WTF? Is Corporate World/Society/etc. THIS bad?

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Mind Control techniques include:

Peer group pressure: Suppressing doubt and resistance to new ideas by exploiting the need to belong

Love bombing: Exploiting the innate need for intimacy by creating a sense of family and belonging through hugging, kissing, touching and flattery

Hypnosis: Inducing a state of high suggestibility by using trance-inducing techniques such as relaxation, musical chanting, emotionally arousing music, rhythmic movements or techniques thinly disguised as meditation

Rejection of old values: Accelerating acceptance of new life style by constantly denouncing former values and beliefs

Confusion: Encouraging blind acceptance and rejection of logic through interminable complex lectures on incomprehensible doctrines

Metacommunication: Implanting subliminal messages by stressing certain key words or phrases in long harangues often called lectures.

Removal of privacy: Achieving a loss of the ability to evaluate experience logically by preventing private contemplation

Time sense deprivation: Destroying the ability to evaluate information, personal reactions, and body functions in relation to passage of time by removing all clocks and watches

Disinhibition: Encouraging child-like obedience by orchestrating child-like behaviour such as circle dancing, chanting

Uncompromising rules: Inducing regression and disorientation by soliciting agreement to seemingly simple rules which regulate mealtimes, bathroom breaks and use of medications

Verbal abuse: Desensitizing through bombardment with critical, foul and abusive language

Sleep deprivation and fatigue: Creating disorientation and vulnerability by prolonging mental and physical activity and withholding adequate rest and sleep — typical brainwashing process

Dress codes: Removing individuality by demanding conformity to the group dress code — sometimes by removing all clothes in ritual circumstances

Chanting and singing: Eliminating non-cult ideas through group repetition of mind-narrowing chants or phrases

Confession: Encouraging the destruction of individual ego through confession of personal weaknesses and innermost feelings of doubt

Financial commitment: Achieving increased dependence on the group by 'burning bridges' to the past, through the donation of assets

Finger pointing: Creating a false sense of righteousness by pointing to the shortcomings of the outside world and other cults

Flaunting hierarchy: Promoting acceptance of cult authority by promising advancement, power and salvation

Isolation: Inducing loss of reality by physical separation from family, friends, society and rational references

Controlled approval: Maintaining vulnerability and confusion by alternately rewarding and punishing similar actions

Change of diet: Creating disorientation and increased susceptibility to emotional arousal by depriving the nervous system of necessary nutrients through the use of special diets and/or fasting

Games: Inducing dependence on the group by introducing games with obscure rules

No questions: Accomplishing automatic acceptance of beliefs by discouraging questions

Guilt: Reinforcing the need for 'salvation' by exaggerating the sins of the former lifestyles

Fear: Maintaining loyalty and obedience to the group by threatening soul, life or limb for the slightest 'negative' thought, word or deed

Replacement of relationships: Destroying pre-cult families by arranging cult marriages and 'families'

The parallel in the corporate workplace

Deikman has shown how the patterns that characterise cults are found in all kinds of human activities, including the military, politics, religious, sport, psychotherapy, academia, entertainment, education and training. Below is just one of his examples: corporate business and administrative organisations.

In any such organisation, the chief executive usually becomes the chief authoritarian. They tend to manipulate the truth about situations and abuse their power. Negative reinforcement is often used, and threat of punishment is linked with power. Most companies automatically develop an authoritarian structure. The lives of employees are often regulated to some extent by the firm. There is 'sibling rivalry' in competition for advancement and the need for approval by 'parents' — one's managerial superiors. Everyone hopes for promotion. Managers tend to feel that they personally should have more power and their subordinates should have less.

The similarity between cult induction and joining a company is striking. The new employee may have to become totally immersed, leading to overwork, exhaustion and having only enough time to mix with other workers, thus reinforcing the company ethos.

Company personnel exhibit 'in-group' identification. Certain uniforms of dress and behaviour become company trademarks. Subordinates curry favours and copy superiors, often in silly ways such as wearing the same shoes or sporting the same style of coloured tie. Dress cues become important statements that give away individuals' ambitions and signal who they would like to be. This is really sympathetic magic: “If I wear what the boss wears, I'll become like the boss”.

Subordinates may also fear the consequences of dissent. They won't speak out if they disagree with the group or its leaders, fearing the consequences of becoming outcasts. Dissent from the company ethos is not encouraged in companies unless it is ritualised 'token' dissent.

Family needs are often sacrificed for the needs of the company. Commonly, a family is expected to move with the job. This may cause family disintegration, loneliness and insecurity for children, etc. Also, when a family announces they are going to move on, people they know often 'drop' them. The family suddenly becomes invisible to neighbours. No one wants to invest any more time with them. It's as if they have already gone. This is very painful for wives and children who don't understand what's happening and who tend to blame themselves for 'being unpopular'.

Despite the pain that moving causes, the company must come first. Loyalty to the larger group is seen as more important than loyalty to the family. The employees most likely to get themselves into this fix are those still looking for a 'parent', and their need to be part of a greater family is more powerful than duty to the real families that they are now responsible for themselves.

Another common conflict occurs when the working partner must take work home from the office, resulting in neglect of the family. Failure to do this extra work may indicate to superiors that advancement isn't wanted. Catch 22!

Colleagues at work may become an 'in' group (cult) and the main source of friends for the employee, leaving the partner at home lonely and resentful. Yet to back out of this business 'in' group would nullify all the previous sacrifices made by the employee and family.

Companies are generally parental and protective in nature. Some companies even arrange a necessary house move, or look after medical and educational arrangements. This is very comforting for most of us and does not encourage us to leave — and step out into the cold.

Company values override individual values, in that a person can have a separate thought and behaviour structure for home and work. The 'violent soldier' goes home and becomes the 'kindly father'.

If employees come to believe that the company is greater than themselves and their families, this can have a tragic outcome for the family.

Cults can be so big they are rarely recognised as such. I recently heard someone, on hearing a Tony Blair policy being criticised, forcefully say, “I won't hear anything said against him. He's my leader right or wrong!”

I think it's sometimes known as 'groupthink'..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink

That stuff exists but is it true everywhere? NO.

My answer to encountering such a controlling atmosphere at a job would be to QUIT, and there-in lies the key difference between a job and a cult. A cult will do anything to keep you from leaving. A job; not so much. They measure your value to them in dollars, and pay you accordingly. Quit, and counter-offers are rare.

Not everything on the list is inherently bad. Long hours help a young associate aquire business skills rapidly, and also help develop a protocal for dealing with deadlines (I only work part time now, but I still I can pull it together and fast if a rapid deadline reared it's face - because I've done it, I've practiced it, I have a pattern for it).

A lot has changed in a world of instant communication. Unlike a cult, which will cut it's members off from that, a corporation won't - it's success depends on it's worker staying connected. And when connected, they have the resources to find out if the employer is acting unreasonably, and to shatter the myths that are being created. Another key difference: access to information.

Still, it will always be possible to fall prey. Never let anyone cut you off from the sources that would allow you to figure it out if you ever do.

There are plenty of great employers out there.

When I read the list of mind control techniques, I realized that almost all of them had been used or attempted on me. It was by a group in the pyramid scheme called Quixtar. http://www.quixtar.com/
Now they've started advertising on TV. If any of you know someone whose in to this or is thinking about it, tell them to stay the hell away from these people.