One thing that’s fascinating about brainwashing is how transparent the tactics are of other groups, yet evidence for those same tactics is highly elusive in your own group. There was little dispute as to the motivations for Scientology offering free “screenings” to victims at the Virginia Tech shootings a few years ago, or doing the same for the Haiti earthquake victims. In both these situations people have had to face the shock of tragedy and, in some cases, losing a loved one or close friend. Because of this they are put into an emotionally vulnerable state, which makes them easy pickings for cults which promise escape, happiness, or the possibility of seeing your loved one again.

Anyone who has been on an LDS mission has probably been told to seek out people who are in mourning for this very reason. Even the slightest feeling of vulnerability or insecurity will destroy your defenses against brainwashing. That’s why it is of paramount importance that the church use any technique it can to make you feel vulnerable when you are being indoctrinated. Bearing your testimony in front of the congregation is an obvious example, but of course when it comes to brainwashing the whole concept of the testimony is an obvious and easy target, so let’s skip that one.

Using Scientology as an example again, since few who are not Scientologists would dispute that they’re a textbook cult; imagine yourself alone in a room with a man who is interviewing you probing for any “regrets” or anything that you need to be “cleared” of. In other words, sins. He has a crude lie detector so you know he can tell if you’re being dishonest, and the outcome of this interview could have a major impact on your life here and in your next life. You are loaded down with guilt, more and more as the interview goes on, and are made to feel terrible and guilty. That guilt leaves with you, and you have to come back for his help in clearing you of your body thetans. It’s not hard to imagine how in such a situation you would sign your life away at a moments notice in order to clear yourself of that guilt, and you will believe almost anything this man tells you because he is in authority.

Replace the auditor in his little office with a bishop in his office, the lie detector with the spirit and the “gift of discernment,” and getting “cleared of your thetans” with “repenting to secure your place in the Celestial Kingdom” and you have the exact same situation. What’s happening here is you feel vulnerable in this little room with a man who has authority over you, and who can potentially control your fate in the hereafter. You are likely to believe anything this man tells you, and the experience will create a dependency to get rid of the guilt. In Scientology’s case you need to come back for repeated audits, in Mormonism’s case you need to come back to proceed in the repentance process.

Anyone who has been through an LDS Endowment session can easily identify another place the vulnerability tactic is used in Mormonism. Your first time attending the temple is always strategically placed at a major life decision where commitments have already been made, such as marriage or a mission, and while surrounded by family thus heaping on tons of extra pressure. At one point in the ceremony they even have the audacity to invite anyone who doesn’t wish to “take these covenants” to leave, conspicuously omitting what said covenants actually are. Being surrounded by family, or worse, your soon-to-be spouse; you are under enormous pressure to conform and accept these covenants (which ultimately amount to giving your entire life to the church). This is not the only brainwashing tactic used in the temple (others include exclusivity/superiority, chanting and repetition) but it is by far the most penetrating and serves to intensify the others.

Finally, for years, the Catholic church has been using massive buildings and impressive art such as sculptures or murals to create that sense of vulnerability. A casual stroll through the Vatican is very impressive even to our modern eyes. In such an environment, a skilled performer can create any emotion they want for their participants and tell you that these emotions came from another source — perhaps divine. Sports venues and other sectors of the entertainment industry have been using this technique for years, take a look at sporting arenas and the flashy presentation used in broadcasts. More recently, mega churches have caught on to this idea and began building massive auditoriums to house their congregations. Brainwashing is frighteningly easy in such an environment where the building itself creates the vulnerability needed in order for the pastor to penetrate your natural defenses. Ultimately the LDS church caught on and added this technique to their arsenal of brainwashing tools.

Since this is a recent addition to the church’s brainwashing tactics, they have only two of these auditoriums so far. (to my knowledge anyway) The second, on the campus at BYU-Idaho, is pictured below.

The church knows very well how effective the use of such facilities are in creating that sense of vulnerability. You are in a large, impressive building surrounded by thousands of people who are all like-minded. Imagine how intense the social reinforcement is here. Imagine the pressure to believe exactly what everyone else believes.

Imagine.

Having grown up in an organization that uses brainwashing, then later managing to break out of it, it seems every time I turn around I discover something new that surprises me. I have fond memories of Young Mens activities and camping trips; and while I may not be in contact with any of those individuals now, at the point in my life when I was going through young mens their friendship was something I really needed.

More recently, I was able to talk to some female ex-mormons (alias BlissfulHeretic in particular) that shared with me what the equivalent experience for young women is like. And what I heard came as something of a shock. She described youth camp where they could force false emotions under peer pressure, particularly at the testimony meeting; they would do “spirit walks” where they would go blind folded to their campsite holding on to an “iron rod” (rope) while people try to “tempt” them into letting go — and failure meant starting over from the beginning. The description of girls still clinging to the rope as they carried it back to their campsite is still haunting to me.

Then there is the recitation of the Young Women’s Theme. Picture a room full of girls reciting this in a chant-like monotone week after week on Sundays:

We are daughters of our Heavenly Father, who loves us, and we love Him. We will stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places as we strive to live the Young Women values, which are:

Faith
Divine Nature
Individual Worth
Knowledge
Choice and Accountability
Good Works
Integrity and
Virtue.

We believe as we come to accept and act upon these values, we will be prepared to strengthen home and family, make and keep sacred covenants, receive the ordinances of the temple, and enjoy the blessings of exaltation.

The guys had nothing like this. I grew up completely oblivious to the blatant cult-like brainwashing my own sisters were subject to while we “priesthood holders” could barely keep straight who was supposed to cover a lesson that week. It is true that the men go on missions which makes up for this, but even then it’s still worse for the women; and most men won’t realize this without stopping to think about it.

Mormons have fairly desirable promises for men. In the hereafter we get virtually unlimited wives, get to become a god and stand atop own own topless throne for our own people to worship. Women get to sit back and spit out spirit babies as rapidly as possible (remember, they have to produce billions of spirits!) all the while disappearing into their spiritual kitchen to serve their divine husband that they have to share with other women. No wonder Utah leads the nation in depression!

It may seem that all that brainwashing is used to counter the misery that the church causes for women. On the contrary, the misery increases the level of commitment and by extension strengthens their emotional bond with the church. Believe it or not, the absolute misery the women in the Mormon church put up with works in the church’s favor. While there are some newer, more progressive sects of Christianity out there that don’t have this problem, they’re in the minority, since there is actually a scriptural basis for the mistreatment of women in the bible. Consider Genesis chapter 3 where God chastises Adam for partaking the fruit. He then turns to eve and… well, read it, verse 6:

To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you.”

Read this in context. Adam gets a slap in the wrist while Eve is cursed with… painful child birth. The attitude of the bible authors becomes even more clear a few chapters later when they start a verse this way (emphasis added):

that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.

When you consider the conspicuous absence of Lilith despite her being known to early Christians and even appearing in the Dead Sea Scrolls it’s apparent that Christians didn’t want their women getting any ideas. Joseph Smith continued the proud tradition of Christians mistreating women by the inclusion of D&C 132 and his practice of polyandry. Even so, if Mormon tradition doesn’t tear them down, the church’s Christian roots will.

Now, despite all this, I don’t think there’s much to be gained from overzealous feminism, changing the spelling of common words to remove masculine references (such as “womyn”) or anything ridiculous like that. My point in all this is to point out something for the men out there that they may not be aware of, or may not have noticed because they were themselves brainwashed by the same organization. Women are treated really poorly in the LDS church, and that poor treatment makes the brainwashing far harder to penetrate. It’s still possible, it just requires patience and understanding. They have a bigger barrier to overcome. But they have you to help them do it.

For women who are reading this and have male loved ones that are trapped by the bonds of brainwashing, understand that a mission can and often does give their brain a thorough scrubbing; but take heart. They don’t have the strengthening factor that comes with the sacrifice, which means there’s a lower barrier. You got out, so can they.

Describing how to get them out is beyond the scope of this post, but I hope this puts some new perspective on what’s happening and why getting your loved one out of the church would be such a huge blessing for them.

I remember the first time I realized that the Mormon church is a cult. That was the most uncomfortable Fast & Testimony meeting ever. I had coincidentally been reading about brainwashing just hours earlier and had learned that one of the easiest and most widely used brainwashing techniques out there is to get the subject to say (often repeatedly) whatever it is you want them to believe. When the first person got up there, got all emotional and declared how she knew the church is true my heart sank. Cult brainwashing uses your emotions against you.

I sat there for the full hour watching in horror as members of the congregation wandered to the front of the room and participated in what I had just realized was a cult brainwashing technique. I had seen meetings like this for as long as I could remember and never once did I make the connection before now. Of course my mind spiraled into a whirlwind of thought as the church became more and more transparent. Part of what makes testimonies so effective is the fact that what they believe is not only false, but patently absurd; and members have to justify it. Sharing their conviction justifies their belief and makes the dissonance go away; but more importantly, it acts as a thought stopping technique. Presented with a really hard question about the church? Just bare your testimony and “their heart will be softened.” The church teaches that, but not to get the subject to convince the person they received the “bad” information from, but to prevent them from thinking any further on the issue.

There is a silver lining here though. When you argue with someone over the “truthfulness” of the church, or simply challenge them on the idea of whether or not it is true, they usually bring out what they think will be a trump card very early on in the conversation, and you can use this to your advantage. Once you destroy that they will still fall back on their testimony as a last line of defense, but you can still get your message past the first line of defense just by making them realize that their “strongest argument is weak.”

So the testimony is one of the weaker brainwashing tactics the church uses, and is just one of dozens, but it ‘s also the most obvious and easy to recognize. Always remember that real truth is self evident. It does not need weekly reinforcement, no “testimony” that can be lost, or faith. It just is what it is. If you believe in something that is not necessarily self-evident, then that may be cause for concern.

I love reflecting back on experiences that I’ve had while I still believed in the church. It seems that every time I do, I discover a little more about myself, and about how and why I believed in the things that I did. I’ve already mentioned in a previous blog post how looking at many aspects of the church often gives me pause as I have to ask… it’s really this obvious? Well, no, it’s not; at least if you are subject to the mind control that the church uses.

During the years when my cognitive dissonance was in rapid incline, I once prided myself on the fact that I could successfully and (I thought) thoroughly defend my beliefs and the church to anyone that would challenge me on them. And challenge me they did. I’ve even had atheist coworkers who knew little about the church ask what would normally be very tough questions, but my answers were swift as they were clever. The guy knew little about the Mormon church, and so could not effectively counter my arguments. (I can destroy my old arguments now though)

Despite the cognitive dissonance I already felt by then, I honestly thought I could argue against anyone that tried to challenge my beliefs. I thought I had the truth™ and everyone else was dwindling in unbelief. The thing is, it didn’t go so smoothly as I liked to think it did. If something I truly could not answer was thrown at me I would dismiss it, assume the answer is out there somewhere, and move on. For this reason I don’t think anyone, even master religious debater Christopher Hitchens, could have really convinced me that I was wrong about this.

But a religion teacher at BYU could.

When I started getting what I now describe as Bludgeoning by Bullshit in a religion class, being told things that I knew weren’t true and had reconciled as being metaphors or parables not unlike the Good Samaritan, I began questioning. The difference here was that the questions and criticism came not from someone challenging me, but myself. I finally found someone clever enough to counter my arguments. Me.

One of the tactics that the church uses is the “devil over the shoulder” approach, which works like this: Anything that is contrary to the teachings of the church, including anything that challenges your beliefs, is of the devil and should be combated at all costs. Even the most casual members, when challenged from the outside, will put up walls around themselves. In fact, the church intentionally made as many people into sinners as possible by making masturbation a sin, thus making the majority of youth cling to the church and ultimately become addicted to it. Why this is addictive is beyond the scope of this post, but the point is that as soon as the devil is felt the believer will put up walls around their “testimony” and cling to belief.

But what if the source of the attack is from behind those walls?

I’m actually somewhat grateful for the religion classes that I took, for without them, the tools to destroy my own brainwashing from within may never have been planted. But of course, there are a million other ways they can be introduced; which brings me back to the arguments I once used to defend the church. These arguments generally included reconciliations for conflicts between science, which I knew to be true because of the evidence; and religion, which I…well, I believed in. Those reconciliations were effectively destroyed in my religion classes, which forced me to go back and revisit them. What it took was me being introduced to information that destroyed the basis of my faith by a source that I trusted. What’s more, the assault wasn’t direct, it simply introduced me to ideas that led me to conclusions whose origin was behind the defenses. When defending beliefs, most people will drop their trump cards early on (real life doesn’t work like the movies, sorry kids) which means their early arguments are the ones that you want to thoroughly destroy… and you want to do it indirectly. Once they see that the argument is invalid the rest will come from their own mind.

No direct assault on the believer from the outside will conquer their bondage until it is destroyed from within. If you have a loved one who is trapped in a cult like Mormonism, don’t directly challenge their beliefs. Give them the tools to do it themselves.

This is a follow-up post to the brainwashing test. Critiquing oneself is very difficult as a byproduct of human nature and identifying oneself as being brainwashed even moreso. I have another brainwashing test here for you.

Cult mind control usually has a motivation behind it, and by extension, it will have an authority figure. What’s surprising to me is just how many ways the mind can be manipulated, up to and including rewiring and reworking of internal chemistry. When I ask a Mormon why they believe, especially if they’ve been presented with contrary evidence for their belief, they will usually fall back on how the church makes them feel. When I was very young I would have accepted this as pretty strong evidence, but today my knowledge has increased to a point where I can easily destroy such a claim by simply putting it in a different context:

Your honor, I know the accused is guilty of murder because I felt a burning in my bosom when I prayed about it.

Recently, I had the “feelings in my heart” argument used against me. I easily destroyed the argument by pointing out all of the other Christians, Muslims, Hindus and others that confirm their own beliefs with the exact same emotional feelings. But where do these feelings come from? Like the above example, let’s put this in a different context. Imagine you visit your doctor suffering from back pains. Your doctor prescribes you some medication that he says will cure your pain, along with instructions on how to take this medication. Your pain goes away after taking the medication, and you feel better.

The medicine that doctor gave you was a placebo; that is to say it was just a sugar pill, your own mind did the real work. The placebo effect is very real and quite well documented, so the pill actually did indirectly cause you to overcome your back pains, but this happened not because he gave you a real medicine. It happened because of the power of suggestion from an authority figure, in this case a doctor. Reality is that if you trust your doctor, and most people do, he can tell you that those pills will have whatever effect he desires and they will do just that. For some individuals, a placebo can even induce vomiting.

Now let’s return to the context of the Mormon faith. Imagine the person issuing the placebo is a man you believe speaks for God and his words are absolute truth. He tells you that if x happens you will feel y. I can say from experience that, if you are in fact subject to cult mind control as I once was, you will distinctly feel y and it will likely firm your trust in the authority figure.

I see no problem with doctors using this technique for the wellbeing of patients, and besides, chances are the medication they are prescribing will actually have the effect they claim. But if you are told to expect certain feelings in any other context — religious especially — you can almost guarantee that mind control tactics are being used. Whether or not you are okay with that is up to you.

During the course of my studies on brainwashing, I came to the realization that no one who is brainwashed knows that they are brainwashed. So if you have someone who is brainwashed next to someone who isn’t, and ask both “are you brainwashed?” they will both answer “no,” and both will believe they are being truthful. So that leads me to ask the question, am I brainwashed?

First, let’s define what brainwashing actually is. When someone is brainwashed, this means that thought control techniques were used to make them believe something that they would not otherwise believe. This belief is often times unfounded, demonstrably false, or subjective. But not always, you could be brainwashed into believing something that is actually true, though this is rare because truth is usually backed up by evidence and is non-subjective. It’s easy to say that if you believe something that’s subjective, you could have been brainwashed into thinking that. (sports teams use brainwashing techniques for example) but what if it’s not so obvious?

For that reason I have devised a fun brainwashing test that you can use to tell if you are brainwashed. Generally this test is best performed by someone else rather than on yourself, but taking it here on this blog should give the desired effect. Ready to take the test? Great. Read the following paragraph and take close note on your thoughts about it.

Philip Gill is a scoundrel. He started his own religion for the sole purpose of scamming people out of money and just recycles lessons and teachings from the Mormon church in order to do so. He wrote the Book of Jeraneck Pseudonymously, that is, he wrote the book while claiming to have translated it from an ancient prophetic source. He is known for being dishonest and taking advantage of others, and his new “church” is just the latest example of this.

Now, as you read the above paragraph, how did it make you feel? Did you feel angry? Offended? Did you feel like it was a personal attack against you? Did you think I was foolish for writing such obvious lies?

Chances are, you felt none of those things. Instead you probably felt confusion, or just flat out didn’t believe me. Perhaps you were going to ask me what my source for this information was. Can you prove it? In fact you might not even know who Philip Gill even is. (You may be in for a treat if you google his name and the “Book of Jeraneck”) What happened here is your logic kicked in, and you started asking questions rather than getting defensive. Or just smirked at the unfounded silliness. Now, let’s play the game again. I have the same paragraph below, but this time I have a dropdown box with several religious groups in there. If you see your group, great. Select it, and the paragraph below will change. Then read the new version.

Now that you’ve read the paragraph for your own organization, how do you feel now? Do you think that I was foolish for writing those things? Do you feel like you were personally attacked? Do you feel like I am influenced by the devil, or that these words are trying to “trick” you? Did you feel even the slightest bit uncomfortable when you read that? If you are brainwashed, then you should have emotional triggers going off rather than logical ones. Sadly, this is a sign of being brainwashed, and the above is the only test I’m aware of that can easily be done yourself.

Now, the next question is, what do you do now that you know you’re brainwashed? Simple. Let logic take over. Remember that if you needed brainwashing to believe something, then chances are that something doesn’t stand well on its own. So do what any respectable scientist would do and examine your belief, and sincerely try to falsify it. Can you? The entire internet is at your fingertips.

Good luck.

[Update!] It has been pointed out to me that you could insert your mother, or perhaps Martin Luther King Jr. into that box and achieved the same effect. This is certainly true, but the difference is that there is no belief system attached to these individuals. If we are to fall back on logic, could we say that there is a purely objective reason to hold such respect for your mother? I would say so if you have a personal, constructive relationship with her. Is it logical to revere Martin Luther King Jr? Do you think he’s infallible? The answer to that second question should answer the first. Do you know Joseph Smith Jr or Helen B White personally? Would you be offended if I insulted either one, and why? Do you believe Joseph Smith Jr was a prophet or Helen B White was a prophetess? Why one and not the other? It all boils down to what the connection to the subject actually is.

Having interacted with a large number of Mormons (particularly in an Astronomy class) I have made a number of observations which seem to have struck a chord with people who I shared them with. In sharing this I do need to be careful in pointing out that this isn’t all that scientific, but it’s not baseless either.

I already have a degree in Animation and am working on a second degree, this time from an “accredited” school. That means I have to take generals, including science credits. This also means that I’ve spent years learning to be very observant, and capture a moment mentally at a glance. I need to be able to watch things in motion and understand everything that’s going on in real time, so I can duplicate attitudes, emotions, gestures and similar. Because of all the practice I’ve had doing this I’ve become quite observant, particularly at noticing subtle details at a glance. (And I should point out that most animators can do this, it’s not a very unique “talent”)

So, whether I intended to or not, I have developed a habit of observing everyone. In a conversation with a roommate a month ago I demonstrated this by describing subtle details about the way our other roommates move, and mimicked all their walks and gestures all while describing what these things communicate. It’s actually a fairly fun skill to have.

What’s more, attending an astronomy class full of TBMs (True Believing Mormons) I’ve found it fascinating to observe their reactions to the otherwise atheistic science being taught there. Without really thinking about it I developed a mental picture of the entire class and how strongly  brainwashed each student was. Now, when I refer to “brainwashed” as a scale, I am referring subjectively to how indoctrinated—or how strongly—they believe that the Mormon church is true. So to gauge how brainwashed everyone was, I found the correlation between that and their reactions to things we were taught in class that contradict the church’s teachings, how vocal they were in opposition, whether or not they tried to justify these teachings (and how they justified them if they shared it) et cetera. I have noticed that this observed behavior doesn’t necessarily correlate perfectly with church participation, but that was considered.

Now, here is where all this gets interesting. There are certain patterns that I’ve been noticing only in the most hardcore brainwashed Mormons. The first thing I noticed was a certain facial expression that I only see in really hardcore believers. The expression can be described as having the jaw wide open, the lower lip covering the bottom teeth, the upper lip pulled back to expose the upper teeth, side of the sips raised, and the center of the eyes scrunched. Usually the head is tilted when this smile is sent in response to acknowledging someone. Note that in a genuine smile the mouth is seldom open that far unless you’re laughing, and the eyes tend to have more muscle action on the outside of the eye than the inside.

So this is a fake smile, and a very unique fake smile at that. I’ve only seen it in really hardcore believers. (ordinarily a fake smile has either no action in the eyes, or the eyes are uniformly squinted; and the jaw is almost never open wide like this during a smile unless you’re laughing) Now, determining why people are smiling like this as opposed to what we would normally identify as a “fake” smile would dive completely into the realm of speculation, but that said it makes sense to me that this is a result of being told (i.e. brainwashed into believing) that they are happy. How else are you going to show that you are happy than with a big smile?

There are also certain poses that I’ve been noticing all the time with highly brainwashed people. They tend to fall into poses that, as an animator, I would describe as “insecure.” In other words, their pose is displaying a lack of self confidence or an inherent dependence on others. This includes any combination of, among other things, a bent spine (slouching), palms facing back, arms defaulting to or tending to favor a tucked-in position, legs bending inward or off to one side overemphasizing the direction of the spine, bent wrists with slightly bent elbows when the arm is relaxed, etc. Now, anyone who is unsure of themselves will fall into a pose with these characteristics, but here’s what sets the “brainwashed” version apart: The head won’t match the pose that the rest of the body is in. Notice how I described everything but the head. So their body will communicate insecurity, but their head will be back, sometimes their chest will be out in spite of the slouching forward posture (or the chest is the exception and matches the head rather than the rest of the body)

There doesn’t appear to be a reliable correlation between a person’s walk and their brainwashing. The correlation is there (same characteristics as the pose I described above) but it’s not as reliable across the board. Also note that these poses are what the person will fall into when they are relaxed and not thinking about it, in other words when you capture them off guard. What this does show, like the facial expression, is a conflict of emotions; and that conflict is what I have identified as the outward sign of someone who is brainwashed. They are behaving and expressing emotions that convey one thing while deep down they are betraying who they really are, and what they really feel. (or what their brain is trying to really tell them)

I should point out now that not all of the students that I had identified as highly brainwashed exhibited these poses or facial expressions. I think this fits perfectly with my hypothesis that this involuntary behavior is a result of an internal conflict, and since there are people who Mormonism “works” for (heterosexual extroverts who are utterly unaware of contradictory evidence, never looked for it, or are so thoroughly indoctrinated that the conflict is gone) it makes sense that such individuals would be without conflict.

In light of the above, there are two gender specific tendencies that I’ve noticed in TBMs. The first is that many women who fit into the “highly indoctrinated” category tend to speak with an unnatural soft, higher pitch voice. When someone is talking with a voice that isn’t natural to that person, it is often times very obvious. (I don’t think it’s really necessary to explain how it’s obvious, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about) So when listening to many of these girls speak, it’s often quite eerie.

For the men, highly indoctrinated individuals tend to stiffen up when they think someone is looking at them. Their posture will get stiff, their movements become slower and more deliberate (even actions as simple as sitting down or standing up) and everything seems to become more robotic. Picture moving only one joint at a time in a limb, imagine how stiff that looks. Now picture their whole body moving like this and you’ll have a somewhat exaggerated but otherwise accurate idea of what I’m talking about. (they’re not THAT robotic but they do get very stiff in their movements)

But here’s where this gets fascinating. When they think no one is looking at them, they relax and fall into a more natural pose; often one like I mentioned above. Sitting in the back row in class and observing this is really bizarre. (it’s easy to observe someone sitting in front of you without them knowing) Picture a student turning to another, that second student stiffens up, then when the first student turns away the second relaxes. Honestly, I have no idea where this behavior comes from, and I have only seen the men do it, even though I’ve been watching for it in both. Also, like the poses that I mentioned above, not all do it; but it is very common and there is a strong correlation with brainwashing.

But that’s just me. Sometimes I love to sit back and observe. Hope you found this as interesting as I did!