Friday, July 01, 2005

RC: a cola or a cult... what every activist should know

I attended what was billed via word of mouth invites as a "support group" for activists. What I agreed to attend was actually an "RC" attempt to gain a foothold in Tucson's activist community through recruiting leaders into RC.

Several things initially bothered me:

$ for nuthin' (and your chicks for free) -- nothing about world peace, activism, positive world change was discussed.

co-counseling seemed an eerie reminder of a scientology auditing -- and when i got home i checked into this feeling and found a very real link between the two.

rigid terminology and ritual actions

overly simple explanations and solutions

no end point or ultimate goal

what i call a "truth" mentality... which is a person or group's belief that there is one way to truth and just happens to be the one affilitated with that person or group.



In any case, the navel gazing and the belief in the need to push people toward discharge in all cases could be quite harmful and certainly such an autocratic rigidity has no place in the progressive movement as there would be no movement toward anything other than RC if this co-counciling catches on.

The best info on the web about the disturbing aspects of RC that I felt almost immediately upon entering the room where the meeting was held is at a site called disinformation.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yes, your comments regarding RC are spot on and its similarities with and to Scientology are a common cause of alarm. I should add, however, that I am a practicing RCer and have been for close to thirty years. Harvey Jackins, the founder of RC always said that we were welcome to take what we want from RC "and leave the rest" and that is what I try to do. Harvey's only caveat was not to call whatever it was we were promulgating as a result, "RC".

It sounds as if the presentation in Tucson was a rather poor attempt at "going public", as Tim Jackins, the current head has been wont to do for some time. There have been similar outings in other places. I don't think we have quite yet mastered the art of connecting the personal with the political, or even with--the significant. It's not enough to say to people, "Hey, this feels good, help me spread it around the world."

That approach trivializes the idea of struggle and it is only with with struggle that true change occurs--IMO. So, forgive us if we haven't quite gotten it right. We're working on it.