How cults rewire the brain | Diane Benscoter

211,905 views ・ 2009-06-17

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00:18
My journey to coming here today
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started in 1974.
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00:24
That's me with the funny gloves.
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I was 17 and going on a peace walk.
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What I didn't know though, was most of those people, standing there
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with me, were Moonies.
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00:35
(Laughter)
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And within a week
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I had come to believe
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that the second coming of Christ had occurred,
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that it was Sun Myung Moon,
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and that I had been specially chosen and prepared by God
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to be his disciple.
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00:54
Now as cool as that sounds,
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my family was not that thrilled with this.
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00:58
(Laughter)
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01:00
And they tried everything they could to get me out of there.
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There was an underground railroad of sorts
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that was going on during those years. Maybe some of you remember it.
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They were called deprogrammers.
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01:10
And after about five long years
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my family had me deprogrammed.
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01:18
And I then became a deprogrammer.
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I started going out on cases.
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01:25
And after about five years of doing this,
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I was arrested for kidnapping.
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Most of the cases I went out on
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were called involuntary.
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01:37
What happened was that the family
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had to get their loved ones some safe place somehow.
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And so they took them to some safe place.
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And we would come in and talk to them, usually for about a week.
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01:49
And so after this happened,
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I decided it was a good time to turn my back on this work.
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And about 20 years went by.
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There was a burning question though that would not leave me.
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And that was, "How did this happen to me?"
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And in fact, what did happen to my brain?
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Because something did.
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And so I decided to write a book, a memoir,
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about this decade of my life.
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02:19
And toward the end of writing that book
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there was a documentary that came out.
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It was on Jonestown.
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And it had a chilling effect on me.
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These are the dead in Jonestown.
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About 900 people died that day,
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most of them taking their own lives.
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Women gave poison to their babies,
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and watched foam come from their mouths as they died.
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The top picture is a group of Moonies
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that have been blessed by their messiah.
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Their mates were chosen for them.
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The bottom picture is Hitler youth.
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This is the leg of a suicide bomber.
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The thing I had to admit to myself,
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with great repulsion,
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was that I get it.
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I understand how this could happen.
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I understand how someone's brain,
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how someone's mind can come to the place
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where it makes sense --
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in fact it would be wrong, when your brain is working like that --
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not to try to save the world through genocide.
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And so what is this? How does this work?
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03:34
And how I've come to view what happened to me
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is a viral, memetic infection.
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03:41
For those of you who aren't familiar with memetics,
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a meme has been defined as
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an idea that replicates in the human brain
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and moves from brain to brain like a virus,
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much like a virus. The way a virus works is --
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it can infect and do the most damage to someone
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who has a compromised immune system.
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In 1974, I was young, I was naive,
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and I was pretty lost in my world.
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I was really idealistic.
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These easy ideas to complex questions are very appealing
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when you are emotionally vulnerable.
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What happens is that
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circular logic takes over.
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"Moon is one with God.
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God is going to fix all the problems in the world.
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All I have to do is humbly follow.
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Because God is going to stop war and hunger --
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all these things I wanted to do --
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all I have to do is humbly follow.
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04:39
Because after all, God is [working through] the messiah. He's going to fix all this."
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It becomes impenetrable.
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And the most dangerous part of this
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is that is creates "us" and "them,"
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"right" and "wrong,"
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"good" and "evil."
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And it makes anything possible,
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makes anything rationalizable.
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And the thing is, though,
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if you looked at my brain
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during those years in the Moonies --
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05:14
neuroscience is expanding exponentially,
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as Ray Kurzweil said yesterday. Science is expanding.
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05:19
We're beginning to look inside the brain.
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And so if you looked at my brain, or any brain that's infected with
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05:24
a viral memetic infection like this,
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05:27
and compared it to anyone in this room,
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or anyone who uses critical thinking on a regular basis,
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05:31
I am convinced it would look very, very different.
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And that, strange as it may sound,
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gives me hope.
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05:41
And the reason that gives me hope
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05:43
is that the first thing is to admit
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that we have a problem.
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05:49
But it's a human problem. It's a scientific problem, if you will.
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05:52
It happens in the human brain. There is no evil force out there to get us.
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05:56
And so this is something that, through research and education,
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I believe that we can solve.
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06:03
And so the first step is to realize
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that we can do this together,
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and that there is no "us" and "them."
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06:16
Thank you very much. (Applause)
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