Synanon did not start off as a violent group. It was actually pretty peaceful and just wanted to help the "dope fiends". The purpose was to change people's lives around for the better and make them better people who were not active addicts. Things slowly started to change. Some rules in Synanon started to change and soon enough violence was accepted.
Synanon was not only violent to the adults, but to the kids as well. Synanon had what was like military boot camps for the youth. Like I talked about in one of my blogs, we had a woman come into class to talk to us about her growing up in Synanon and what that was like. She told us that the kids lived in these dormitory like buildings. The children lived in a different part of Synanon than the adults. The guest speaker told us that sometimes the kids were hit and beaten for certain things.
Violence did not just happen between members. Some members of Synanon were violent towards regular people not even involved with Synanon. We watch the beginning of two different Synanon movies as we were first learning about Synanon. The second movie we began watching covered the violent aspect of Synanon whereas the first one was more about the beginning and start
up of Synanon. In the second movie we saw how the members were violent towards others. In the movie some members attacked a man and his girlfriend because they were on Synanon's land. The guy wanted to show his girlfriend where he grew up, I believe this was the case.
The media also played an important role in how people viewed Synanon. This was also the case with Jonestown. Jonestown was portrayed in a very negative way so everyone had a negative view of Jonestown. There was also the anti-cult people who only had bad things to say about Jonestown. I'm sure Synanon had some of those same people as well. Synanon, towards the end, got bad publicity as well. There may have been some positive aspects of Synanon, but the media focused on the negative. The newspapers that printed articles about Synanon printed articles trying to expose Synanon for its wrongdoings. I do not think they ever really printed anything positive about Synanon.
The book we read, "The Rise and Fall of Synanon" even the content of the book did not seem al that positive. It seems like there were more negative things to be said about Synanon than positive. I am sure there had to be some positive things about Synanon, after all, a lot of goups and organizations borrowed ideas and practices from Synanon. Even the woman who came to talk to us seemed to have more negative things to say about Synanon than positive things. Before Dederich's decision to want to keep everyone in Synanon forever, I think Synanon may have been beneficial to people and actually helped people.
Synanon became a religion for all the wrong reasons. After Dederich started drinking again, things started to change. He started to care a lot more about money and wanted more of it. He did want want to have to pay taxes, so he wanted to make Synanon a church. If Synanon became a church, it would no longer have to pay taxes. Synanon was soon declared a church. While Synanon was a church, they still had their businesses they were running. Their businesses were for profit. Later on down the line, Synanon got busted for making money for profit as a church. This is was ultimately led to their demise.
I think when Dederich started drinking again, everything changed. He became a different person than he was when he first had the idea to start Synanon. He endorsed violence, after all, he is the one who said to put a rattlesnake in Paul Morantz's mailbox. I am not really sure why or how he thought any of these things, becoming a religion and turning to violence would help Synanon at all. I think it definitely made things worse for them.
I also wonder what the deciding factor was for Synanon accepting violence on other members and on the outside community. Did he really think violence would help things? Was the game not enough violence? I know the game was not itself physically violent, but it could be seen as verbally violent. Was it the media who helped Synanon meet their decline or was it the fact that the IRS caught onto their schemes?
Synanon did have a lot of potential to continue to be great. It started off as a good idea and had a great cause. Along the way I think Dederich and the other members of Synanon lost sight of what was important and lost sight of all the goals they once had.
No comments:
Post a Comment