The EnlightenMeFree (EMF) Online Debate Forum

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ex_m ... think.html# (6.24)

From above: ?Diane Benscoter spent five years as a "Moonie." She shares an insider's perspective on the mind of a cult member, and proposes a new way to think about today's most troubling conflicts and extremist movements.?


Her bio:

http://www.ted.com/speakers/diane_benscoter.html


Q & A with Diane Benscoter: Joining, leaving and ultimately defeating the cult

http://blog.ted.com/2009/06/qa_with_diane_b.php

Here is an article about ?memes? that Diane Benscoter mentioned.

"Sex, Drugs, and Cults. An evolutionary psychology perspective on why and how cult memes get a drug-like hold on people, and what might be done to mitigate the effects" By H. Keith Henson (Scientology critic)

http://www.human-nature.com/nibbs/02/cults.html



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

Copied from above:

Memetics

Henson's wife, Arel Lucas, was credited by Douglas Hofstadter in Metamagical Themas for suggesting the study of memes be called memetics. Henson wrote two articles on memes in 1987, one published in Analog. The other, Memes, MetaMemes and Politics, circulated on the internet before being printed.[citation needed]

Eric S. Raymond, a long-time friend of Henson's, saw one of the early drafts of a later paper on cults, memes and religion and has publicly credited it as an influence on the theory of peer-esteem rewards he developed to explain the open-source movement.[16] Richard Dawkins, who originated the concept of memes, approvingly cites in the second edition of his book The Selfish Gene Henson's coining of the neologism memeoids to refer to "victims who have been taken over by a meme to the extent that their own survival becomes inconsequential."[17]