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The use of Praise and Blame |
Praise and Blame refer to a system of rewards and punishments used to control your behavior. They use praise when you do something good and blame when you do something bad. Sounds like normal child rearing so far but it doesn't stop there. Some praise and blame is normal. But cult control takes it to an extreme. Cults need to enslave you to survive. Praise and blame are the must common tools to do that with.
The process appeals to the human need to do good things. Since humanity has evolved around the Tree of Knowledge and our success as a species is tied to our ability to plug into society, our need to be an upstanding member is hard wired into our brains, just like fear, sex, and the need to find food. We are more like bees in that respect. A bee is nothing without the hive. It dies when separated from the hive. Humans will often kill themselves as a result of social shunning. And for many people there is no greater thrill than to be praised by your peers. We want to accomplish great things and rise in social position within the group. Social position give us respect and power and authority. Women are attracted to the powerful males creating more opportunities to spread one's DNA around.
On an instinctive level, we also want to be part of the Tree of Knowledge. We are aware of our limited existence and we want to continue to live in some form after we are gone. We want people to remember our name and who we are and the great things we accomplish. We want to go down in history as heroes who fought and died for some great cause, or at least be part of a group that goes down in history for some great cause. Our instinct to be part of the Tree of Knowledge is so strong that we will sacrifice our lives to make that happen. It is this kind of biological commitment to community that has made the human race rise to the top of the evolutionary chain.
There is however a down side to this need to be a respected member of the community. The down side is that it can be exploited. This need is far more powerful than people realize. But cults realize it and they have become experts at exploiting it. They can make you jump through hoops like a trained animal. And that's why most of the world is a slave to some form of cult. I would say that less that one percent of humanity comes close to the standard of what I consider free. The rest are slaves to the cult mind.
When you join a cult they start off with the carrot. They tell you that you are a very special person who was led to them through divine inspiration to be a member of an elite group of special people who are on a special mission to accomplish great things. You are one of the good people who is in a desperate battle with the forces of evil that are taking over the universe. Your decision to join forces might be the tipping point for the triumph of Good over Evil, where your refusal to join might result in Evil winning, and it will be your fault if that happens.
Everything becomes black and white. You are either with us or you are against us. If you're not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Are you an "us" or a "them"? There is no middle ground. Evil people serve the evil master and everything they do is evil. They are sinners and Infidels who are unworthy and deserve death. We however "are washed in the blood of the lamb" and our sins are forgiven. The idea that non-members have a role in society and that they are contributing is unthinkable. The don't see people as having some good aspects and some bad aspects and that you can improve them a little and help people evolve forward. They are the enemy, and the enemy is to be destroyed.
Once you are in, the reprogramming begins. You are a student, a disciple, and they are the wise masters. they are right and you are wrong. You have to accept what you are being taught. After all, this is all new to you. You are learning the secret ways so obviously the possibility of you being right and the master being wrong is highly unlikely. You are being taught a different way of thinking. You are being reprogrammed. The lesson isn't what you think it is though. What you are being taught to believe is what you are told to believe without question. You are being trained to be a sock puppet.
A sock puppet is a person who is totally controlled by the cult mind.
You are taught that you are important and that you are being trained for an important mission. You are being evaluated by the other group members who are all concerned about each other's spiritual progress. You are required to seek their praise and avoid their blame. Social position is everything within the group and it is often very competitive. They feed you ego treats to get you really addicted to your self importance, and then take them away to punish you for failing to behave.
The use of praise and blame is a common mind control trick. Once a person is fully addicted, they will do anything, say anything, believe anything in order to get their ego fix. The life of a sock puppet is a life of fear, always having to worry if they are good enough. They are given impossible goals which they never can achieve which puts them in a state of perpetual failure. First they feed the ego, then they starve it. Progress is measured in obedience.
Cults are about the suppression of freedom. They punish independent thinking. Faith is required and doubt is punished. In contrast, the Church of Reality requires doubt. Blind faith is considered bullshit. We encourage a diversity of viewpoints as a way of coming up with fresh ideas. We, however, must ourselves be vigilant to avoid the praise and blame game and not fall into the same traps where we divide into masters and starry eyed groupies who suck up information like a sponge and parrot it back without thinking. Sometimes people become sock puppets and just hop from cult to cult looking for someone to enslave them in a way they feel better about. That's why we require people to ponder reality so that they can become themselves and invent new things for the Tree of Knowledge.
We have a concept called Intellectual Tithing where we give back new ideas to the Tree of Knowledge. New ideas require innovative thinking which means that people have to think outside the box. You can't come up with a new idea if you are just parroting church dogma. Intellectual Tithing creates a process where explorers develop the skills of independent thinking. It creates an environment for new idea to emerge and be presented for discussion, scrutiny, and doubt testing. This not only makes humanity smarter, but it strengthens the mind and makes people more immune to cult based thinking.
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