I have always been cognizant of the fact that I have never been a BK and fully understand that I will never understand the experience as you all have .
Dear Tete,
One of the unique and priceless features of this forum is that it is the only place where the relatives of BKs can come and have their say. This is a group of people who have been at best patronized and marginalised and, at worst, literally demonised. I, for one, would not presume to suggest to any of them that they limit or shape this way or that whatever criticisms they might have. We cannot presume to understand your experiences anymore than you ours.
It is great to have you posting and I hope to hear more and more of your story on this forum.
Dear Everyone,
And indeed I would like to stress to everyone from every little definition -XBK, PBK, BK non-BK etc etc in no way do I want to dissuade anyone from making whatever comment they wish to make. Everyone must have their voice here and everyone's voice is priceless. And please do not edit what you think or say to make it more "positive". That would be an incredibly easy trap to fall into after the years of thought and behaviour control of our BK years. ex-l is absolutely right to be reminding us of the use of language as a means of control and we have all been very well groomed in that regard.
My comments about positivity are not supposed to "sanitise" the site, i.e. to remove so called negative content. The idea that we should all always be positive is awful and, frankly, just makes me just want to swear. My original point was supposed to be that healthy discussion ultimately contains both ebb and flow, and unremitting blackness is itself probably a distortion. ex-l to his very great credit had been asserting that the challenges I was making to him in private I should make in public and it is only for this reason that I took the example of one of his posts. In my opinion ex-l is the greatest gift the drama could give to the BKs and it is ultimately their failing not his that they cant hear him. But ex-l is always going to be the best version of himself there is, and neither this site nor our once called Brothers and Sisters back in the old kingdom will be served by 20 carbon copies of him, anymore than the original one.
Personally, i think that this site exists primarily for those who are big enough to openly join it. I am not overly worried about those who won't even sit down and talk with us. I want to show them respect and fairness, but I don't want to court them. But I do think that they shouldn't have to put up with insults to their religion. And that is the case no matter how badly the sisterhood of that religion sometimes behave. We must be careful to criticize them without insulting it.
And, for us, I would suggest that adopting a sometimes neutral posture or positive posture in thinking about the institution will in certain conversations here free us to look at things from other angles and to uncover truths we perhaps haven't yet noticed. I do not wish to absolve the institution of anything, I just don't want to use it as a convenient villain on whom to blame all the woes of my past. There may be more to it than that. Perhaps I can take some responsibility for things which I reflexively lay at their door. Chewing through the way somebody took advantage of me is part of recovering from abuse, but it is not the whole process. And, yes, being a BK turned out to be highly abusive, but it was a great deal more than that and I would like to take account of all of it.
When I suggest that we take a bit more care over the way we refer to the BKs it is not so that we explore positivity as a replacement of negativity. We must be as plainly honest as we have always striven to be. And we all must do the work as it presents itself to us and unfortunately as a ex-BK a lot of that work is unpleasant. An intrinsic part of being a ex-BK is coming to terms with a great deal of dysfunctional and destructive baggage. The BKs have not (yet) been through what we have and they cant possibly appreciate our so called negativity - for them the dream is not over. And for some it will never be. But most BKs leave and at the very least we provide now a catalogue of warnings about what they face. It may not be pretty but it is is very helpful.
The suggestion by me of myself and ex-l sending them love would be an extremely inappropriate suggestion for some people on this forum and I hope I did not offend anyone. It came from the paradox that we and many others here have come up with insights that the BKs could really benefit from, but unfortunately we are a source they feel unable from which to learn. This was particularly difficult for example with the child protection where I knew that I had information and skills which they needed but my status as a dumbfuck (Hindi translation - Shudra) meant that they would not accept it. And because of this children got abused who otherwise would not have been.
But there is more to it than that - it is not just their prejudices in the way. Research across many different fields shows that good advice is not followed if the recipient's self-esteem and sense of moral identity is damaged or under threat by the way the advice is given. In simple terms if you want to teach anyone anything you cannot simply point out what they are doing wrong. Not only do you have to point them towards some replacement behaviour but you also have to give them a little injection of moral encouragement.
Criticising people in a way that damages their esteem almost always results in them behaving worse not better. This has been established in many different areas of education, in psychology, in management, in the penal system, in sports and military training. As a professional teacher I wince at some of the content here not because it is factually wrong - it almost always is not, nor because i think it undeserved - it seems to be well deserved from where I am standing. I wince because it is the worst way to make things better.
We have exposed many faults about them. Serious and horrible faults - suicides, child abuse, PBK beatings, money grabbing, misrepresentation to the point of possible fraud etc etc. All of this is intrinsically humiliating and therefore it is potentially very morally damaging. If you have ever wondered if the BKs are going downhill morally and ideologically, you are not the only one! Trust me, they are asking that as much as us! But unfortunately we may be helping them on their way. We did not do what we have done in order to humiliate them, but it was a by-product.
I, personally, wasted years trying to avoid it, but ultimately I had a choice of trying to get some child protection in place and accept the humiliation they would suffer or do nothing. I made my choice and I haven't regretted it for a minute. But I would rather have not humiliated them. And that is what I mean by owing them love. There is a hole in their self esteem that I helped to create. Individually, collectively and institutionally. And self-esteem is not some trivial indulgent thing, it is central to moral development.
Without self-esteem we cannot face our faults but instead hide in self-recrimmination, blame and/or denial and apparent helplessness. And these people that are being shown to be wrong, are people who quite simply are not allowed to be wrong. Psychologically and metaphysically. They are trapped in guilt at their apparent fallabillity whilst also astounded that they could be so limited. They carry extremely heavy psychological responsibilities -full of contradictions and what normal people would consider impossibilities. Beneath lots of strength there is bound to be some fragility.
To be clear, when I say "owe" I do not mean a debt, but I do mean a responsibility: I mean the last component in the lesson -the moral encouragement that enables them to take the lesson. It is the hug a child receives just after they have been corrected, but before they have tried again and got it right.
I was right and they were wrong -that is the fundamental truth of the matter, and it is a damn awkward one for both sides. But awkward or not it is still beholden on the person who knows to educate the other. And unless I want to share in the responsibility for them doing it even worse I have to minimise the moral damage. I am suggesting that we be more cognizant of the damage to their self-esteem that our necessary work causes, and that we should without changing the substance of our work attempt to minimise that damage. And that requires respect, compassion, interpersonal cleanliness indeed many of the concepts of dharna and karma that they taught me.
Being right is a responsiblity, it is an opportunity to teach but it is also a responsibility to teach well. Yes they have their responsibilities as well. Gigantic stuff but that's their stuff -not really my problem, except just another set of reasons why I should try to make it as easy as possible for them.
And that in a long winded way is why I started talking about love. An attitude of good intention to all - including them, but expecially to them so that they realise it is not them we are "against", it some of their mistaken actions. We need to see them as essentially good people, guilty of some bad actions. That is, if we would like to help. And one cannot attack wrong action without having to do repair work upon the person who made those mistakes. That is love.
I am sure that nobody here wants to interfere with anyone innocently practicing their religion. So maybe through our self expression here we can inform the members of that religion that some of their practices are very far from innocent and they seriously infringe upon the rights of others. So a beneficial and inevitable offshoot of what we do here is the potential to educate. But that involves teaching. And teaching involves love. Whether we like it or not we are educating them, so we might as well do it well. Which is what I mean when I said "We owe them love".
And if for many of us right now this crazy talk of love is not relevant, and if for you ex-l it is not relevant that of course is fine by me and i trust you wont get distracted by my "stuff" for one second. Maybe a string gets added here, but certainly i don't want to restrain what is already happening.
26 Nov 2007
, as you have described it, is dipped in honey 
before being served to the Chief Executives of BKWS Corporation 
, it would give the management gurus of the Corporation a run for their money 
.
