HelluvaHoax!
Well-known member
.Is coercive communication utilizing threats considered to be rhetoric?
As an example, you're walking down the street and some thug comes up behind you, puts a gun to your head, and says
"Give me your wallet NOW or you're going to die!"
Another example: You're sitting across from the Ethics Officer in a CoS and he says:
"Riddick, your Ethics folder is huge and as a consequence, I've prepared a CSW for your SP Declare this morning which is going to mess you up for trillions of years. However, If you upgrade your IAS status to Patron with Honors that would demonstrate that you're really not an SP and I would put the CSW through the shredder. What would you like me to do?"
Yes, that's the problem I also have with the "everything is rhetoric" argument. That there are so many obvious examples of "persuasive" entrapment gimmicks used in Scientology that have nothing to do with rhetoric. I have also mentioned some in previous posts.
Here's another: Sleep deprivation. The individual's resilience, their free will and resistance to obeying a guru's "commands" is gone. So naturally they robotically comply and do unspeakable things to others and themselves. Where is the rhetoric in that?
Another: Incarceration. Having big ethics security goons escort one to an RFP gulag where the windows are barred and there are guards posted at the single exit door. And where even if the escape their prison, they are still inside a large desert compound surrounded by walls and inward facing barbed wire--and there are more guards, locked gates, surveillance cameras, motion sensors and other security personnel with walkie talkies and chase vehicles at the ready. And if they can somehow escape all that, there are entire goon squads that will immediately mobilize in a "BLOW DRILL" to stake out bus stations, train stations, airports and other likely places the escapee might be hiding. And beyond that the cult illegally breaches the escapees charge card data to see where they are spending money for food, hotels, gas or travel--so that additional thugs can be immediately despatched to go surround, capture and return their quarry back to prison. And if all those extreme methods of coercion, stalking, intimidation and terror don't work, then other goons are flown around the country to the homes/businesses of the escapees family and friends, because that is likely where they have gone for help to avoid re-capture. All that is pretty "persuasive", right? SO WHERE IS THE RHETORIC?
Another example: How about tricking people into using their own imaginations against themselves as a persuasive indoctrination/entrapment technique, even when there is nobody within miles to use rhetoric on them? That's infinitely more "persuasive" than listening to Hubbard's lies. When a Scientologist takes themselves into a "solo NOTS session" and searches for 75M year old implanted aliens and then miraculously finds hundreds of thousands of them and audits each of them to the state of "clear"(whereupon they exteriorize and cease harassing the Scientologist), WHERE IS THE RHETORIC?
Another: What about using the "pleasure/pain" principal and inflicting pain on the individual when they don't obey? The very real pain could be psychological terror and/or physical--such as being beaten and kicked bloody by the cult leader. WHERE IS THE RHETORIC?
There are many dozens of examples of Scientological "persuasion" that have nothing to do with rhetoric. The attempt to persuade otherwise is, itself, rhetoric.
.
.
Last edited: