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https://theconversation.com/have-i-just-joined-another-cult-daniella-grew-up-in-the-family-then-joined-the-army-where-she-experienced-toxic-control-again-196385>
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Review: Uncultured – Daniella Mestyanek Young (Allen & Unwin)
On Daniella Mestyanek Young’s first day of military training, she stands among
her fellow recruits holding a duffle bag high in one arm above her head. As she
ponders the other bodies lined up in her peripheral vision, all struggling to
maintain the same pose, it gradually occurs to her that this feeling — of being
owned, coerced, programmed — seems unsettlingly familiar: “Have I just joined
another cult?”
This sense of suspicion forms a pattern in Mestyanek Young’s life, which she
documents with remarkable insight in her memoir,
Uncultured, exploring the
systems of control in which toxicity can thrive.
Mestyanek Young was born into religious cult the Children of God, also known as
The Family. (Not to be confused with Anne Hamilton Byrne’s Australian-based
cult, also known as The Family.)
Mestyanek Young spent her childhood shuffled from compound to compound in
Brazil, Mexico and the United States. At 15, she fled what she would come to
recognise as a cult, made her way to Texas and put herself through school and
college, eventually graduating as valedictorian and joining the US army, where
she served as an intelligence officer.
But this book is not simply a survival story. It’s an exposé of the abuse that
can run unchecked within cults. It’s a story about trauma, a war memoir, a
meditation on the difference between culture and cults. And it’s a searing
indictment of groups that continue to view those who are not men as subservient
to those who are.
But at its core,
Uncultured is a book about groups. It asks readers to look
closely at the power mechanisms at work within the communities we call our
own."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
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mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
