derkrash-at-yahoo-dot-com
I wish to explore two things that I find charismatic organizations using to influence people: sensory overload and expected response. When something comes at you quickly and like a machine gun, you have no time to think; your instincts take over. When someone pitches you something in a high-pressure manner, they are overloading you with information, a loud sound form their voice and their actions. They overload you sense of hearing and seeing. The rational faculty cannot process all this to the untrained person. The rational faculty shuts down and the emotional response is all that is left. If one does not gain back his sufficient rational faculty before the close of the deal, he might purchase something that he will later regret. Highly trained religious recruiters use this technique to the extreme. They sometimes approach the victim with rapid fire and say, “You are going to hell.” Of course, they are trained at presentation and if they can hypnotize the person sufficiently before he understands the situation, he might hear the doctrinal line and all of its rationalizations. He is overloaded and at the same time feels that his rational faculty is working because he “hears” the rationalization. Music is another way of sensory overload. The loud sounds and the proper chord progressions tend to force down the rational faculty. Charismatic and Pentecostal musicians are among the world’s most skilled artists. Why is this? Because this art has the proper effect of attacking the rational faculty for enough time so that they can be sucked into the emotion of the moment. They accept words easier if accompanied by serious music. The resonance makes one feel the music, making it feel so real and powerful. Another technique of sensory overload is shouting over a loudspeaker. This amplifies the message and makes it forefront in one’s conscious mind. It is so intimidating that one cannot focus upon anything else when someone shouts over a loudspeaker. As the person shouts, this high state of emotional focus imprints the message or the person in one’s mind. One does indeed feel “changed.” The problem is that this “change” is simply an old state of hypnosis. One’s rational faculty is shut down almost completely. For a moment, one’s emotions soar to the highest levels, because they no longer have the anchor of the rational faculty. This feels “liberating.” Why? One’s emotions are not controlled by the rational faculty that controls emotional states to protect us from physical or emotional injury. This is why we feel “changed” and “free.” We lost our minds! The problem is that civilization is the process of channeling our emotions to useful ends and not letting them get out to do mischief. When this sensory overload kills off our inhibitions and traditions that check our emotions, of course, we will “feel” liberated. This is the state of emotional explosion and indulgence that “feels good.” When we fly out of control running around, shouting and speaking in tongues, this is the high state of ecstasy. Of course, it “feels good.” The stern father of the rational mind is shut down and the childish barbarian emerges. The child hates the father’s control, but he is not yet mature enough to understand that the father protects the child.
Of course, once someone accepts this emotional state as evident of some truth, one is, in effect, open to emotional manipulation and control. One can use fear to control a person because fear is an emotion and it is similar in class to this initial “life changing experience.” One eventually becomes a slave to emotional manipulation. One accepts strangers a “brothers” because of this common “life changing” experience. This leads us to bypass the normal friend-making process and accept these strangers based not on rational trust but on emotional “brotherly love.” Both are caught up in emotional indulgence. This acceptance of brotherly love further opens one to emotional manipulation. Like I said before, once one accepts the initial emotional experience as a life defining moment, they live by their emotions out of consistency. This acceptance of these new “friends” and “brothers” fosters a strictly emotional bond usually void of serious rational trust. Thereafter the leaders of the group can use these emotional bonds as a weapon against anyone who he wishes to control or destroy. Since the entire group is based on emotion, and emotional indulgence, the leadership seeks to exploit people by threatening to break these bonds when a member becomes troublesome and threatening. To leave the group is to be cut off from this “brotherly” bond of all one’s “friends.” So, the threat of kicking one out of the group threatens a person’s circle of support in this mutual emotional indulgence. Separation from the group can be devastating to a member who must now either conform, join another emotionally indulgent group, or wake up and reactivate his rational faculty as a normal person. No option is easy. To join another emotionally indulgent group requires making new bonds. Conforming robs the person of his conscience and his mind in many cases. Returning to the rational life might be the most painful thing since this requires the recognition that one has wasted much time, effort and money on a corrupt system. This requires purging one’s mind of the wild fantasies. The problem is that this process takes longer than the sensory overload and subsequent recruiting. The rational faculty will not wake up with a reverse process similar to the quick and easy “conversion.” The rational faculty wakes up only after intense exercise thereof and forcing one’s self to look at reality as it is an not as one’s former doctrines dictate. This takes time and a lot of effort. Occasionally, the person’s mind floats back into one’s former emotional mode of thinking and this triggers fear and anxiety. The emotional mode sometimes takes over one’s thinking temporarily and causes the person to question the decision to quit the group. Since the emotional mode that the victim is accustomed to is so easy compared to the exercise of the rational faculty, sometimes it just feels easy to give up. Sometimes this makes the person an emotional “basket case.” The problem is that the healing takes tremendous effort on the part of the victim.
The other thing is expected response. Since one is in the group and subject to emotional indulgence, one is at the mercy of others' emotional feedback. The group requires particular emotional responses. Soon, one recognizes particular cues after which particular emotive actions are required of the group member. This is all learned though the process of feedback to a response. The positive feedback and the negative feedback are not rational instructions, but emotional responses to an action. Sometimes it is childish glee, shouting, hugs, big smiles, and back patting for the positive.
JP Istre
