Fata Morgana: mental manipulation between skepticism and anti-proibition

1
Fata Morgana mental manipulation between
skepticism and anti-proibition

• Luigi Corvaglia
• CeSAP, Vice-President

2

• A Fata Morgana is an unusual and complex form of
  mirage that is seen in a narrow band right above
  the horizon. It is an Italian phrase derived from
  the vulgar Latin for "fairy" and the Arthurian
  sorceress Morgan le Fay, from a belief that these
  mirages, often seen in the Strait of Messina ,
  were fairy castles in the air or false land
  created by her witchcraft to lure sailors to
  their death.

3
Sometimes thinghs are not what they appear to be
Sometimes thinghs are not what they appear to be

• Is this
• a grilled cheese or
• a portrait of Vergin Mary?

• Is this
• a grilled cheese or
• a portrait of Vergin Mary?

4
Sold on eBay for 28,500 to a Las Vegas
Casino Illusions can lead us to make wrong
choices, mirages to head in the wrong the
direction.
in the debate between anti cult and against cult
(anti anti cult) someone plays with mirrors
5
Sometimes, things are not what they appear to be

• First Illusion
• Anti-cult movement belive in brainwahing or
  other form of mental manipulation
• Anti anti-cult movement belives that manipulation
  is a mith
• So, the issue is to belive or not to belive in
  mental manipulation

This brings us completely off course and lead us
on the shoals of an empty and sterile discussion
6
Mental manipulation and exploitation. A synopsis

• The vast majority of academic scholars of new
  religious movements deny that there is an
  objective concept of "brainwashing" or
  "conditioning techniques to change a
  personality.
• Massimo Introvigne

Massimo Introvigne
7
Mental manipulation and exploitation. A synopsis

• also the majority of the scholars of political
  science and economics have difficulty finding an
  agreement on the "objective concept" of
  "exploitation", but few of them would be willing
  to subscribe to the idea that this does not
  exist.

• Maybe it is true. But.

8
Mental manipulation and exploitation. A synopsis

• "Anarcho-capitalism", challenges the concept of
  "exploitation" operated by the capitalist to the
  detriment of the worker in poverty, not because
  the first does not exploit the need of the second
  paying less than they would if he was less needy,
  but because this last one is not forced to endure
  the terms of the relationship with physical
  violence or threat.

• Anarcho-capitalism
• Anarcho-capitalists argue for a society based on
  the voluntary trade of private property and
  services (in sum, all relationships not caused by
  threats or violence, including exchanges of
  money, consumer goods, land, and capital goods).
• So, any agreement not caused by violence is
  permissible.

The libertarian argument
9
Mental manipulation and exploitation. A synopsis

• Anarcho-capitalism

Capitalist acts between consenting adults
David Friedman
David Friedman
10
Mental manipulation and exploitation. a synopsis

• Anarcho-capitalism about exploitation

• Against cult movement about manipulation

• The opportunistic nature of the relationship is
  recognized, but it is considered unavoidable and
  typical of any type of human relationship. The
  concept of "exploitation", they say, is so vague
  and imprecise. For this reason, all laws to
  guarantee the worker should be dismantled.

• The opportunistic nature of the relationship is
  recognized, but it is considered unavoidable and
  typical of any type of human relationship. The
  concept of manipulation", they say, is so vague
  and imprecise. For this reason, all laws to
  guarantee the individual should be dismantled .

11
The king is naked

• This is not unbelief, this is
  antiprohibitionism

• Slavery between consenting adults

12
The king is naked

• Anti anti cult say
• if plagiarism were a crime, you should punish
  "any situation of mental and emotional
  dependence, such as the relationship between two
  lovers, between parents and children, between
  teacher and pupil, between doctor and patient,
  between spiritual guidance and disciple and many
  other that recur in everyday life

• if drug dealing is a crime, you should punish the
  coffee dealer too.

Is like saying that
13
The king is naked

• the fact that there is a continuum between
  conditions that do not constitute assault or
  exploitation, and others that meet these criteria
  does not mean that you can not make out the
  extremes.

• Following the fata Morgana" indicated by the
  defenders of the cults, the existence of the warm
  water should make it impossible to distinguish
  the cold water from the hot!

14
Why anti-prohibition may not apply to cults

• if for the worker in need to whom it is offered a
  cheap labor, or the girl subjected to "sexual
  blackmail", there is still a margin of choice,
  altough strongly influenced, to the person to
  whom you replace the prior convictions is
  created a vulnus, a weak point precisely in
  the function responsible for the choice.

• Even if the persuasion takes place according to
  natural mechanisms, whatever outrage resulting
  from this conviction that were "voluntarily"
  suffered would no longer arise as the result of
  free and conscious determination.

15
Why anti-prohibition may not apply to cults

• although there are conditions which are located
  in a "gray area" and in which it is extremely
  difficult to determine whether a conviction is
  unlawful or less, can not be denied the existence
  of undue forms whose quality, rather than in the
  formal aspects, is to be found in the purpose (of
  aggression, control, etc..) and are recognizable
  by presumptive elements that are rather obvious.

16
presumptive elements

• A cult is when old guys get to have sex with
  young girls to which they would not have
  ordinarily had access.
• Pat Linse, Skeptics Art Director

Pat Linse, Skeptics Art Director
17

• Sexual acts between consenting adults?

• Slavery between consenting adults?

18
Litmus test

• The shadow of exploitation is back, but, this
  time, to invalidate the libertarian reading of a
  free agreement (which, though not a little
  distorted by the need still remains in the
  economic or sexual exploitation), is the
  cancellation of a will so free to reach,
  autonomously, an agreement.
• That opportunistic exploitation of a
  psychological subjection, then, is a type of
  asymmetrical agreement at all peculiar, in front
  of which you cannot put yourselves divided into
  factions of believers and unbelievers, but only
  in those of friends and enemies.

• It is the very fact that a similar proffer can
  take place to demonstrate the reality of this
  kind of subjection of the adepts. In fact, it is
  difficult to imagine that, in conditions
  different from those of a conscious psychological
  subjection, a senior "master" could expect from a
  young student to have sex as a favour to her. The
  fact that such offers can take place is a sign
  that those who produce them expect, in all
  probability, that his actions will not produce
  particular negative reactivity. This expectation,
  otherwise absurd, then, is the "litmus test", the
  unmistakable sign of a psychological dependence
  that the will of the person to whom the offer is
  made is, in fact, defused.

19
Out of the shallows. What antiprohibitionism
hides.

• The anti anti cult are members of a cultural
  world that we could hardly associate with that
  freedom of choice, relativism and tolerance of
  which seem to be standard-bearers only in this
  case.
• The reason is that, given the opportunity of a
  mental conditioning, this construct could also be
  used against traditional religious groups.

• The clerical demand freedom for themselves in the
  name of the liberal principle, except to suppress
  it in others, as soon as he can, in the name of
  the clerical principle
• Gaetano Salvemini

20
Out of the shallows. What antiprohibitionism
hides.

• Massimo Introvigne , the most authoritative
  exponent of the anti anti cult in Italy, is a
  leader of Alleanza Cattolica, a right-wing
  organisation . It is "Catholic" and hence
  religious, indeed the group devotes much time to
  reciting the Rosary. On the other hand, its
  objective is to set up the "Kingdom of Mary" on
  earth, defeating Communism and secularism and
  ushering in a theocratic government.

21
Out of the shallows. What antiprohibitionism
hides.

Out of the shallows. What antiprohibitionism
hides.

• According to Introvigne, The People's Temple, the
  ultimate cult, which led over 900 people to their
  death in a mass suicide, was not a religious but
  a political movement, a Communist movement to be
  exact.
• The reason of the massacre was not a
  manipulation, but communism.

22
Out of the shallows. What antiproibition hides.

• However, cult critics will say that the issue,
  whether the group was "Christian" or "Communist",
  is not the "basic question" at all.
• What matters is, why did 900 members of the group
  commit suicide?

23
The matter is

• .. can a closed group, whatever its ideology,
  create a conditioning climate so as to induce
  their followers to commit mass suicide or mass
  suicide was simply the sum of one thousand free
  and simultaneous decisions made by men, women and
  children?

24
Why anti-prohibition may not apply to cults The
ultimate incompatibility

• All ethically oriented action can be guided by
  either of two fundamentally different,
  irredeemably incompatible maxims it can be
  guided by an ethics of conviction or an ethics
  of responsibility.
• Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation

Max Weber
25
Max Weber two ethics

• Ethics of Conviction

• Ethics of Responsability

• It aims to identify universal rules which lay
  down "right" rules to be applied without regard
  for the consequences.
• Good choices come from virtuous principles.

• It produces actions on the basis of rational
  evaluation of the consequences.
• Valid choices produce "virtuous consequences.

26
Max Weber two ethics

• Ethics of Conviction

• Ethics of Responsability

• It aims to identify universal rules which lay
  down "right" rules to be applied without regard
  for the consequences.
• Good choices come from virtuous principles.

• It produces actions on the basis of rational
  evaluation of the consequences.
• valid choices produce "virtuous".consequences.

Religious ethics
Liberal ethics
Individualism, free thinking, antiproibitionism
27
Max Weber two ethics

• Ethics of Conviction

• Ethics of Responsability

• It aims to identify universal rules which lay
  down "right" rules to be applied without regard
  for the consequences.
• Good choices come from virtuous principles.

• It produces actions on the basis of rational
  evaluation of the consequences.
• valid choices produce "virtuous".consequences.

Religious ethics
Liberal ethics
Anti cult
Anti anti cult
Individualism, free thinking, antiproibitionism
Deeds, not creeds
28
Max Weber two ethics
Something went wrong.

• Ethics of Conviction

• Ethics of Responsability

• It aims to identify universal rules which lay
  down "right" rules to be applied without regard
  for the consequences.
• Good choices come from virtuous principles.

• It produces actions on the basis of rational
  evaluation of the consequences.
• valid choices produce "virtuous".consequences.

Religious ethics
Liberal ethics
Anti cult
Anti anti cult
Individualism, free thinking, antiproibitionism
Deeds, not creeds
29
The impossible shift

• Ethics of Conviction

• Ethics of Responsability

• It aims to identify universal rules which lay
  down "right" rules to be applied without regard
  for the consequences.
• Good choices come from virtuous principles.

• It produces actions on the basis of rational
  evaluation of the consequences.
• valid choices produce "virtuous".consequences.

Religious ethics
Liberal ethics
Anti cult
Anti anti cult
How can antiproibition shift from a laical
platform to a theological one?
antiproibition
Individualism, free thinking, antiproibitionism
Deeds, not creeds
30
So you understand that

• The second illusion is
• The war against the concept of mental
  manipulation is a struggle for freedom and
  Liberty.

31
Sometimes things are not what they appear to be

Sometimes things are not what they appear to be

32
Sometimes things are not what they appear to be

Sometimes things are not what they appear to be

• . and not always what appears noble and
  elevated really is.

The End