You walk around and there are bodies everywhere, hundreds of them, the body count is bordering the thousand but you don't know that yet, you're still in shock. They’re all dead, except from the one lone little girl crying on the floor.
You’ve never seen anything like that, your heart shoots up to your throat, your thoughts start to drift away and all of the sudden, you notice the strangest thing.
There are no apparent signs of violence to be seen, no gunshot wounds, no stab wounds, no signs of struggles whatsoever. They all decided to leave this plane together. They punched their own tickets.
Cyanide induced mass suicide, that’s what the papers will say anyways.
There Was a Man Walking Around Selling Kool-aid.
A tall dark man goes to church, what’s that has to do with the price of rice, right?
His name is James and he looks familiar, mainly because this isn't the first time he's been in that place. And now he's back with a message, a message from the bird of doom:
The end is nigh, time to say bye, so get ready to cry.
Repent!
The end is what now?
"Trust me, I know what I'm talking about." He says in the absolute voice of death. He takes a deep breath and he starts to perform his well-practiced routine.
The end is nigh, you are not worthy, give me half your shit.. You know the spiel, right?
Immediately thereafter, Jim starts to paint a pretty doomy-gloomy picture for what’s going to happen if those people didn’t repent and change their ways. There is no salvation.
Buuuut.. You are chosen.
Well I find that hard to believe!
"What’s your name ma’am?"
Norma.
"Norma, the source told me that you were gonna say that."
They did?
"Yes, they watch everything that you do" (kind of like a celestial version of the NSA)
They do?
"Yeppers, they even told me that they forgive you for naming your oldest son Jack after the milkman."
Oh my God, how do they even know about that?
"They know everything, they see everything, they hear everything."
(Kinda like the reverse edition of the three monkeys: See no evil, hear no evil, say no evil.)
"Oh, and Bill! They know about that hooker you brought home when your wife was in labor, but they forgive you. They also know about that penis pump by the way."
"And they forgive you Jessica for sleeping with you brother in law at your sister’s reception last year."
Oh my God!
"Not God, the source."
The force?
"That too."
Might as well, he thought to himself, I’m making this stuff up anyways.
Fast Forward, Mass Suicide.
Now is probably the time when you find yourself wondering: How did he know about all those secrets?
Remember when I said that it wasn’t the first time he has been in that church? Not only he was there before, but he helped building that very same church. He knew every single corner, every door, every hidden passage in that place. But he went away for a while.
And then one day he came back and he started creeping in as thief in the night listening to people’s confessions.
He started to bring a pen and and paper with him and began documenting every single confession his unsuspecting soon-to-be audience were making. In fact, he spent two years collecting data for his Machiavellian plan. If there is something you should not underestimate is the relentless nature of evil.
Authority huh? It’s those who claim it who should never be trusted with it.
Now, between that day when Jim first went shopping for clients in church and the day mass suicide tragedy occured, a couple of decades have passed. Twenty five years and change that allowed his criminal personality to escalate as it is common in these cases, slowly driving his followers to the frying pan, like the old analogy of the frog and the boiling pot.
That escalation inevitably let Jim out of his guard down and revealed certain hidden personality traits that are almost inherent in cult leaders:
Induction of feelings of shame and guilt to order to influence and control its members, an ever-increasing polarized Us Versus Them mentality, discouragement of questioning and punishing dissent…After all, whoever thinks differently has to be the enemy, right? You know the spiel, I’m sure.
We’ve all heard the spiel, every single person in the world has heard the spiel, every motherfucker that has ever walked the face of the earth has heard the spiel.
Every society across any period of time has been run by a ruler - political, religious or otherwise - that has displayed some sort of apparent signs of sociopathy.
There are All Kinds of Cults in The World
You read all kinds of books, you watch all sorts of documentaries, you find all kinds of studies about how certain women are theoretically attracted to rich people because centuries ago it was the hunter-gatherers that provided more chances of survival.
You read all kinds of origin-theories about how fear of heights, snakes or spiders are just echoes from our ancestors’ fears, those who actually used to die from snakes, spiders and heights.
Meanwhile, there is one type of research that you never find, those that have to do with the personality traits of those driven by the need to own human beings.
There is a song that remains repeating itself like a broken record that has been played a zillion times, a song where a disguised authoritarian finds an audience that he selected as prey. Then he pretends to hold the answers to all their problems.
He then butters them all up, he tells them they’re so so special because of pure accidents of birth and ultimately they fall in love with his deadly kiss.
A kiss that holds a million deceits.
Shortly afterwards, the mask starts falling down and his true instincts starts appearing on the surface as he starts exhibiting the very same personality traits as our friend Jimmy:
A strong polarized Us Versus Them mentality, discouraging questions, cracking down on dissent, and of course, where would we be without the immortal technique of divide and conquer?
Rich Vs poor, man Vs woman, black Vs white, straight VS gay, north Vs south… You name it, they scripted it.
Meanwhile as civilizations moves forward and break free from that deadly loop while still figuring out how the hell could anyone ever fall for such a pile of crap, again.
The old ways then slowly start disappeaing too but some of those personality traits still linger around, at least for a little while.
One of the most common of which is guilting people to make them do what you want.
You turn on the TV and every warmongering politician is trying to guilt people who oppose his horrific wars, calling them unpatriotic and all sort of things. You find every kind of religious zealots around the globe recurring to the exact same technique with those who don’t fall in line.
Always a dog-whistle word to be found.
Welcome to the Guilt Trip Express.
Then all of the sudden you find mothers saying something like: “I slaved over that meal for four hours and now you say that you’re not hungry anymore.” You find fathers saying stuff like: “You don’t wanna come that’s fine. I guess your family is not important to you.”
You find lovers guilting their partners, teachers guilting students, and co-workers guilt-tripping each other left and right.
Oh yeah, it still lingers.
Now, I’m not saying that you should split from your family, in fact that would be like taking a page from that very same cult manual. I’m not even suggesting that you are in an abusive situation that you need to escape.
All I’m saying that that there is a reason these things are so common despite the fact that they’re so unhealthy and so counter-productive.
People are simply brought up thinking that this how things are done, a gene-deep certainty that the best way to get what you want is to treat your partner with a full rich guilt-trip experience.
After all, this is how our ‘leaders’ operate, there must be some wisdom behind that. And unconsciously they proceed to repeat the same.
Now, I know what you must be wondering? How do we deal with guilt trips?
I ask myself the very same question. While I’m not trying to solve a societal problem on my own, my hope is that the rise of peer-to-peer will shape the way we see things, maybe even creating a habit that bypasses that fear of the new - in this case, voluntary interactions - as more and more people are getting used to transactions among their peers and realize that a win-win is a far better way to interact as opposed to wanting to make the other person do what you want them to do.
Luckily, every renaissance or industrial revolution has been strictly correlated to a subsequent increase of quality of life. Suddenly, societies become more open to certain discussions that mainly drew blank stares not very long before.
Some of the old ways of past rulers still hang around sometimes like an uncomfortable hick-up, but sooner or later they fades away.
The good thing is that we are more and more able to find conversations about these subjects at scale. In fact, the last video uploaded in The Society by Neil Strauss was Titled: “Non-Violent Communication”. But it's not only there, it's everywhere.
The world is changing and our habits are changing with it.
Personally, I am glad we are having these types of conversations here on steemit, in fact, this very post was inspired by a conversation with a fellow steemian. A conversation about guilting schemes that people engage in with partners and kids, and how the this technique is extremely common and very unproductive.
While this is a subject that I couldn’t resume in one post, I decided that the first step was to share some thoughts about the origins of such a propagated phenomenon.
That being said, I do hope we can have more conversations about relationships, communication and similar topics, and I hope that we continue to exchange our thoughts and ideas about a wide array of subjects whether it’s technology, art, psychology, cinema…
We have an amazing platform, let’s not waste it on personal attacks.
Happy Sunday everyone!
Yes, alien. Once again, bravo. These people you describe are bonafide narcissistic sociopaths. The "guilt" method into coercing others to do your bidding is a whole different level of psychological abuse. Some people feel the need to control others, for whatever reason. And they will do it by whatever means necessary by playing on a human characteristic - empathy. You see, sociopaths don't have an ounce of it in them. But they sure as hell can exploit it in others and derive great pleasure from doing so. Everyone should read about Jonestown. You think - hey, I would never fall for that. I say, these people are genius manipulators. Never say never and watch out for those who appear out of nowhere in your life and seem to know all about you. Run for the hills!
Thanks Johanna! Totally agree, they prey on people's empathy. In Psychology it's known as Dance of the Sociopath, I call it Dance with the Devil ;)
Immortal technique :)
Great great story and work! love the details man!
Let steemit grow!
Thanks man! Glad you like it!
Powerful stuff.
Thanks Tom!
Awesome read, thanks for sharing!
I look forward to the call you're doing with our guys tomorrow.
Hi @veryrico! Looking for it too :)
Glad you liked it btw!
Happy 'Sun'-day of course! lol
Thanks for the fun read! :)
Haha did you have a good Saturn night last night? ;)
Are we playing mind-games and puzzles like Ulysses? :)
Thank you btw!
Ah yes, Saturn night, yes I did. :)
Mind games and puzzles is so much more fun!
You're welcome and thank you for standing under.
Haha the old use of language :)
bravo homie.. loveded it... I just realized how many times I've felt the urge to guilt trip my son into just kicking back and watching a movie with me over him playing with his toys... lol, thanks for helping me realize how stupid it is
Oh man, that's great that you kicked back!
It's not stupid of you, it's propagated that's all :)
Thanks for the comment man!
lol man i love this title
Haha thanks!
In the end.., these "guilt trips" do nothing more than breed hate, fear.., and resentment. Thus, reinforcing the stagnant societies these sociopaths thrive in -- the status-quo, lack of evolvement… If we as humans, are to break free of these shackles, these "mind-trips…" Evolving as a species, as a whole.., and groups such the one we are all involved in now are definitely a step in the right direction. Cheers @the-alien for broaching the subject with such skill and creativity. HAPPY SUNDAY / MONDAY!
Thank you @macksby! I'm glad that you like it.
And you're right, it doesn't work. It just only causes more resentment but, we're moving towards a better direction it seems :)
Hey @the-alien
I love your posts man. All this talk about guilt trips actually brings to mind a Derren Brown video that I recently watched. I think you'll be really interested in checking this out. Bit of a social/psychological experiment.
Thank you! I know Derren Brown (not personally :P ) I'll check this out :)
The whole internet in the beginning was the place for free expression of an opinions and thoughts and this type of conversations.
Things change since then, but now we have Steemit🙂
And I hope they keep changing faster :)
The intertwining of narrative storytelling into editorial piece was seemless and gave me a mixture of King and Klosterman.
As for guilt trips, I had never thought of them of this way. i find that being able to state out loud that you don't subscribe to guilt trips has the same effect of a gentle no. People don't expect it and it sets boundaries.
Beyond technology, civilization has not changed much.
One of my first posts was on NVC and Marshall Rosenberg. Violence truly is a tragic expression of unmet needs, just as jackal language aims at guilt, shame, and judgment of others. I'm so glad we are starting to learn better ways. We are evolvijg as we move up Maslow's Hierarchy of needs towards self-actualization.
Hey Luke! I know, I'm glad we are starting to learn better ways as well :)
I'll read your post after the Book Club that is starting soon. Great think you thought about sharing, I love reading the first posts :)
Happy Moon Day
Catch You Later
Hahaha Yeah we talk later!
Very true. We all (not just cult leaders like Jones) use the guilt trick to manipulate people and I think as you say it is learned through observation of other authority figures. I'm not sure it will be easy to get rid of though because it works really well!
Hahaha Yeah, it's the new habit that replaces the old habit, that's what I think at least :)
@neilstrauss NVC could really be used as a best practice on how we all treat each-other here, as well as in life. Thanks for taking the time to answer questions today.
It was my pleasure @theoptimist!
excellent post, surprising congratulations
I know it's not actually related to the real "meat" of your post, but this song came to mind: