To Guy's point, I also agree the parent was well within her rights. I don't think indoctrination is illegal. Not even sure it should be illegal. But nevertheless, I think, the parent was brainwashing her child. (brainwashing might be overstating the case a little, but, according to Josh, everyone on this board claims all Mormons everywhere are brainwashed, so I'm just trying to help out his board credibility a bit:)
Those kinds of people would refuse to read the book themselves too.
Oh but that's not true Nehor. That's the ultimate brainwashing ploy. Make it look like the inductee is given liberties and choices while stacking the deck behind the scenes. I think you might be able to rate the strength of cult oppression by the number of times it has to emphasize your freedom, or freeagency.
Lou Midgley 08/20/2020: "...meat wad," and "cockroach" are pithy descriptions of human beings used by gemli? They were not fashioned by Professor Peterson.
LM 11/23/2018: one can explain away the soul of human beings...as...a Meat Unit, to use Professor Peterson's clever derogatory description of gemli's ideology.
Gadianton wrote:Oh but that's not true Nehor. That's the ultimate brainwashing ploy. Make it look like the inductee is given liberties and choices while stacking the deck behind the scenes. I think you might be able to rate the strength of cult oppression by the number of times it has to emphasize your freedom, or freeagency.
My wife likes to argue that she has perfect freedom to think what she wants. I don't believe this, and her behavior belies it. She has created an artificial intellectual barrier beyond which she will not allow herself to venture. This barrier is not one of her own, free, independent choosing but one that has been inculcated in her by decades of indoctrination. She, and many other believers, live in an intellectual prison of sorts that they have constructed with bricks, bars, and mortar provided them by Mormon Inc.
This whole process of using indoctrination to transform free thinking into some kind of sin, or at least character defect, is one of the single most insidious practices of dogmatic religion.
God . . . "who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, . . . and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him ..."
jskains wrote:Wow, what drama. Might want to take some time off trying to villify the LDS Church and take responsibility for yourself. I have been a member for 13 years and not once have I seen HALF the stuff you claim goes on in the Church. Aren't you the one with that website (propaganda machine)?
Of course not. I went to a different LDS Church than anyone else did. It doesn't exist now, except in my mind. It was all a dream I once had.
Propaganda Machine? Which site do you mean? As opposed to LDS.ORG right?
You are free to think what you want but if you think certain things you will go to Hell, or not make it to heaven, or God will be angry with you, or you will lose your testimony, or your family will be destroyed, or something.
Religions, or any other group who holds these ideas, while they don't technically eliminate free thinking, create such a pervasive fear that free thinking is virtually non-existent in those who embrace the ideas.
I don't think this is brainwashing but certainly an unhealthy way of managing believers, and totally reflective of the need for control in those who create the fear.
I'm NOT saying this is the experience of every, (or any), LDS member or believer.... I'm speaking generally about numerous groups and beliefs.
~dancer~
"The search for reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings for it destroys the world in which you live." Nisargadatta Maharaj
liz3564 wrote:If that mother had read Judy Blume's "Forever", she would have probably fainted. LOL
I actually don't think there was anything wrong with the mother reading the book first. When you have a minor child and you are concerned about content that child may be processing, there is nothing wrong with reading the material first, or previewing a movie first, etc.
Did the mother forbid the daughter from reading the book? That's not how I interpreted it. Maybe I'm missing something:
I read the book, which as I remember is about a young girl, Margaret, who is trying to find God and goes from one church to another, but never finds Him. She never really resolves her search; the book seemed atheistic to me (although not nearly as forceful as Pullman’s books). I sat Clarissa down and described the book and my feelings on it; she decided not to read it and returned it to the library the next day.
According the quote here, the mother explained her feelings, and then the daughter made the decision not to read the book. It didn't appear to me that the mother said, "Don't read it." It sounded more like she said, "I read it. I don't agree with the philosophy of the book but you can read it if you want to."
If that is how it was presented, I really don't see anything wrong.
Given that the mother says that she described her "feelings" about it, I doubt very much that she said, "I don't agree with the philosophy of the book." I am willing to bet that she said something more along the lines of, "I felt the spirit leave me," or, "This is a dark book," or something like that. The mother clearly did not want her daughter to read the book, and so I doubt very much that she presented it in such neutral terms.
Then again, in my experience, LDS mothers often tend to think they are granting free agency when, in fact, they are placing pressures on their kids in various ways, even if they don't mean to.
Infymus has engaged in two types of really common cognitive errors. First, he looks at something, picks out what he wants to see, and disregards the rest. In the following paragraph he posted, look at what he left out, which I have bolded.
"The process of inculcating ideas, attitudes, cognitive strategies or a professional methodology. It is often distinguished from education by the fact that the indoctrinated person is expected not to question or critically examine the doctrine they have learned. As such it is often used pejoratively. However, instruction in the basic principles of a science, or the methodology of a profession, can also be called indoctrination, in the sense that people do not necessarily question or critically examine them. From the specific perspective of some people, like the people who don't critically examine basic principles of a science or methodology of a profession, the word does not necessarily have negative connotations."
How critically do we teach our children to examine the math classes, the chemistry classes, the history classes they take in school?
Now, second, about brainwashing.
What infymus quoted is from the wiki page. But he didn't give you the disclaimer wiki included with this article, to wit:.
"This article or section has multiple issues: It needs additional references or sources for verification. It may contain original research or unverifiable claims. It may not present a worldwide view of the subject."
And Infymus talks about deception and thought control. He also shows a great disdain for his fellow posters. He thinks we can't find out that his knowledge base is wiki, and that we can't recognize what he is doing. We caught you. Try to pull the wool over someone else's eyes next time.
Gadianton wrote:Oh but that's not true Nehor. That's the ultimate brainwashing ploy. Make it look like the inductee is given liberties and choices while stacking the deck behind the scenes. I think you might be able to rate the strength of cult oppression by the number of times it has to emphasize your freedom, or freeagency.
That is certainly the easy way out. So from now on, if anyone tells you they feel free in Mormonism, you can just quip that they are in fact not, rather made to believe otherwise by the brainwashing ploy of Mormonism. So no matter what, you win. Real open minded thinking there.
How critically do we teach our children to examine the math classes, the chemistry classes, the history classes they take in school?
That's a great point Charity. So why is it now that we'll likely never see a Meridian article where mom insists on reading her child's algebra text first, before letting her proceed?
(Richard Feynman has a good story about how he was called upon to evaluate the science texts of a particular grade school system, and he came to the conclusion they were all trash. it's pretty funny)
Lou Midgley 08/20/2020: "...meat wad," and "cockroach" are pithy descriptions of human beings used by gemli? They were not fashioned by Professor Peterson.
LM 11/23/2018: one can explain away the soul of human beings...as...a Meat Unit, to use Professor Peterson's clever derogatory description of gemli's ideology.
I'm really hoping you are joking but I have a feeling you are not.
He thinks we can't find out that his knowledge base is wiki, and that we can't recognize what he is doing. We caught you. Try to pull the wool over someone else's eyes next time.
Did you not notice the quotes in LARGE quote boxes? Did you miss where Infymus clearly wrote, "Both can be found on Wiki?"
I'm pretty sure no one here doesn't know how to click on Wiki. I think we all know that WIKI is not some ultimate authority on anything. It is a great resource but we all know how it works.
OK, you were joking right? ;-)
~dancer~
"The search for reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings for it destroys the world in which you live." Nisargadatta Maharaj
This thread amuses me. My mother was more strict than this mom. I had an authorized book list and my mother was thorough in making sure I was not exposed to material she felt would be harmful to me. We had no television when I was growing up because of its evil influence. We only saw G rated movies until I was 16 and then I was allowed a PG movie only after my mother prescreened it. My mother would not sign the permission slip allowing my phys ed teacher to give us instruction about menstruation because my mother felt that it might lead to an inappropriate, unauthorized discussion about sex. My mother would not allow me to stay at the home of a nonmember friend because they did not share the same LDS values. I was either at home, church, or school and even the school was suspect many times. Those were the only safe places for me. I remember two sleepovers in my entire upbringing, both with good Mormon girls whose parents my mother trusted not to have bad things in their homes.
Now don't get me wrong. My mother always couched her protection reasons in nice motherly explanatory terms, and always followed my compliance with appropriate positive reinforcement. By most standards my mother would be considered a better than average mother. It was her job to protect her children from what she felt were the harmful things in the world.
Which is why, ironically, in my 7th grade year I won a reading contest. I read 120 books in one school term. Reading was my only source of real entertainment, and I craved it. So much so that I went underground. Of those 120 books, I'd say a good 85% of them were harlequin/silhouette romances which I borrowed from my friends or purchased cheap at the used bookstore. I read them each day on the bus ride to and from school. Sometimes I would read them at home, but they were carefully imbedded in a larger, accepted book. I can remember hiding a steamy (even Judy Blume would have cringed, the author used the world loins, for heavens sakes) historical romantic novel about Sacajawea inside my scripture covers and reading them in my bedroom at night.
"I think one of the great mysteries of the gospel is that anyone still believes it." Sethbag, MADB, Feb 22 2008
