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