The anonymity in the group caused by the taking of new names upon joining, isolation from society at large, social norming, and the deindividualization of groupthink was a powerful force.

I wrote before that perhaps this name changing was akin to Plato’s “Ring of Gyges.” To put this in more contemporary and perhaps more relevant terms, think of Tolkien’s “The One Ring.” Both were stories of magic rings that granted invisibility to the wearer. In Plato's Republic, he uses the story of the ring to consider whether a person would be moral if he did not have to fear being caught. In Tolkien's story, the ring also brought with its invisibility the propensity towards evil. Did the anonymity of name changing in The Family affect people’s psyches and give them further license to engage in behavior contrary to conventional morality?

Aside from this more obvious psychological process of providing a cover for amoral activity, I wonder if anonymity was a basic factor in keeping the cult together. We had new personas in the cult. We could forget who we were before joining, forget our family and friends, and forget conventional mores.

Reflecting on my teen years as a Catacomb member of the COG while still living with my parents, I see how I had had two personas—the happy cult Hepsi and the past Mary with her biological family, her friends, and problems. When my best friend called me after having been away for months, I told her about my infatuation with the Children of God. She reacted as I probably would have, had our situations been reversed. She blurted with disdain, "What? You're a Jesus Freak?!" I felt so embarrassed. But not embarrassed enough to change my mind.

I had found succour in the cult. That loving, welcoming "Family" that gave purpose to my life. I had to separate my outside self, the one my friend had known, from my cult self. Then when that friend stopped by my house to visit, I was too ashamed to answer the door. Too bad I wasn't self-aware enough to realize how my behavior betrayed my real feelings toward the COG. Although that embarrassment continued lurking in the shadows of my subconscious all my years in the cult, I repressed those "sinful doubts" and gave my all to The Children of God. And that is the real shame.

"American Heiress" and Brainwashing

American Heiress is Jeffrey Toobin's thorough recounting of Patricia Hearst's kidnapping by and involvement with the Symbionese Liberation Army - an "army" of six. Aside from the wealth and influence of her family and the powerful role that that played in her light sentencing and eventual Presidential pardons, the crux of her trial came down to whether or not she had been "brainwashed."

Did she wholeheartedly join the cause of the SLA, or was she coerced and just went along with them to keep from being killed? If the latter, as she claimed afterwards, then why did she not escape when given so many opportunities over the 19 months she was with them? She was left alone many many times. She had people that would take her in. She did not lack for money. She was not completely isolated from society. She had family that cared about her and were willing to help her.

It's hard not to conclude that she was enamored with their cause.  

After she was arrested she still held onto her revolutionary beliefs for a while, but her enthusiasm faded as the days away from the influence of the SLA grew, gradually replaced by the influence of former friends and family who were visiting her daily. With this came a change in how she viewed her past. Like the rest of humanity, she began to view her experience through the filter of her current mindset. 

Surely, she had been coerced. She had not had consensual sex with the man who had given her an obviously sentimental amulet necklace that was found in her purse when she was arrested, a year and 4 months after he had died. Sentimental? No, he had raped her - apparently, repeatedly.

Did she need to tell herself that story in order to preserve her sanity and to corroborate her claims of innocence? How could she, a "good girl" from a "good family," have committed such crimes in the name of the SLA? "Impossible," pronounced her new default narrative in protection of her ego.

Perhaps her situation echoes Stanley Milgram's conclusion. "Often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act."

Could it be, that we are all more vulnerable than we think? Given the right set of circumstances, can we be certain how we would react? 

Chillingly Similar: Berg's "Family" and Manson's "Family"

I recently finished reading the excellent account of the Manson Family and the gruesome Tate-LaBianca murders, Helter Skelter, written by the prosecutor in the case. The parallels were chilling. So chilling, in fact, that one may wonder if Berg actually borrowed some of his ideas from Charles Manson.

The Manson Family:

• Delusional, charismatic leader with his own theory of an apocalypse where blacks destroy the whites, then step aside to allow the reincarnation of Jesus himself, Charles Manson, to come out of his refuge in the desert and rule the world along with his loyal followers.
• Using his female followers to flirt and entice men to join the group, with sex as their bait. Women's purpose was to take care of men.
• So-called "freedom" with unashamed nudity and unbridled sex and orgies.
• Delusional followers who would do whatever their leader told them, even brutally killing innocents to "set them free," while bringing "death to pigs." A bit of a conflicted message.
• They called themselves "The Family," a united, "loving" brotherhood.
• Jargon and anonymity — Members took new names, police were referred to as "Romans," outsiders were other-ized.
• No shame or guilt for their crimes.

The Family of Love:

• Delusional, charismatic leader who taught that the world was evil and would be destroyed in the apocalypse, before which God's children would be raptured to heaven and saved, soon to return to rule the world during the Millennium.
• Using female followers to entice men to join and/or support the group financially. "FFing [Flirty Fishing] is going out witnessing the love of Jesus with the serious intent to use sex or sex appeal as the bait." (From FF Report Questions & Answers!) Women were taught that their role in life was to care for men, specifically, the men's "physical needs." 
• Free sex — yes.
• Delusional followers who were to obey unquestioningly. "You must obey implicitly, quickly and without question your officers in the Lord, without murmuring [complaining]..."  (From The Revolutionary Rules, 1972) The disciples' job was to set the "Systemites" free, while overall condemning them for following "mammon" [material goods, i.e. working for money].
• The Family, a united brotherhood — yes.
• Jargon and anonymity — Members took new names when joining and after "breakthroughs in their spiritual lives." Indeed, police were referred to as "Romans," as in praying, "Lord, hide us from the eyes of the Romans," before distributing literature on the street, etc. (Truly, that was a common prayer back in the day.) The othering of "them and us" was elemental.
• No shame or guilt, absolutely. They do not feel their doctrines were wrong.

Berg, with his delusions and charisma set up a fool's paradise that became his followers' "normal," with a whole different set of mores from society at large. Most egregiously, he proclaimed that adult sex with kids was "godly." Bear with me through these loathsome quotes in which I have added bold type for emphasis:

"THE ONLY WAY TO GET FREE OF [Satan] AND HIS LIES AND HIS PROHIBITIONS AND GUILT COMPLEXES ABOUT SEX is to get rid of his lies and his lying propaganda, his anti-sex propaganda, and believe the Lord and His Word and His Creation and God's Love and His freedom! That there's nothing in the world at all wrong with sex as long as it's practiced in love, whatever it is or whoever it's with, no matter who or what age or what relative or what manner!

"I'M TALKING ABOUT NATURAL NORMAL GODLY LOVE AS MANIFESTED IN SEX, as far as I'm concerned for whomever! There are no relationship restrictions or age limitations in His law of love. But system laws make it all against the law, and if I'd tell you what I think, I'd probably break the law publishing it! Whew! Wow! The system really stinks! It is a pit of lies and deceit and fiendish propaganda against the laws of God and the love of God and the sex of God! It's almost totally against nature!" (From The Devil Hates Sex!—But God Loves It!, 5/20/1980)

What was satisfying about the Manson murder trials, was that the prosecution succeeded in convincing the jury that without Manson's role, influence, and philosophy, and of course, his orders, the murders would not have been committed. He was given the death penalty, which was changed to life imprisonment when California abolished capital punishment. At the time of this writing, he is still in prison, living at taxpayer expense, even making some money from the licensing of his songs and name. But, at least, a measure of justice was served.

Too few TFI members that followed through with Berg's advice that “unto the pure all things are pure,” including sex with kids, landed in jail. It is a shame that Berg and Zerby did not. Even though Charles Manson did not personally kill the victims of the Tate-LaBianca murders, he was judged to be the one that instigated his followers, and because of that and other crimes, he has spent his life in prison. Berg and Zerby not only created the atmosphere where their followers thought such behavior was “of God,” they themselves set the standard for this child-abuse. If anyone should have been jailed, it was Berg, and the current leader of the TFI, Zerby. 

No justice has been served.

Play-doh Brains

Our brains are physically formed in childhood by our input and environment. Like play-doh dented and squeezed with each new experience, our thoughts literally change the material structure of our brains. As neuron connections develop and brain maps form, our perception of the world and the mental software of our culture are installed. 

Lenin was (almost) right when he said, "Give me a child for the first 5 years of his life and he will be mine forever." Ideas reinforced in the early years gradually become self-sustaining. We accept what agrees and reject what doesn't.

As we age and plasticity naturally declines, the Confirmation Bias holds even more sway, and we navigate towards people who think like we do, and ignore or explain away views that are not comfortable to us, ie. information that does not match our beliefs. (No wonder the children of immigrants have a much easier time adapting to their new culture than do their parents. Old habits die hard.)

TFI (and other cults) use brain plasticity to their advantage, inculcating doctrine into their little ones through manipulation of their environment, making sure they have constant feeding of Family publications through devotions, school time, and evening "story time." The kids' "normal" becomes the insular world of the cult.

This same process works on adults as long as their environment is controlled, which is exactly what happens when a new disciple joins the cult. Told they must relearn all their values to "become a new creature in Christ" they submit to hours of reading and memorization of the Bible and Family literature, effectively rewiring their brains. With enough repetition, they actually "unlearn" former ideas. This is possible only because of the brain's plasticity.

The happy news is that the brain plasticity that allows for such manipulation can also be used to our advantage. According to Dr. Michael Merzenich, PhD, "Everything that you can see happen in a young brain can happen in an older brain." It just takes focused concentration. 

Plasticity is competitive, so if we want to undo past learning, we need to focus on building new mental pathways. The memories are still there, but become grown over as new pathways form and gradually rewire our brains. (See It's Only Jesus.)

Just learning one new thing that requires disciplined study and focus is so invigorating for the brain that not only are new connections built that facilitate that new knowledge, but the whole brain is sharpened. This applies to not just mental learning, such as studying a new language, but to physical learning as well, such as learning a new dance or sport.

While there's life — and a determination to learn — there's hope.

Isolation

Last week I finished Amanda Lindhout's compelling memoir, A House in the Sky, recounting her 15 months as a hostage in Somalia. Aside from being food for nightmares, what impressed me deeply was the community she had back home that was working to save her. Although isolated and alone in her dark room, separated from her fellow-captive, there were many many people in Canada that worked tirelessly to obtain her release.

Then I listened to a talk by Steve Hassan, who, according to Wikipedia, "is an American licensed mental health counselor who has written extensively on the subject of cults." He joined the Moonies when he was 19 and was in for a couple years when a traffic accident landed him in the hospital. His sister visited and convinced him to go home with her to meet her son who had been born after Steve joined the cult. He agreed, but asked that she not tell his parents because they didn't like him being in the Moonies. Fortunately, she did tell his parents, and they arranged an intervention in the form of a deprogramming, and after five days of this, he came to his senses. He went on to study cult recruitment methods, write Combatting Cultic Mind Control, and become an expert on cults.

I wonder if people take their families and friends for granted? I know it's easy to take our "normal" for granted. Both of those people's salvations were made possible by others. What if they had had no friends and family? Or what if their parents were dead and their friends and families were so caught up in their own lives that they had no time to think about them? The endings may not have been so happy.

So much of the power of cults to keep its members comes from their burning of bridges - cutting off contact with their friends and families and keeping them isolated. Orphans are even easier to keep. Where can they go?

Unknown Unknowns

Daniel Kahneman, among other things, pointed out that the mind naturally works by going on what it sees and knows. But "there are unknown unknowns," as Donald Rumsfeld so famously said, and these are the things that we need to seek out. Obviously, the tendency of the mind to just look at what it sees and knows and go no further is crucial to cult loyalty, and reaching past that tendency is the only way out.

To quote Kahneman, "A mind that follows WYSIATI [what you see is all there is] will achieve high confidence much too easily by ignoring what it does not know. We focus on what we know and neglect what we do not know, which makes us overly confident in our beliefs."

Outside information "is routinely discarded when it is incompatible with one's personal impressions... In the competition with the inside view, the outside view doesn't stand a chance."

"It is therefore not surprising that many of us are prone to have high confidence in unfounded intuitions."

Thus, as a secluded and information-starved cult member, whose only source of outside news was weeks-old compiled and edited news articles supplied for our supposed convenience by cult leadership, I had no concept of the vast amounts of knowledge that did not come from the cult source. Of course, I talked with outsiders, but everything went through the filter of what I already "knew" to be true, i.e., my firmly held beliefs.

Thankfully, we now have the internet with its anarchy of knowledge and pseudo-knowledge to allow us to search out other sides to issues. IMHO, the internet was the undoing of the COG/TFI.

Cults and Abusive Relations are Alike

The similarity of mental process that I demonstrated both in my cult subservience and in my abusive marriage lead me to believe that the psychology is one and the same. 

One important characteristic of cults, in order for them to continue and thrive, is isolationism—if not physical isolation (like Jonestown), then social isolation (like TFI, where we were taught that "you are in the world, but not of the world," and to "keep yourself unspotted from the world," as the Bible admonishes). Separation from outsiders, a "them and us" mentality, is a crucial part of the doctrine.  

This same condition applied to my nuclear family life. After leaving communal life, we remained in a country that, shall I say, is not particularly open to foreigners, nor is the language easy to pick up. We were looked on as "outsiders" by the community around us, which seemed to suit our mentality just fine, having been immersed in the isolation of cult life for all of my husband's and my adult lives. Isolation and "being separate" were second nature to us.

In this atmosphere of isolation, my loyalty to my family was strong, as had been my cult loyalty which fortunately, by this time, was beginning to wane. (This period coincided with the publication of remarkably bizarre new doctrines which the "Prophetess" had "received from the Lord," as I wrote about previously. See Finally.)

Both cults and abusive relationships rely on belief in delusions. 

The TFI has so many delusions that it has filled volumes, highlighted by the collective wish-fulfillment of being God's children with the promise of heaven. As for my marriage, my delusion was also a form of wish-fulfillment—believing that my husband was the good, loving husband and father as described by my internal narrative. As is the nature of beliefs, I wanted to believe them, and in so doing unwittingly suppressed the reality testing function of my brain.

Moreover, both cult-life and my married-life played on my human need for acceptance and belonging. I have a desire to be useful and needed, along with the rest of the human race, particularly mothers. Both situations—cult and marriage—played to that need as well.