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updated: 2021-07-27
| "'Those who wish to enjoy peace must be ready for war.', [Epaminondas] lectured them [in 370BCE], 700 years before Vegetius's more famous Roman dictum, Qui desiderat pacem, praeparat bellum." --- Victor Davis Hanson 1999 _The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, How 3 Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny_ pg54 |
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2021 December, week 1 (1-4) (16KB)
2021 December, week 2 (5-11) (16KB)
2021 December, week 3 (12-18) (16KB)
2021 December, week 4 (19-25) (16KB)
2021 December, week 5 (26-31) (16KB)
| "During the 1st moments of contact, potential converts may be manipulated with precision by the rhetorical ploys Marjoe so deftly demonstrated: conversation, rapport building, group lectures, confrontation & other modes of persuasion. Once they have been drawn into the cult, they may be bombarded with ideas & religious doctrines they cannot fit together & led through ceremonial rituals that induce intense emotional highs & overwhelming peak experiences. Converts may then be subjected to more personal encounters in which their new experiences are given prescribed cult interpretations. During this period, new converts are instructed in intensive repetitive rituals such as chanting & meditation that may induce a physical & psychic high, stop the mind's natural processes of thinking & feeling, & further weaken their resistance to suggestion & command, converts are given specific orders to refrain from doubt & told not to question the wisdom of cult doctrine. Inevitably, under the cumulative pressures of this sweeping physical, mental & emotional blitz, self-control & personal beliefs give way. Isolated from the world & surrounded by exotic trappings, converts may rapidly absorb the cult's altered ways of thought & daily life. Before they realize what is happening, while their attention is diverted by contrived spiritual conflicts, repetitive rituals &, in many groups, impaired further by lack of food & sleep, the new cult members may slide into a state of mind in which they literally are no longer capable of thinking for themselves. In our view, this comprehensive assault strikes at the heart of consciousness, under-mining the basic processes of thought & feeling essential to individual awareness & volition. Yet to zealous cult members this new state of mind often has another name: happiness...bliss... is their reward for unquestioning devotion." --- Flo Conway & Jim Siegelman 1995 _Snapping_ pp 51-52 |
