How to Tell You've Been Indoctrinated

[Clueless Morgan]

I've been thinking a lot about my Mormon penpal as of late (it looks like our conversation might be getting a reboot) and I've been trying to think of a way of explaining to her that she has been indoctrinated.* Which got me thinking about how an indoctrinated person can tell that they have been indoctrinated.

I know, for instance, that I have been indoctrinated to certain things. The most overt example of my own indoctrination is that I (now) consider myself indoctrinated into the D.A.R.E. program (Drug Abuse Resistance Education); As a teenager I don't remember a time when I thought that doing drugs was a good choice, it was always in the back of my mind that drugs were illegal and doing them was just wrong, wrong, wrong despite the fact that I didn't care whether others were doing them, I was adamant about not drinking before turning 21, and the one time I was offered the opportunity to smoke pot I said no before I even fully comprehended what had happened**. Reflecting on this incident (the pot-offering incident), which happened about seven years ago, I think this is my indoctrination presenting itself. It gave me an answer to a question that I could give without even thinking about the answer. It was automatic, out of my mouth before I knew what I was saying. There was no thought on my part. Which is one of the hallmarks of indoctrination.

I have no personal experience with religious indoctrination so I guess I'm wondering how a religiously indoctrinated person realizes that they have been indoctrinated. For myself, I came to think I was indoctrinated because of self-reflection after reading The God Virus and wondering if I had been "infected" with something that wasn't god or religion.

Does anyone on the forums have this kind of experience, being indoctrinated and then realizing it while still being in the midst of one's indoctrination?

How do you think one realizes that indoctrination has taken when one has been indoctrinated? Is it really as easy (or as hard) as self-reflection?

* I understand that explaining this to her is likely to have no effect and just piss her off.
** I concede that this might have as much to do with my goody-two-shoes personality as with being indoctrinated, but I definitely consider my attitude towards drugs to be externally imposed - through indoctrination at the grade-school age.

[Clueless Morgan]

[Angrboda]

I'm not sure what you mean by "indoctrinated." It seems you're using it as a synonym for brainwashed, which is a concept of some ill repute. If we were to rephrase the question as, "How do you know when you've learned about the existence of God?" then the question tends to lose the rather negative attitude involved by using the term "indoctrinated." I think you're biasing your conclusions by using loaded terminology.

[popeyespappy]

I'm not sure what you mean by "indoctrinated." It seems you're using it as a synonym for brainwashed, which is a concept of some ill repute. If we were to rephrase the question as, "How do you know when you've learned about the existence of God?" then the question tends to lose the rather negative attitude involved by using the term "indoctrinated." I think you're biasing your conclusions by using loaded terminology.

Merriam-Webster defines indoctrinate as: "to teach (someone) to fully accept the ideas, opinions, and beliefs of a particular group and to not consider other ideas, opinions, and beliefs."

bolding mine

If you accept that definition of indoctrination the bolded part is usually the problem. Most consider it OK to indoctrinate some people in certain things. For example most don’t have a problem with indoctrinating a child with the belief they should always look both ways before crossing the street, or two plus two always equals four. On the other hand indoctrinating someone into a particular political belief without due consideration of other positions is probably not a good idea. Unfortunately many religious groups fall into the latter category. They teach that their position is the correct position without discussion of other possibilities. When they do that it is religious indoctrination.

[Clueless Morgan]

I'm not sure what you mean by "indoctrinated." It seems you're using it as a synonym for brainwashed, which is a concept of some ill repute. If we were to rephrase the question as, "How do you know when you've learned about the existence of God?" then the question tends to lose the rather negative attitude involved by using the term "indoctrinated." I think you're biasing your conclusions by using loaded terminology.

Indoctrination and brainwashing are synonymous. I won't repeat the definition of indoctrination as popeyespappy has already provided one which I feel is adequate.

The question I posed, "How do you think one realizes that indoctrination has taken place when one has been indoctrinated?" has the same meaning as "How do you think one realizes that brain-washing has taken place when one has been brain-washed?"

It does not have the same meaning as "How do you think one realizes that one has learned about the existence of God when one has learned about the existence of God?" (What does that even mean?)

We know indoctrination and brain-washing occurs. To the best of my knowledge that's not in dispute - please correct me if I'm wrong. So your restatement of my question is not only a misunderstanding of the purpose of my post, it's completely beside the point. You can be indoctrinated into something that has nothing to do with god or religion, as I was with the D.A.R.E. program. The question I'm asking is not "How do you know when you've learned about the existence of God?" it is "If you become indoctrinated or brainwashed into anything, how do you come to know that indoctrination or brainwashing has taken place?"

Furthermore, my question to others in the forums was (I'm rephrasing here) "If you have had the experience of being indoctrinated or brainwashed (which in the case of the members of these forums is likely to have occurred in the context of religion, though it's not confined to this context) how did you come to know that you had been indoctrinated? What was the impetus of this realization?"

I maybe should have posted this thread in the philosophy forum, but since my particular interest happens to lie in a better understanding of religious indoctrination (which I never experienced) I posted it in the Religion forum. I don't suppose I can move it now, perhaps if a mod thinks the Philosophy forum is a better place for it I wouldn't be opposed to it being moved...

[Angrboda]

I'm not sure what you mean by "indoctrinated." It seems you're using it as a synonym for brainwashed, which is a concept of some ill repute. If we were to rephrase the question as, "How do you know when you've learned about the existence of God?" then the question tends to lose the rather negative attitude involved by using the term "indoctrinated." I think you're biasing your conclusions by using loaded terminology.

... We know indoctrination and brain-washing occurs. To the best of my knowledge that's not in dispute - please correct me if I'm wrong. ...

Well then, your knowledge differs from mine, as my understanding is that "brainwashing" as a psychological concept has fallen on hard times. If you have anything which says otherwise, please present it.

"The suggestion that NRMs [New Religious Movements] use mind control techniques has resulted in scientific and legal controversy." ~ Wikipedia

Reexamining the concept of brainwashing after the war, in 1956 the U.S Department of the Army published a report entitled Communist Interrogation, Indoctrination, and Exploitation of Prisoners of War which called brainwashing a "popular misconception." ... Two academic studies of the repatriation of American prisoners of war ... concluded that brainwashing ... had at best a transient effect. More recent reexaminations of the notion of brainwashing likewise have concluded brainwashing per se did not occur.

(ETA: I don't think it matters where its posted so long as the focus is understood. And while I think you're putting words in my mouth, and then using a fallacious appeal to ridicule, the question, "How do you think one realizes that one has learned about the existence of God when one has learned about the existence of God?" is a perfectly valid question with surprising implications. [See Robert Burton's book, On Being Certain, or would you prefer to simply mock doctor Burton?])

In 1983, the American Psychological Association (APA) asked Margaret Singer to chair a taskforce called the APA Task Force on Deceptive and Indirect Techniques of Persuasion and Control (DIMPAC) to investigate whether brainwashing or "coercive persuasion" did indeed play a role in recruitment by such movements. Before the taskforce had submitted its final report, the APA submitted on February 10, 1987 an amicus curiæ brief in an ongoing court case related to brainwashing. Although the amicus curiæ brief written by the APA denies the credibility of the brainwashing theory, the APA submitted the brief under "intense pressure by a consortium of pro-religion scholars (a.k.a. NRM scholars)". The brief repudiated Singer's theories on "coercive persuasion" and suggested that brainwashing theories were without empirical proof. Afterward the APA filed a motion to withdraw its signature from the brief, since Singer's final report had not been completed. However, on May 11, 1987, the APA's Board of Social and Ethical Responsibility for Psychology (BSERP) rejected the DIMPAC report because the report "lacks the scientific rigor and evenhanded critical approach necessary for APA imprimatur", and concluded that "after much consideration, BSERP does not believe that we have sufficient information available to guide us in taking a position on this issue." This leaves the APA's position on brainwashing as equivalent to: more research is needed until a definitive scientific verdict can be given.

[Clueless Morgan]

[Angrboda]

At this point, you've buried things in so much crap that I no longer care.

[Whateverist]

Using Popeyespappy's definition of "indoctrination", the answer to the original question follows something like this. Someone realizes they have been indoctrinated into a particular belief when they realize that their learning about it was carefully managed to present only one view as acceptable. When they discover that others see the same things in a variety of ways which can be defended as well as the one they've had cultivated in themselves then they know they have been indoctrinated.

There may be instances of indoctrination where one doesn't mind. One might reason that having been brought up with certain values that those values justify the one sided attempt to instill them. One might even decide to pass them along in the same way. I'm not sure this falls so far outside the norm as to be universally damnable.

[Angrboda]

I think something that may be missing here is the difference between the learning done by a child in the context of a family and the learning by an autonomous adult. Because of the context, developmental psychology of children, and the incentives for both parent and child, much of the early learning of a child will fit the dictionary definition of indoctrination. And this definition doesn't communicate well that indoctrination is often viewed in a bad light, as something unhealthy. If we put the two together, we end up passing a blanket judgement that this early learning is unhealthy, and I think that's absurd.

As to my own view, I stopped believing in the virtues of my Christian upbringing at an age which I don't remember what happened. I do think that a factor in my abandoning Christianity is that my religious education was neglected. My sisters were confirmed, and once that had been accomplished, my mother no longer bothered to educate me in the ways of Christianity. I think it's natural to think that likely influenced my desire to continue learning and remain in the faith, but I just don't know. I simply don't remember. Though I was a willful child (am?), so it's possible that my thinking became autonomous in character earlier than that of most.