on the social psychology of cults and totalitarianism

'none of the brethren hymns that I remembered had any birds or animals in them' 

yesterday was a beautiful evening with sun on the tops of the houses opposite. this morning is a beautiful morning with a hazy sun shining through the bare branches of the tree opposite. 

horsemouth has finished reading rebecca stott's in the days of rain: a daughter, a father, a cult. 

her parents marriage has imploded as the exclusive brethren split. it has entered a period of cultish strengthening of central power. brethren members (already banned from trade unions) are now to be banned from professional associations (such as lawyers, doctors, dentists, architects, engineers have) on the basis that they should be shunning the world not engaging with it. similarly brethren young people in higher education have to leave their courses. as a result they have to leave their professional jobs and find work elsewhere  (often in brethren run businesses).

there are unannounced priestly visits to check on the orthodoxy of members who can then be disciplined  by being shut up  in isolation in one of the rooms of their houses, isolated from their family and given time to reflect. 

stott is guided by a 10 week course she did at the mary ward centre on the social psychology of cults and totalitarianism taught by alex stein PHD (another cult survivor - see above), many of the students had children in cults or had lived in communities. she read hannah arendt, she mentions milgram's compliance with authority experiments (themselves inspired by arendt). 

in a way horsemouth can't help but compare the being shut up with covid isolation in the home, he can't help but see it as designed to produce a new soul in the shut up person (in a foucault type reading). 

her father is a larger than life figure. initially he is caught up in the need to get the truth out to other brethren about the leaders abuses but the exiles from the cult (those withdrawn from) reproduce the cult in smaller and smaller circles. he was one of the last university educated brethren and the literature that he had read, the films he had watched became the basis of his new personality. he becomes involved in amateur dramatics, lives a double life with another family, drinks a lot, watches a lot of bergman and becomes involved in amateur dramatics. 

and he takes up gambling. (why the roulette wheel? asks a stoner friend of rebecca's) he goes to work for the bbc (as a researcher for religious programs then making documentaries). 

he is in search of his reward, he is trying to make up for lost time, he is just trying to fund the lifestyle. 

'none of us have many pictures from that time' and yet rebecca finds photos for the book. 

the book is a bit baggy (the way real lives are baggy and not the hero's journey). rebecca has a things to say about darwin  (cut out of the family encyclopedia by her grandfather), about bergman, about the gyres that inform her father's gambling system, about birds. some of this works. there is an entire other book to be had in the father's post cult life. 

when not reading in the days of rain horsemouth was finishing off watching ireland - a television history. david kee goes and interviews the old IRA men of the easter rising. he plays the early episodes to catholic republicans in the north. he lauds moderate voices. 

when horsemouth finished that he took up with feargal keane's the story of ireland a more modern 'multicultural' reading of same material. 

there is good news. but horsemouth cannot tell you what it is yet because it hasn't been announced.