Ray, who had shot to fame following his appearance in the
simplistic and crassly materialistic New-Wage moviemercial The Secret, was
convicted of negligent homicide for the three deaths in Sedona --
and consequently served less than two years in an Arizona state
prison -- but he was never criminally charged in the death of yet
another follower, Colleen Conaway, at a San
Diego Ray event a couple of months before Sedona.
Every year since October 8, 2009, I've commemorated the horror in
Sedona on this blog, and this year is no exception. But this
year, I'm going to inject some politics into my annual
observation, because, unfortunately, cults and cultishness have
slithered their way into American (right-wing) politics, and I
don't think the threat that they represent can be overstated.
In a way, this is a tale of two Virginias, and I only hope that
the Virginia I greatly admire will not be insulted by appearing
in the same blog post as the "other" Virginia, for whom
I have nothing but contempt. Let's get that "other" V
out of the way first.
Virginia Thomas: there and back
again -- from cult member, to anti-cult crusader, back to cult
member
Today Virginia "Ginni" Thomas is best
known as the conspiracy-mongering -- and possibly seditious -- wife of Supreme
Court Justice Clarence "Long Dong Silver"
Thomas. But not everyone is aware that Ginni was once a member of
a cult, and at some point became aware that it was a
cult, and underwent "deprogramming," after which she
became an anti-cult crusader for years.
The cult with which Ginni, then known by her maiden name of
Virginia Lamp, was involved was a Large Group Awareness Training
(LGAT): the now-defunct Lifespring, a
product of the "human potential movement" that began in the late 1960s and came to fruition in
the 70s and 80s. Lifespring was founded by several colleagues of Werner
Erhard, the perpetrator of the even
more infamous Erhard Seminars Training, or est (which later became The Forum, which later became
Landmark Forum, which later became Landmark Education, which is
now Landmark Worldwide).
NBC News was one of several media outlets covering
Ginni's journey there and back again. A
June 14, 2022 article on the NBC News web site offers a brief summary of what Lifespring was and did
(and in the process, I couldn't help but notice, mentions Ray's
"sweat lodge").
Lifespring, like NXIVM and “Sweat Lodge Guru” James Arthur Ray’s course that led to three deaths in 2009, are what some experts call Large Group Awareness Trainings, New Age self-help programs that paradoxically promise to deliver almost superhuman mental abilities that can be achieved only through total submission.
Lifespring put inductees through grueling multiday “educational” sessions where they were psychologically broken down. In a 1987 Washington Post exposé of the group, Thomas gave an interview describing one session in which trainees were made to strip down to bathing suits and subjected to body shaming.
“The emphasis was upon abandonment to an undifferentiated, unknowable other,” psychologist Janice Haaken and sociologist Richard Adams wrote in an academic journal article on Lifespring. They participated in a 1981 training in Seattle where they witnessed a man have a psychotic break while organizers berated him, concluding that the impact of the training “was essentially pathological” for even the people who enjoyed the experience.
Several trainees died, including a 27-year-old model who was refused medical attention during an asthma attack, leading to a $450,000 settlement with her family, according to a 1987 article in The Washington Post. The group, which claimed to have trained hundreds of thousands, went defunct in the 1990s after a series of lawsuits.
Following Ginni Lamp's realization that Lifespring was a destructive cult, and her escape/deprogramming, she became a force for good -- for a while, anyway. From the NBC piece cited above:
“When you come away from a cult, you’ve got to find a balance in your life as far as getting involved with fighting the cult or exposing it,” Thomas told attendees at a 1986 Cult Awareness Network panel in Kansas City, Missouri. “And kind of the other angle is getting a sense of yourself and what was it that made you get into that group. And what open questions are there that still need to be answered.”
It’s difficult to reconcile Thomas then and now, four people who worked with her at the height of her anti-cult activism through the late 1980s said in interviews. After she spent years trying to expose cults, these people found Thomas’ efforts to promote outlandish plans to overturn the 2020 results, particularly the text messages and emails in which she referenced false election conspiracies that originated in QAnon circles on the internet, surprising. Democrats and Republicans alike have said QAnon supporters exhibit cult-like behavior.
“Ginni Thomas was out there active in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s and then she really went a different path,” said Rick Ross, a prominent expert on cults and a former “deprogrammer” who knew Thomas through their anti-cult activism. “I admire the work she did back in the ‘80s. And she should be given credit for that.”
No disrespect intended to Rick Ross, whose work I've
long supported, and I've always been willing to give credit where
credit is due, but isn't there a point at which today's awful
deeds cancel out yesterday's good ones? In any case, at the risk
of overstating the obvious, Ginni Thomas née Lamp is in
an even worse cult now -- not just QAnon in particular, as noted
by various media outlets that have explored her curious journey,
but the Trumpcult in general.
Ginni loves her Trump, and apparently the love is returned.
While Ginni Thomas is a high-profile example, her story isn't all
that unusual; for many folks, susceptibility to cults and manipulation is apparently a lifelong condition, somewhat like
traditional recovery circles claim is the case with alcoholism
and other drug addictions. In my previous post, and in a
different though related context, I quoted myself quoting my pal
Jason "Salty Droid" Jones, but I think another
quotation of a quotation of a quotation is in order here.
...None of this is really surprising.... As my pal Salty Droid has both documented on his blog and has mentioned in private correspondence, quitting one manipulative scam or scammer doesn't cure one of the thinking pattern errors that got them sucked in in the first place. "Manipulation causes susceptibility to manipulation as a side effect," sez Salty.
Indeed. A July 24, 2022 piece on the Business Insider site not only suggests that Ginni Thomas has "fallen back into old habits" but also offers some insight from cult expert Steven Hassan, himself a former cult member who worked with Ginni back in her anti-cult activism days. Hassan said he actually wasn't surprised by Ginni's apparent infatuation with QAnon.
"Ginni Thomas was in a cult, and anyone who has ever been in a cult is vulnerable to another cult if they haven't properly counseled and done their homework," Hassan said...
..."I haven't called [Ginni Thomas] stupid or crazy, which the media does, because I know that she's been unduly influenced into these beliefs. She's a very intelligent, educated person, but her brain has been hacked," [Hassan] claimed.
With all due respect to Steven Hassan, while
Ginni is almost certainly not stupid, she is, in my
unprofessional opinion, bat-crap crazy.
Unfortunately, she's far from the only American who believes in QAnon's
batty conspiracy narratives. A PRRI
Report from February of this year revealed that nearly one in
five Americans in general, and one in four republicans in
particular, still believe in QAnon conspiracy theories. And
Americans who most trust far-right "news" are nearly
five times more likely to be QAnon believers than those who lean
towards mainstream news media. It would be all be merely
humorous, were it not for the fact that this deep toxic ocean of
irrationality threatens to drown American democracy.
So you really can't talk about cults in general without injecting
a little bit of politix in the mix.
Virginia Brown: turning profound grief into a force
for good
Now we come to the Virginia I admire: Virginia
"Ginny" Brown, mother of one of James Arthur Ray's
death lodge victims, Kirby Brown.
The families and friends of the four people killed by Ray have
all learned to cope with their losses in their own ways. One of
the ways that Kirby Brown's family chose was to found a nonprofit
organization, SEEK Safely to help educate
the public, hold self-help leaders accountable, and hopefully
avoid more deaths and injuries at the hands of reckless gurus.
Given the context of this post, I should probably emphasize that
SEEK Safely is not a partisan political organization,
the only connection with politics being an ongoing campaign for responsible legislation to rein
in the self-help industry. Nor,
contrary to what some might expect, is the organization
anti-self-help. Rather, its message and mission center around
empowerment, in the best sense of that egregiously overused word,
i.e., by helping people make informed decisions when choosing to
go the self-help-seminar route. I urge you to visit the SEEK
Safely site, which is continually expanding. You will find a
wealth of useful information, as well as opportunities to get
involved if you're so inclined.
Yet another way the Brown family found to come to terms with
Kirby's death, while helping many other people who are dealing
with profound loss and pain, was through the 2020 memoir, This
Sweet Life: How We Lived After Kirby Died, by Ginny and her younger daughter Jean. It is truly a
lovely and haunting book, which I read shortly after it came out
and have yet to keep my commitment to fully review here -- but
never mind my own negligence; I urge you to read the book.
Before I wrap this up I also want to make the
distinction between self-help cults (or cultlike organizations)
and the whole QAnon/Trumpcult phenomenon, particularly regarding
their respective followers. I think that many if not most of the
people who get sucked in, to the point of harm, by charismatic
self-help gurus have good intentions themselves, despite the
malevolent intentions of the "leaders" they look up to,
and that their original motivation for becoming involved is simply
to improve their lives in some way. (This of course applies to
those who get involved voluntarily and not because they were
required to do so by employers or coerced by loved ones.) Many
LGAT attendees are highly educated, high-achieving, even
adventurous souls who like to challenge themselves and be
challenged. Even Ginni Lamp Thomas, who was highly educated when
she got into Lifespring, was reportedly drawn to the LGAT by a
desire to improve her life.
QAnon, on the other hand, attracts a wide range of
fringe "thinkers" and nutcakes, many of whom aren't the
sharpest tools in the shed, and it's also a convenient weapon
wielded by power-hungry cynics who don't actually believe the
wackadoodle conspiracy theories pushed by Q but are all too happy
to exploit the gullibility of those who do believe.
Unlike many LGATs, and for that matter the Trumpcult, QAnon
doesn't have a single specific high-profile cult leader at the
helm, but the conspiranoid narratives pushed by Q advocates are
in many ways more destructive than anything any LGAT guru could
wreak. And the Trumpcult, which is fed by and feeds into the Q
cult, poses an even greater danger than Q alone.
That said, it would be a mistake to underestimate
the danger of self-help cults led by malignant narcissists. Like
James Arthur Ray, for instance.
For Ray, the daze of the four- and five-figure live events such
as the Spiritual Warrior travesty that culminated in the death
lodge would seem to be over, and that's a good thing. Though he
has been struggling to make a comeback since his release from
prison, framing the whole Sedona thing as a super-major trial and
tribulation for him, his audience has shriveled like the
balls of a long-time steroid user.
Today Ray merrily tweeted
about something he calls "Steps to the Economy of Mind
#5," which is apparently part of his "Modern
Alchemy" shtick. He advises, "ONLY put things in your
mind that cause YOU to improve." Spoken like a true
narcissist. He didn't even mention the death lodge anniversary,
not that I would expect him to, since putting that thought in his
mind and out in the Twitterverse would most likely not cause him
-- or his bottom line -- to improve, at least not by his definition of improvement. In any case, today's tweet, like
most of his nuggets of wisdumb on Twitter, has earned very few
likes, and zero responses so far. Even so, James Arthur Ray still
has a fan base, and as long as he is in the business, he remains
a danger, no matter how minor that danger may seem at the moment.
The takeaway: Whether it's a McSpirituality/selfish-help cult or
a far-right political one, cults remain a threat. Do what you can
to protect yourself and those you care about from their
influence. (And make sure you're registered to vote, if you're
eligible.)
And... never forget.
Related musings from the Whirled archives:
- March 2010: Self-help regulation: necessary safeguard, or
Nanny-state nonsense?
A long (and long-ago) post that explores questions raised in the wake of the death lodge debacle, regarding the need to regulate the self-help industry. Of particular interest for overall context of the "human potential movement": the segment under the subhead, "Going back in time: a little 'historical perspective." Several of the links are no longer active, but this is, after all, the Internet, and 2010 was a long time ago. - October 2010: Musings on a tragedy and its meanings
Another long post, published on the one-year anniversary of Sedona and doubling as a review of former James Ray follower Connie Joy's book, Tragedy in Sedona: My Life in James Arthur Ray's Inner Circle.
No comments:
Post a Comment