as i get farther into the cult book, i understand the importance of
writing down what you agree, disagree, or want to look more into, as
the author says to do.

it is so rare to hear somebody talking about what the book talks
about, and it engages my experiences when done, that i can forget the
things i disagree about with the author entirely and begin believing
whatever he says.

ch3:

- i so much agree with BITE. nobody ever says this. systematic control
of Behavior, Information, Thoughts and Emotions. [confused: BITE must
mean how we are eating people's spirits like zombies eating brains.]

- i don't think it's clear to call all influence groups cults when
cults inspire images of people in robes worshiping dead animals, not
really a huge thing

- i disagree that meditation with belief in eventual levitation or
flying is harmful. i believe this is a good thing, without destructive
attributes itself, to give people inspiration to spend time becoming
more thoughtful. i do not mind that popular science believes that
levitation does not happen from pensation: many people hold belief
systems that have disparity with popular science, and use this as
reason for prayer or dedicated behavior. i have no trouble considering
that this belief is _used_ harmfully by some people.
i think personally i see the belief as an analogy to how, when you
meditate well and long enough, you begin seeing more and more things
that others do not ever see: things you can do, reasons people do
things, etc etc. this seems it could become a similar super power to
flying. personally, i found i develop a comparable feeling to flying
when i gain mastery over my body like with skilled free running.

- MOVE is mentioned as an example of a cult. it was an activism group
for black people. given MOVE was so politically targeted that most
members were killed by the police, it seems far more likely that the
political targeting (and disreputating messaging) was engaging in any
destructive influence than the group. counter ref 62

- similarly i am of course skeptical that a democratic workers
collective would be a destructive cult, and worry some around
political harm in the label; workers collectives have been repeatedly
targeted, sometimes killed en masse by corporations or governments, in
our nation's and global history. counter ref 64

fragment: pierce told me "some of us are felons, some of us have
families." i mentioned worrying about being tracked with my phone to
pierce. he had me turn it on, and then suddenly cory visited, and
spoke to me about the red and the blue. he lay down on the floor next
to pierce's bed, just waiting. we had an intuitive conversation where
he would wait and be silent before each thing he said. [sarah said a
fragment of an expression to me, as if people were saying things that
only made sense if all taken together as parts of the same sentence]
finished writing fragment 2022-08-20 1033 [the interaction seemed very influential and strange. cory would often say he "was just happy to be involved". he said he had come off a long hiking trail, but lived as a homeless person who never left the city. i was in an intense state of mind, near the end of behaving with strong intuition. i think i had taken a jesus emblem with me, and showed a text message to sarah on my phone.]

- farther along, the author says that a concern around worrying about
mind control is that everything can be seen as mind control, as if
this is a struggle normal people have. i have also been exposed to
this belief. it is not normal at all. where did it come from?

- further: it seems reasonable to say that the only reason it would be
unclear whether a group is destructive or non-destructive, after
observing it, would be due to influence preventing this clarity.
clearly this clarity is needed badly.

- in the section regarding childhood sexual abuse, which explains how
learned phobias produce an environment for repeat abuse, i became
worried for a friend i love, who was sexually abused as a child. this
worry shortly became numb and hidden for me, and is hard for me to
consider now.

- "Put a person into a situation where his senses are overloaded with
non-coherent information, and the mind will go "numb" as a protective
mechanism. It gets confused and overwhelmed, and critical faculties no
longer work properly. It is in this weakened state that people become
very open to suggestion."

- i'm thinking of how my influence seemed to me to pretend to be the
things i was passionate about, kind of starting off with offering a
"deal" that if i "really wanted to get involved" i would need to do
this or that

- somewhat uncomfortable around the recommendation of trusting search
results regarding terms like "criminal" or "abuser". i think i have
hits around "criminal" as does somebody i respect have "abuser", where
these hits are from disinformation in my opinion. one possible
difference: if a powerful influence is involved and it is disreputing
the person, the hits go near the top; if a powerful influence is
involved and it is supporting the person, the hits go near the bottom.
anyway it is very normal to do such web searchers, so it's mostly
moot.

- the book does not yet describe how the sharedness of indoctrination
techniques between groups and how this indicates collaboration among
the cult leaders. it could be important to remember that we are at a
time where power is catalyzing and everyone must protect the freedom
of the entire world.

- it's hard for me to see forthright faith healing as a human rights
violation; death is a needed part of life and truly is the domain of a
deity, and the placebo effect is very strong. obviously if the efforts
are deceptive or disinformative and non-spiritual in benefit or
result, things are different.

- maybe what's reasonable to consider here is that the author is
describing a horrific lifelong torture that few people can imagine,
and it is very hard to convey this to someone who has not experienced
it.

- the book mentions another book by Harvey Schwartz that mentions
wolves and sheep and soldiers, and internalized perpetration. it is
about terrorist recruitment of children, but likely the techniques and
stories have overlap with other things. my experience had
wolf/sheep/soldier themes. it seemed to me a wolf was a mind
controller; it seemed to me a sheep was somebody who didn't want to be
one; it seemed to me a soldier was somebody who had seen the horrors
of these things (and [did urgent work?]) and had ptsd and other things
from it.

- it looks like the book author's community needs help setting laws to
protect people from mind control groups

- it would have been hard to help me as i [learned to] identified all
things as my own psychological issues