High end cultists, get her out. NOW.
this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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Get your daughter way from that kid as fast as you can.
| I don’t even understand if it’s an actual religion or one of those pay-to-level-up self-care courses.
yes, at about a ratio of 1 to 8. There's a mythology that these people fervently believe in, but pay-to-level-up is the core tenet. Distilling this down a bit, they believe that any problem you have is a ghost of long dead aliens clinging to you, and with enough abuse they can be scared away leaving behind the pure human.
When first you encounter them they seem to be offering self help courses or books. "Having trouble quitting smoking? Buy our book, join our class." For some these do genuinely help, if through no other mechanism than peer pressure. Then they pull out a bullshit device called an E meter and start talking about alternative therapies to realize your true potential, and then they've got you.
They are a high control group; they're like Mormons on amphetamines. Your life is centered on the church, people are kept in line through threats of destroying their families and support groups. They're particularly vindictive and are well documented to attack anyone critical of them.
Avoid these people with extreme prejudice, they are genuinely dangerous.
A cult
It's an acronym.
The S stands for "Scam".
the rest stands for bullshit.
L. Ron Hubbard was a science fiction writer. He made a bet with another science fiction writer that he could get rich quicker by starting a fake religion, and collecting tithes, than he could selling science fiction stories. Scientology is the resulting pyramid scheme/ cult.
Depends a lot, whether you are in Usamerica or not.
They are the classical gang of cultists who manipulate people into donating all of their money (by buying "courses" and reaching "levels"), and then some more. People who have escaped are seriously damaged, emotionally.
But if you are in Usamerica, they have made some courts grant them full rights like any real church.
Teens can be complicated. I know. I have 5 kids. Youngest two are 14 and 12.
How close is your relationship to your daughter? If you are close, you can probably do nothing other than point out how weird things are, such as they way they won't discuss their beliefs, or the slavery thing. She'll probably eventually exit the situation on her own.
If you aren't close or you are prone to flying off the handle, that can be used as a wedge between you and your daughter.
Either way, this only ends in a few ways:
- Your daughter indoctrinated into a cult with you cut out of her life and labelled a "subversive person" (unless you decide to join, too)
- Them splitting
- Him leaving and losing all of his family, connections, and support
Scientology is a cult. And not just a cult, it is a vicious cult who take revenge on anyone they perceive as an enemy. People have found themselves surveilled and having their bosses called making things up to try to get them fired. They are extremely litigious.
Obviously I wouldn't want my kids in any cult, but Scientology would probably be the worst one. At least most other cults, if you make yourself available to help when they decide they need to leave, they can escape. Scientologists will literally house them on a prison ship.
Good luck, friend.
We’re close, and both my wife and I talked with her. She says she doesn’t care about religion, she just wants to be with him. She doesn’t seem to be able to understand that both him & his family care a lot about their “religion” though. His family won’t even acknowledge her as his girlfriend. They say “she’s a friend”, even though they’re not even a PDA discreet couple. My wife says they most likely view her as just someone who their son is fooling around with at the moment - they don’t take her seriously or see her as a “real candidate”. Wife believes she’ll most likely get angry about it all once the infatuation ends and break it off with him. The surveillance thing is scary, I wonder if we’ve already been “looked into” due to daughter’s association with this family…
I don’t have much new to offer here, but it’s 100% a cult and please be very careful with regard to your daughter. My impression is that any relationships with people outside of the cult will result in them trying to bring the outsider in and once they’re in, it can be difficult to break them out. They’ll have information on their members that they’ll use against them leaving, and they’ll at best be labeled a suppressive person and then harassed if they try to leave and at worst further isolated from their outside relationships, including family as their sucked further into the cult that drains them of their money and/or basically uses them ad slaves. Since the family is rich, they may have a little more freedom and be a little more laid back about the religion, but if they have slaves working at their house, they’re probably higher up and may be discouraged from dating outside their cult since they seem to place very high value on money and fame and likely don’t want significant others to break those people out of the cult.
His family won’t even acknowledge her as his girlfriend. They say “she’s a friend”, even though they’re not even a PDA discreet couple. My wife says they most likely view her as just someone who their son is fooling around with at the moment - they don’t take her seriously or see her as a “real candidate”. Wife believes she’ll most likely get angry about it all once the infatuation ends and break it off with him.
Oh ok, not an ideal situation under normal circumstances, but it might be for the best if they don’t take the relationship seriously. It might be a good idea to check out some of the resources others have posted in the comments with your daughter just to prepare her. The Leah remini series is a great, comprehensive look at how it affected former members. The South Park episode shows how ridiculous the mythology of their religion is, but from what I understand, most people in the cult don’t even learn about that until you’re higher up and I guess by that point, they’ve invested so much money and resources that they just go with it. There are a few documentaries on streaming services like Netflix and max that cover a lot of it too. It might be worth getting ahead of it in case they start seeing your daughter as someone they can recruit. I don’t see how anyone could join them after watching the Leah Remini series, so that’s probably best.
Oh boy...
Scientology is the very definition of pay-to-level-up. Unless you're famous, then you can stay for free due to the PR. Travolta, Tom Cruise, and many more are sciientologists, and it's reasonable to believe they are shielded from the darker side of the cult.
A doomsday cult set up as a religion so they can dodge taxes.
Read this book, it's the story of L. Ron Hubbard, the god of Scientology and tells you everything you want to know.
Watch this series about life in Scientology and you'll get the idea pretty quickly.
TL;DR/DW: Get her away from him asap
I would just like to note that we’re on Lemmy, the land of 100 different opinions, and yet everyone has said the same thing about Scientology. That should be a huge flag there.
You've already had some great replies, but in case you want to watch something rather than read, in addition to the Leah Remini documentary series, Louis Theroux also made a documentary (I'm pretty sure there were earlier ones, but the current one is dominating the search results and I can't find them on wiki or imdb) that is very good.
You should ask your daughter about Scientology.
Does she explain it like it's ridiculous, or credible?
You might want to show her that clip from South Park if she doesn't realize it's batshit crazy.
Teach her (don't force her, that never works) before she falls in with a cult and you lose her forever.
I asked her (and the boyfriend) and she's just like us, also doesn't get what it's all about, because the guy himself won't "share information with non-members"!!!
It’s probably because he doesn’t really know either. It’s because they lock information about the religion away from the low ranking members and they are discouraged from looking it up online. Members can reach higher levels, known as Operating Thetan Levels, by donating money.
That's probably alright, just keep an eye out. Let her know about the crazy stuff before he eases her into it.
Also, it's not the boyfriends fault. He was raised in it and doesn't know better. Assuming he's otherwise a good kid, talking shit on him will not help the cause.
The fact that a science fiction writer was the one who created it in the 1950s should be enough cause for concern.
It's not really a religion, as much as it is a grift.
I went into one of their "churches" once to ask what they were about, and they literally would not tell me anything unless I either bought a book or stayed there to watch a video along with them.
I just commented something related to this; the boyfriend does this exact same thing!!! He won’t talk about anything.
It's bad, really really bad. Have a talk with her immediately. It doesnt mean her partner is a bad person, it just means her partner is caught up in something bad.
Don't interject yourself in between, just expose her to all the news articles of people who have tried to get out, and the cult like behaviors.
The part that really stood up to me was that the boyfriend himself won’t talk about his religion’s beliefs or practices with neither my daughter nor us (her parents), if you ask him he’ll only say surface level abstract stuff & will say the rest is members-only. He’ll say the Church “is family and these things are family business”. It’s weird not even being able to get a member to explain things to you.
South Park s9e12 actually does a decent job rounding up and illustrating their beliefs. Might be worth a watch, if you don't mind South Park.
For a long while their innermost secrets were just that, secret. Members are tight-lipped on any real elaboration, and won't engage with outsiders.
It also makes it really difficult for outsiders to present any countering logic to their beliefs. People aren't gonna tell you you've fallen in with crazies, if you don't tell em the dumb shit you're being told is real.
But a lot of it is now out in the open, if you know to look. Even then, the church AGGRESSIVELY wields the law in an active attempt to suppress public knowledge as much as possible. But as even top-level members have left the cult over the decades, even the innermost bullshit has been exposed.
It's probable that your daughters boyfriend himself knows much less than what is available online, because members are discouraged from interacting with any "harmful" media so as to not grow disillusioned, and aren't told anything substantial until it's way too late to painlessly pull out.
It's all quite deliberately set up to be as insidiously prolific as possible, while minimizing the chances people will leave.
And if people do show start to show signs of wanting out, the gloves come off really quick with stuff like blackmail and legal action.
Even its tax exempt status in the US is a complete farce, yet it lends the cult an air of legitimacy.
A sci-fi author who considered himself somewhat of a renaissance man created what he thought was a novel approach to psychology which was not accepted by the scientific community. He then made it into a religion to get it going and get tax breaks. As head of the religion he eventually was surrounded by sycomphant yes men zealots and over time he convinced himself it was real as a religion and was like its prophet holy man and expanded on it with sci fi elements that were only revealed to the cult memebers as it was run like multi level marketing where you buy the secrets of yourself and the universe. He died and like in any corpo cult the top ones are the most psychotic.
I don't believe in the slightest he though he created a novel approach to psychology.
He has other books he's written where, plain as day, he points out the absurdity of religion and people following it. He put out a sci-fi book as a self help book because he thought it was funny and would make more money. He then made it a religion because he knew people were easily manipulated.
I am basing this on other things i've read from him, such as the Mission Earth series. I don't believe in the slightest that he believed in any of it, from the junk science on up.
Well he thought it was a novel approach but the concepts are not completely new. He was trying to get it accepted into the psychological community before the religion and I whole heartily think he believed the initial thing and by the end I would not be surprised he bought into his own divinity. I think he sorta went howard hughes like at the end but maybe more with drugs.
Eh, maybe early on. Scientology was founded in the 50s, the Mission Earth series that made fun of religion and the people who followed it blindly was in the 80s just before he died, so I don't think he bought into his own bs. I think that was him saying "You schmucks will still follow this crap after I die".
The most concise way to think about it is to think Freemasonry combined with Star Trek.
Star Trek
... if you bought your Star Trek from a version of Wish that was also bought from Wish. Knock-offs all the way down.
I was thinking more along the lines of original Star Trek, where you had aliens posing as Greek gods, disembodied immaterial Galactus hands stretching out from planets, and parallel universes where evil versions of the characters can cross over from, and yet where at the end of the day, the characters can nod their heads and give a toast to "the godless universe".
It was very much like Doctor Who if Doctor Who didn't just explain everything with a simple "it's all wibbly wobbly".
I see what you're saying, Star Trek just has too many redeeming qualities that could have made Scientology cool if they'd become StarTrekology instead.
To everyone saying that this religion is a cult:
All religions are cults, but Scientology is one of the worst ones.
Yeah, but we reserve the word cult for the most dangerous ones.
How would you define a cult?
A cult is devotion no matter what. Religions are cults.
Even the people who revere God but not "no matter what"?
If you disregard a belief because it is detrimental to yourself or others, then you are not in a religion, you are not in a cult, you just believe in what makes you comfortable and that is okay. Religion is fine, until it causes detriment to other people, which is what it has done in all of history.
Believe in what you like, just don't impose that on others. Live and let live.
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