Blog: Think for Yourself - 2010-11-05
Think for Yourself November 5, 2010,
Of course, that's one of the slogans of the Church of Scientology. I ought to know – I was very much involved in its development and implementation.
Here's some of the back story. In the late 1980s and early 1990's, we did a lot of surveys on the subject of Scientology, in preparation for the launch of a major campaign. Our surveys showed that Scientology was vastly unpopular. In order to handle this negative public image, I started digging in with more surveys. I found that people considered Scientology to be a cult. And so I had further surveys done to find out what people thought a cult was. The top "cult" item was that one could not disagree with the cult leader or the cult doctrine.
In this, public perception of what constitutes a cult was pretty accurate. In a cult, one may never, never, never challenge the cult doctrines or the cult leader (guru, prophet, founder). Here's Steve Hassan again, from Combatting Cult Mind Control: