Today's blog post is about an interesting show that was recommended to me by Hulu. The show is called The Path, and it stars Aaron Paul from Breaking Bad. I had previously watched Breaking Bad, and told myself I need to stay away from these series, because I end up losing many productive days binge watching them. Obviously, I did not live up to my goal, and ended up bingeing on The Path all day Saturday.
The show is based on the Meyerist group, a made-up cult in upstate New York. The show has many layers as is it deals with interactions and drama within the cult and with the outside world. It is fascinating to see the parallels between MLM and the show, and it is especially helpful to see the many viewpoints of people coming into contact with this group, both inside and outside.
The lead character, played by Aaron Paul, named Eddie, is dealing with the overwhelming evidence that the group has been lying to him and his family. In the opening episode, you can see he is not conforming completely to the ideas being presented by the Meyerists, and it is later revealed that he was devoted until he went on a trip to Peru. Dealing with his own issues in the cult is one thing, but he also has to deal with the fact that his family is extremely devoted to the cause. He tries to tread as lightly as possible, and pretend to fall in line, but there are constantly issues coming up and eventually his views get him kicked out of his family.
While there is dissension in the Meyerist group, there is also a devoted police officer trying to bring the group down, a neglectful father that tries to get his daughter out or receive some sort of compensation, and the locals in town that do not want this cult infiltrating their society. This adds to the significance of the story, because you aren't stuck with a one dimensional view of the impact of cults. Cults are mostly covered from the inside, and made to look as though it doesn't affect a broader portion of the general public, but this show includes the people of the society and the burden they feel having the Meyerists around.
The main points of the show that are similar to MLM: an us vs them mentality, a specific set of rules or guidelines created by a superior intellect which must be followed or failure is imminent, a set of levels that are artificially created by the cult leader to ensure superiority and create subordination from the lower ranks, a level of ambiguity and lies to help spread the message and generate more followers, a specific target audience of people that are vulnerable.
I highly recommend this show, and look forward to comments correlating MLM with the Meyerists.
If you have a story involving abuses from your upline and would like me to share it on this blog as a guest post, then please e-mail me and I will be more than happy to post it! Your stories are not as unique as you may think, and your stories are some of the most impactful resources we have to fight MLMs. I will keep your anonymity upon request.
The show is based on the Meyerist group, a made-up cult in upstate New York. The show has many layers as is it deals with interactions and drama within the cult and with the outside world. It is fascinating to see the parallels between MLM and the show, and it is especially helpful to see the many viewpoints of people coming into contact with this group, both inside and outside.
The lead character, played by Aaron Paul, named Eddie, is dealing with the overwhelming evidence that the group has been lying to him and his family. In the opening episode, you can see he is not conforming completely to the ideas being presented by the Meyerists, and it is later revealed that he was devoted until he went on a trip to Peru. Dealing with his own issues in the cult is one thing, but he also has to deal with the fact that his family is extremely devoted to the cause. He tries to tread as lightly as possible, and pretend to fall in line, but there are constantly issues coming up and eventually his views get him kicked out of his family.
While there is dissension in the Meyerist group, there is also a devoted police officer trying to bring the group down, a neglectful father that tries to get his daughter out or receive some sort of compensation, and the locals in town that do not want this cult infiltrating their society. This adds to the significance of the story, because you aren't stuck with a one dimensional view of the impact of cults. Cults are mostly covered from the inside, and made to look as though it doesn't affect a broader portion of the general public, but this show includes the people of the society and the burden they feel having the Meyerists around.
The main points of the show that are similar to MLM: an us vs them mentality, a specific set of rules or guidelines created by a superior intellect which must be followed or failure is imminent, a set of levels that are artificially created by the cult leader to ensure superiority and create subordination from the lower ranks, a level of ambiguity and lies to help spread the message and generate more followers, a specific target audience of people that are vulnerable.
I highly recommend this show, and look forward to comments correlating MLM with the Meyerists.
If you have a story involving abuses from your upline and would like me to share it on this blog as a guest post, then please e-mail me and I will be more than happy to post it! Your stories are not as unique as you may think, and your stories are some of the most impactful resources we have to fight MLMs. I will keep your anonymity upon request.
This is off topic, but I feel that today's tragicomic news will only attract more mainstream media attention to the ongoing phenomenon of 'MLM' cultic racketeering, but it's now too late.
ReplyDeletehttp://mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.fr/2016/11/mlm-racketeer-donald-trump-picks-mlm.html
Yes, the 'Amway' racket's Betsy Devos has been appointed as US Education Secretary. In order for Trump to top this latest sick joke, he's going to have to give Bernie Madoff a Presidential Pardon, nominate him for the Nobel Economics Laureate and then appoint him as Chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
The way things are going in the land of Trump, almost anything is possible
David,
DeleteThis is truly a depressing time when people like Betsy DeVos get government positions, because we are being ruled by a pathological lying narcissist that is going to get away with using the United States as a way for him to generate more revenue.
Donald Trump has always been about Donald Trump first, and this is just another sign, along with the Bannon nonsense, that he was full of crap on the campaign trail. He doesn't want to "drain the swamp", but rather get us submerged with different and equally awful representation.
Someone else made a joke about Bernie Madoff being the treasury secretary, because he is the best at operating ponzi schemes. With the current affairs of the U.S. debt it can only be described as a giant ponzi, and under overlord Trump, things will start to unravel after Obama did a great job of kicking the can down the line with excessive rate decreases.
John - I don't know if you are aware that Donald Trump's model of reality was heavily-influenced by a sanctimonious 'Positive Thinking/Prosperity Gospel' preacher, Norman Vincent Peale.
Deletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/06/nyregion/donald-trump-marble-collegiate-church-norman-vincent-peale.html
Peale (and others) also influenced the DeVos and Van Andel Crime families and many other 'MLM' racketeers.
Peale became wealthy and famous by promoting a totalistic 'positive vs negative' contolling scenario in an endless series of books, articles and lectures, but none of this was original.
In effect this type of charlatan has simply translated the religious concept of 'blind faith leading to future redemption in Paradise,' into a the more-easy-to-peddle jargon of 'positive thinking leading to success on Earth.'
Peale used closed-logic i.e. He taught that only persons who believe totally that they will succeed, can achieve success.
Therefore, in the mind's of Peale's followers, failure to succeed became seen as the fault of individual who obviously didn't believe totally.
When you combine Peales dangerous brand of victim-blaming closed-logic with an 'income opportunity' fraud, the result can only be described as evil.
David,
DeleteI am not familiar with Norman Peale, but he seems to be one of the originators that spawned people like Kiyosaki and Maxwell. It doesn't surprise me at all that Trump was morphed into this weird pile of confidence and bad hair based on these idiosyncratic methods.
At this point, I have been doing a lot of research based on the pizzagate scandal, and it would seem all of the politicians that are installed in the US are blackmail whores. Trump will be no exception to this, and there will continue to be scandals and controversies released around the white house and the government. These false flags seem to keep popping up in recent history to try and have the masses voluntarily give up their rights as they are easily manipulated by main stream media and horror stories of politicians gone awry.
I fear for my country in this troubling time. We have an economy that should have burst two decades ago, and will now have a global effect. We have a president-elect that could possibly be the most publicly corrupt individual in the history of the United states. We have a disgusting scandal that is volleying to take down the entire democratic party. We have a guy named Soros who decides which rights we should and shouldn't have, and will implement maniacal tactical assaults through the media to convince and trick people into giving up their freedoms. We are no longer a Constitutional republic, but rather a weird ever closer version of communism.