A take on the old phrase about keeping up with the Joneses. From Wikipedia:
"Keeping up with the Joneses" is an idiom in many parts of the English-speaking world referring to the comparison to one's neighbor as a benchmark for social caste or the accumulation of material goods. To fail to "keep up with the Joneses" is perceived as demonstrating socio-economic or cultural inferiority.
Living beyond one’s means can end in disaster. Financial ruin. Debt. Bankruptcy. Foreclosure. Divorce.
Kind of like being in Amway.
In Amway the pressure is there all the time to have what everyone else has. Even in our case. We were abnormal in our line of sponsorship. One of very few who actually owned their house, drove nice cars, had retirement savings, etc.
So with us the upline had to go a different strategy and mostly target Ambot because I wasn’t too interested in what they had to say. The upline put the pressure on to reach certain levels: Platinum, Emerald, and then Diamond. All of this to be accomplished in 2 to 5 years. The pressure was put on Ambot to get to that level because everyone else in the WWDB line would be reaching those levels at the same time and we didn’t want to be left behind did we.
Then of course there are the Amway functions with slide shows of the Diamond lifestyle. Mansions, sports cars, yachts, private jets, luxury vacations.
To reach that coveted level we had to buy Amway products and motivational tools and find others to do the same. Ambot always bought more than enough Amway products each month to make over 100 PV but the upline still phoned and badgered him. Upline Asshole has this much PV this month. Surely you want to beat him and get to Platinum before him. That kind of bullshit.
The pressure was always on Ambot to buy things like motivational tools that others in the WWDB group hadn’t bought so he could be one up on them and that meant the rest of them had to keep up with us.
It was just a crazy roller coaster and maybe keeping up with the ambots gets worse the higher up you get. Other bloggers have commented on Diamonds who have declared bankruptcy and gone into foreclosure and provided links to where the documentation can be found online. No doubt in my mind that those Diamonds have to keep up and surpass each other when it comes to material possessions which has led to their financial downfall.
There were other things that Ambot purchased during the time we were in Amway that had nothing to do with the pyramid scheme but were general purchases for things around the house. Things that pissed me off because we had no need for them but he had to buy them so he’d look good in front of the other ambots.
To sum it up when we were in Amway we spent money buying things we didn’t need (both Amway products and material possessions) just so Ambot could impress people I did not like.
Yup real mature. Real good reason to be involved in the shitty Amway business. Gotta keep up with those ambots!
Anna - Group-pressure is one of the co-ordinated devious techniques of psychological persuasion always used by cults.
ReplyDeletePerhaps you know that the first book exposing 'Amway' as a cult, was by a former adherent of the 'Peoples' Temple'cult, Phil Kerns. It was entitled, 'Fake It Till You Make It.'
In the late 1970s, secretly financed by the 'Soviet' regime, more than 1000 'Peoples' Temple' adherents were persuaded to go to a remote plot of land in the jungle of Guyana. This worthless scrub had been acquired from the 'Soviet'-backed Guyana government. Years had already been spent clearing the site and planting it with crops, to build Jones' Utopian dream-world, which he claimed would be safe from an imminent nuclear holocaust. In reality, what Jones' followers were doing was not rational, because this region was too close to the Equator to support such a large population. In the end, his group was cut off from external reality, without passports and living behind barbed-wire under brutal siege conditions (convinced that the US government was going to send a murder squad to wipe-out 'Jonestown'). Dissidents to this dark fairytale risked torture in a sensory-deprivation cell, and/or injection wth psychotropic drugs. In reality, the group had always been slowly starving to death, but Jones (who maintained a monopoly of information) steadfastly pretended that his 'Agricultural Project was a huge success.'His followers were obliged to smile in front of any visitors and play the same dangerous game of make-believe. However, one trusted-adherent managed to come to her senses. Whilst on a trip to the capital of Guyana, she ran away and escaped back to the USA with the help of the US Embassy. She tried to blow the whistle, but was attacked by Jones reality-inverting propaganda machine as a 'liar and a thief.'
Eventually, rather than face reality, Jones killed himself and more than 900 of his prisoners. This mass-murder is often described as a mass-suicide, but around 25% of victims were infants and babies. Their parents obeyed Jones' orders and squirted poison into their screaming children's mouths. (The whole event was recorded on sound-tape by jones himself). Previously, Jones ordered the assasination of US Congressman, Leo J. Ryan, and a television crew, who were visiting 'Jonestown' on a fact-finding mission. Several millions dollars in gold and cash was later recovered from 'Jonestown.' This was stashed in Jones' quarters.
Just like you observe, Phil Kerns deduced that even 'Amway' adherents who appear to be 'hugely successful,' are invariably starving whilst recklessly dissipating all their own resources to the benefit of their leaders, under the delusion that this will enable them to achieve the Utopia known as 'total financial freedom.'
Phil Kerns (who was in the 'Peoples Temple' in California, before the 'Jonestown'exodus) was invited to an 'Amway' function, and he immediately recognised the tell-tale delirious looks on the faces of the worshippers who were paying-through-the-nose to attend. Kerns then decided to infiltrate 'Amway' and, over a period of time, he conducted interviews with fanatical core-adherents and he took many photographs.
Kerns discovered that, like the enslaved followers of Jim Jones, 'Amway' adherents were living a complex, ego-building lie and their doomed-project's apparent 'success' often had the effect of fooling casual observers, and of drawing other vulnerable people into the same dangerous game of make-believe.
Even today, you can find a few propagandists active on the Net., who still steadfastly pretend that Jonestown' was a 'huge success' and that Jim jones was a 'completely innocent man framed by his jealous enemies.'
David Brear (copyright 2011)
David - I think I might have read Phil Kerns book about the People's Temple many years ago but not the one about Amway.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if that prime piece of jungle is available is for sale. I'm sure our sack of shit Platinum would want to buy it and move his flock of cult follwers there where they could escape negative dream stealers and build their little Amway empire in jungle land utopia.
Good example of the delirious looks on the cult followers. Exactly what I saw at Amway meetings while the ambots worshipped their leaders. Sickening.
Anna - Although most people assume that 'Amway' and the 'Peoples Temple' must be completely different, because of their sizes, external presentations and levels of physical violence, internally, the two groups are essentially the same.
ReplyDeleteAt one time, Jones wielded enormous influence over some opinion-makers in San Francisco. Ironically, he was given the Martin Luther King Humanitarian of the Year award just prior to his leaving for Guyana. At about the same time, an article appeared in New West magazine, which contained interviews with former adherents who accused Jones of secretly being a sadistic charlatan, pervert, etc. One of his favorite toys (for punishing negative voices in his flock) was an electric cattle prod.
I think Phil Kerns book on 'Amway' has been republished and is still available on the Net. I only have a faded photocopy of one of the original versions. The book you probably recall reading about 'Jonestown,' is called 'Peoples Temple Peoples Tomb,' but it's not by Kerns.
There are some excellent documentaries available on Youtube which trace the history of Jones' group, using contemporary film-footage. Jones loved to dress up as a preacher and pretend to perform miracles, even when he was a little boy, but he seems to got many of his cultic ideas when he encountered a guy called 'Father Divine'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_Divine.
Strangely, 'Jonestown' is currently the subject of a debate in Guyana where some bright spark has suggested that it should be made into a tourist attraction.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-15799345
David - I should have used a cattle prod on our upline. Or at least one of those electronic bug zappers!
ReplyDeleteI seem to remember a book I read about the People's Temple where Jim Jones performed miracles such as removing cancer from people's bodies but he really had chicken parts, don't recally exactly what innards, and he used the old slight of hand magician tricks to cure his followers.
I can see my upline wanting to buy Jonestown for their own Amway/religious use and for a tourist attraction. Maybe its the same group? Or maybe my Platinum better get a move on before he's outbid.
My understanding is that Jim Jones did not kill himself, but was shot in the back. There are stories of him talking about fleeing with the $ after everyone else was dead, and supposedly that is what he tried. Jim Jones did not drink the kool-aid, he knew better, and only administered it.
ReplyDeleteI mention this not to contradict the earlier posts (I have no idea what the truth is), but to mention it as an even more appropriate parallel. Are diamonds really drinking the cool-aid, or just passing it out, then cracking the champagne?
Anna - You are correct. Jim Jones regularly pretended to have divine powers, including the power to heal the sick. In his 'Temple' he used to perform what he described as 'miracles,'but he was actually palming the warm and bloody entrails of freshly-killed chickens. These were being slipped to him by his accomplices. Jones made sure that the noise level at his pay-to- enter performances drowned out the chickens being slaughtered behind the scenes. His unquestioning flock truly believed that he was removing cancers and tumours.
ReplyDeleteThe same cruel trick had been headline news all over the world in the 1960s, when crooks calling themselves 'psychic surgeons' had been filmed in the Phillipines also apparently removing cancers and tumours from their 'patients,' again with their bare hands.
After this free-publicity, a number of like-minded charlatans started a gruesome business flying terminally ill cancer sufferers from all over the world to visit the 'psychic surgeons' in the Phillipines. Sadly, even though this was exposed by more-rigorous journalists as a complete fraud, vulnerable people who had been given no hope by the medical profession, could still easily be persuaded to believe.
In Europe, some 'scientific conferences' were held on 'psychic-surgery.' One of the people who promoted this absurd nonsense was a handsome Belgian doctor, Luc Jouret. This traumatized and deluded former paratrooper, who held all sorts of non-rational beliefs, later became the poster boy for the so-called 'Order of the Solar Temple.'
'Solar Temple' adherents believed that 'successful' men like Jouret had access to a secret knowledge derived from the 'Supreme Architect of the Universe.' Some of the cheap conjuring tricks that Jouret and his ugly partner, Joseph Di Mambro, performed as reality, were so ridiculous that its difficult to believe that any adult could have fallen for them. In their 'Temple,'they dressed like medieval Knights and they weilded a sword which they claimed 'channelled solar energy'. This prop was, in fact wired-up with an electric bulb and batteries.
In the end, more than 70 deluded adherents of 'OTS' (including Jouret and DiMambro and some children) wound up dead in Switzerland, Canada and France. One of the people who was probably behind all of this, is Michael Tabachnik. He has twice faced trial in France on charges of murder and of participating in organized crime, but he has not been convicted, even though he is known to have lied to investigators about his real position in the 'OTS' hierarchy.
It seems that 'OTS' was under surveillance, and had been infiltrated, by French internal security. Two of the French victims were police officers acting on orders coming directly from the French Ministry of the Interior. Various books have been written about these tragic events, and it is generally accepted that it is not in the interests of the French State for the full truth to come out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Solar_Temple
Since the OTS tragedy, cultism has been given a much higher priority in countries like France, where a government-financed bureau is supposed to monitor the criminal results of the phenomenon. However, due to 'lobbying' in the USA by groups like 'Scientology', this French bureau has been criticized by the US State Dept. as being 'anti-religious-freedom.'
Amazingly, 'Scientology' propaganda compares French 'Scientologists' to German Jews being persecuted by Nazis during the 1930s.
David Brear(copyright 2011)
Hi Anonymous. Yeah its been so many years since I read about the People's Temple and their last hours but if I recall correctly there was a tape recorder running the entire time that Jim Jones was preaching his last sermon and in the background people screaming and gun shots. The last gunshot and Jim Jones stopped talking. I don't remember him being shot in the back. I thought he was shot in the head and it was unknown if he pulled the trigger or someone else.
ReplyDeleteI think you're right about the Amway Diamonds passing out the kool aid while they drink the champagne!
David - our Platinum also claimed to have devine powers, namely the secret to financial riches in Amway though after 15 or 20 years or however long he was in it still hadn't happened for him.
ReplyDeleteAnna - One thing is certain, your heel-clicking little 'Platinum' Ambot would tuck his tail and run a mile if a law enforcement officer insisted that he produce all his 'Amway'-related audited-accouts (particularly, his income-tax receipts)in order to prove that he has not been committing fraud on behalf of his masters in Michigan.
ReplyDeleteIn pernicious cults the cruel, closed-logic, brainwashing trick is always essentially the same. The charlatan/leaders identify whatever it is that their customer/victims most need to believe is true, then they steadfastly pretend to be able to supply it (for a price, and provided their customer/victims do not question the charlatan/leaders' authenticity).
Thus, the 'Amway' bosses are no different to either Jim Jones or to the so-called 'psychic surgeons' he evidently copied. Instead of producing perfect, heel-clicking, role-model customer/victims who claim to have been cured of cancer through 100% positive belief , the 'Amway' bosses produce perfect, heel-clicking, role-model customer/victims who claim to have been cured of poverty through 100% positive belief.
It beggars belief that no one in government in the USA has ever had the gumption to work out how this absurd, but nonetheless dangerous, fraud functions and then challenge its instigators' authenticity publicly. Yet, asking an 'Amway' boss to produce the audited accounts of a significant group of 'successful Amway' adherents, in order to prove that the so-called 'Amway MLM income opportunity' has been legal and genuine, would have the same effect as someone asking Jim jones to have produced the certified medical records of a significant group of the individuals who all claimed that he'd cured them miraculously.
David Brear (copyright 2011)
David - I did report our Platinum to the IRS department that deals with tax cheaters tips along with a recording of him giving tax tips on how everything to do with Amway is a tax deduction. Amway wasn't interested in this complaint so maybe the tax man will be! That was a couple of years ago. Its not like I'm part of his in crowd group and know if he got audited or not. I hope so! Serves him right for being an asshole to me!
ReplyDeleteThere's an accountant who occasionally visits my blog who also writes a blog and has written a couple of posts about Amway tax cheaters who've gotten caught.
But yeah the authorities are just going after the little fish.
Anna - You know that when your husband was temporarily hypnotized by the 'Amway' lie, he did not try to retail the organization's wampum to the public for a profit. Furthermore, you know that your husband did not encounter any 'Ambot' regularly retailing 'Amway' wampum to the public for a profit.
ReplyDeleteA mountain of evidence proves that, once inside the organization, all adherents have been constantly bombarded with economically-suicidal intructions to duplicate a plan of 100% self-consumption, and to recruit others to duplicate the same plan, on the pretext that duplication is one of the secrets to achieve total financial freedom in 2-5 years.
However, any trading scheme without significant external sales to non-participants, is an unlawful scheme based on the specious economic theory that endless recruitment + endless payments by the recruits = endless profits.
In the USA, various wealthy 'MLM' racketeers have infiltrated federal and state governments using a corporate front-group known as the 'Direct Selling Association'. Copy-cat 'DSAs' now exist all over the world, but they have been centrally-controlled from the USA. Their member companies pursue lawful, and/or unlawful, enterprises, in order to divert investigation
Using tactics of subversion arbitrarily defined as 'lobbying', 'MLM' racketeers have sought to corrupt legislators in order to introduce effectively-meaningless technical legislation, and regulations, all over the world. Once you know how 'MLM' fraud functions as a closed-market, it becomes immediately obvious that 'DSA'-sponsored legislation has been maliciously-designed, surreptitiously to remove the key-distinction between the legitimate traditional direct selling of goods/services to the public, and illegitimate money circulation schemes dissimulated as traditional direct selling of goods/services, but in which goods/services are illogically not required to be retailed to the public.
Currently the de facto agents of the 'Amway' bosses (in the guise of the officers of the 'Indian Direct Selling Asociation') are attempting to introduce the familiar meaningless legislation in the Indian state of Kerala, in order to block a criminal investigation of 'Amway'by the Indian police.
Groups like 'Amway' have been running unlawful money circulation schemes dissimulated as 'MLM income opportunities', for decades. Even though these schemes can all be proved to have been fundamentally fraudulent (because they have produced virtually no external profits and, therefore, their hidden failure-rates have been effectively 100% for tens of million of contantly-churning participants)the criminals who have run them now believe that they have legalized their activities in the USA (and elsewhere) and that they cannot be held to account.
In reality, generations of stupid, and/or lazy, and/or corrupt, US legislators, have allowed this tragicomic situation to develop. We have now arrived at a point where the US government would have to accept its own share of the blame in order to tackle the root of the problem. Unfortunately, the moral and intellectual calibre of US leaders has not been suficiently high for them to comprehend the 'MLM' cancer, let alone cut it out.
David Brear (copyright 2011)
Wow David! Very well put! Although I might not have realized Amway was a pyramid scheme once I got out and started reading more about MLM's and pyramid schemes there's no doubt in my mind that Amway is a pyramid scheme. And part of that as you said is because of lack of retail sales and mostly self consumption. No matter how many times the upline cult leaders try to convince us that a job is a pyramid and draw little circles and stickmen on a white board and say your boss is up there at the top.
ReplyDeletePS - IBOFB and someone at Alticor in Grand Rapids have taken an interest in this particular post. Must be something you'r saying because you say it so much better than me!
Anna - Imagine how impossible it would be to explain what the real nature, and destructive purpose, of Trojan Horse is, if you only describe its exterior using thought-stopping vocabulary supplied by the lying invaders who built it. In the legend/allegory of the Trojan Horse, a priest, Laocoon, desperately tries to warn the people of Troy not to drag the attractive wooden horse into the city. However, he is strangled by a giant serpent that rises out of the sea.
ReplyDeleteMr. David Steadson, a.k.a. 'IBOFB,' and his 'Amway' chums, are a latter-day version of the sea serpent. Steadson's role has been to keep repeating the thought-stopping vocabulary of his masters in an attempt to block any attempt on the Net to warn victims, and casual observers, what actually lies inside the latter-day Trojan Horse, known as 'Amway/MLM'.
Thus, you and I Anna are asking people to think, whilst Mr. Steadson and his 'Amway' chums have been trying to stop them.
Obviously, no pyramid scheme is ever advertised as a pyramid scheme. They are all dissimulated as some form of attractive way to make money. Most people cannot put into clear terms what it is that makes all forms of pyramid scheme, fundamentally fraudulent. However, in order to explain any form of criminal deception, you need first to forget the thought-stopping terminology used by charlatan/criminals to hide their real objectives, and then use only clear, accurate terms.
This common-sense method of radical free-thinking has always existed. However, it was given the fancy label 'Deconstruction,' by a intellectual/philosopher relatively recently.
In pernicious cultic groups, the instigators seek to control all information entering not only their adherents' minds, but also that entering the minds of casual observers. This is achieved by constantly denigrating all exterior sources of information whilst constantly repeating the group's reality-inverting key-words and images, and/or by the physical isolation of adherents.
The 'Amway' cultic racketeers, and their many copy-cats, know exactly what has made their particular pyramid scheme fundamentally fraudulent. Tens of millions of constantly-churning victims have retailed virtually nothing to the public for a profit, they have merely bought the wampum themselves and tried to recruit others to duplicate the same economically suicidal plan.This is why the 'Amway' racketeers, and their copy-cats, have sought to introduce their own precise, but essentially meaningless, terminology into 'direct selling' legislation all over the world, in an attempt effectively to legalize their fake version of 'direct selling'. You know these crooks have been at their subversive work, when you read inaccurate words like 'consumers' and 'customers' in legislation describing traditional 'direct selling', rather than accurate terms like 'regularly retailing to the public for a profit.'
Mr. Steadson and his 'Amway' chums are terrified that people like you, will be able to describe in accurate deconstructed terms, that despite its reality-inverting external presentation, the 'Amway' scheme has always been fundamentally fraudulent, because internally, it has been based on the specious economic theory that endless-chain recruitment + endless payments by the recruits = endless profits.
David Brear (copyright 2011)
David - I don't know its been many years since I've heard the story of the Trojan horse! I probably couldn't explain it at all!
ReplyDeleteAlthough Grand Rapids Alticor was in this morning he didn't read this post's comments. This person or someone else in the Grand Rapids office likes to come in and read my post about the qualifications for getting a customer service job at Amway. They must be updating their job sheet and looking to me for assistance!
I'm sure IBOFB and his Amway chums don't like former IBO's describing their experiences online. The common theme is that its a scam and losing money. I go in a different direction and describe my upline and the things they said and did and make sure there's no doubt in anyone's mind that I was dealing with a bunch of abusive assholes all carrying out their despicable crimes under the name of Amway. Amway is so used to everyone saying good things about their cult leaders and worshipping them that someone who doesn't like the Amway people more than they dislike Amway is an unusual situation for them to comprehend.