When Prophecy Fails

by Nate Merit 17 Replies latest watchtower bible

  • Nate Merit
    Nate Merit

    I used to have a number of copies of this book, but through the years I divested myself of them through my largesse. In other words, I lent 'em out but never got 'em back!

    The book centered on a flying saucer cult in 'Lake City' in an unspecified state. (I use the word cult in it's actual dictionary meaning, which is a synonym for religion) For reasons of privacy the actual location in which this psycho-social study unfolded was not divulged. The players in this fascinating drama were still alive when the book was published.

    The first several chapters dealt with a number of fringe religious groups in the past that had given specific dates for the end of the world, and explored how the members of these groups reacted when their apocalyptic expectations were dashed. Surprisingly (and I do mean surprisingly), most of the rank and file of these mini-movements did not lose faith when the prophecy failed. Quite the opposite. Most members became even more fervent in their millennial madness, renewing their efforts to warn the doomed, and rallying around their leader.

    Most such fringe groups were able to survive a number of such disconfirmations. Most did eventually fold under the weight of disappointment and disillusionment, but a number of them did not. Some, such as the Second Advent movement, spiritualized the prophecy and became more or less a mainstream movement. Others took the same route but eventually the group dissipated in spite of the spiritualizing.

    The flying saucer cult on which the book focuses centered upon a woman who engaged in 'automatic writing' through which the space brothers communicated with her telepathically. Two sociology majors were assigned to infiltrate the cult and perform an actual field study. I was engrossed by the group because of my own similar experience as a Jehovah's Witness, and saw the same psychosocial dynamics at work. The credulity of the true believers, their willingness to suspend their critical thinking faculties in the face of ludicrous claims, made an indelible impression on my mind. I was quite surprised this book was not republished after the Heavens Gate mass-suicide., another saucer cult.

    If you come across a copy of this book, buy it and don't lend it out. It's a classic, and a good reminder of why you reclaimed your mind and life from the grasp of the lunatic fringe.

    Believe what you will if you're religious, reality will roll over you and your beliefs and continue on its way, heedless of your beliefs, hopes, and dreams.

  • Leolaia
    Leolaia

    This is Festinger, right?

  • Nate Merit
    Nate Merit

    The name rings a bell, so it may be. It's been seventeen years.

  • VM44
    VM44

    From: http://www.baskeptics.org/julysept2004.htm

    Leon Festinger explained this very clearly in his book When Prophesy Fails. This is one of my all time favorite psychology books and I'll spend a little bit of time talking about it. In the early 1950s, Dr. Festinger learned about a small flying saucer cult in Chicago whose leader was predicting that a huge flood was about to occur that would wipe out all life on earth. Everybody in the world was going to drown except members of this tiny cult who would be saved on the night before the flood by a flying saucer that would land in the leader's yard and take the whole group to safety to another planet.

    The members of this cult knew the flood was coming because the leaders of the group was getting channelled messages from wise aliens from another galaxy called The Guardians who told her this was so. The leader would go into a trance and her writing hand would be taken over the by the Guardians who would then fill page upon page with spiritual advise and predictions of doom. Dr. Festinger had been curious about millenialist groups for a good while. He wondered what the reactions of members of such groups would be when the Armageddon-like catastrophe that was predicted didn't happen. In other words, what is your reaction when your religion teaches you that the world is going to end on a certain date and then it doesn't?

    It was maybe presumptuous of Dr. Festinger but he decided to study this tiny group to see how they would react when the world did not get wiped out by a giant flood on the date their leader had predicted. To do this, he had his research assistants join the cult and to take notes of everything that was said and everything that happened. As the cult members prepared for the day when the flying saucer would rescue them from the giant flood, they were subjected to huge amounts of emotional abuse. A medical doctor member of the group lost his job at a university because of his involvement; members were threatened with child custody suits and of course, they were all ridiculed horribly. They were laughing stocks.

    On the night the flying saucer was supposed to pick them up, they waited at the leader's home, with television and radio and print media out on the sidewalk. This tiny group was big news. These people were certain that the flying saucer was coming they even had the secret password the Guardians had given them that they had to say in order to get on the spaceship. They had given up everything in the belief that the flying saucer really would take them away on a particular date. They were so sure of themselves, so smug, that they hadn't even bothered proselytizing to the outside world. From their standpoint, the truth of their beliefs was so evident, that if you chose not join them, then you'd die in the flood and that was your problem.

    But, as you all know, there was no flood and the flying saucer did not come. These people had lost everything. They'd lost their jobs and now they'd really be laughed at. Some had lost their homes and some were in danger of losing their kids. You'd think, logically, that they might then have just acknowledged that they'd been wrong, that they'd made a mistake and were embarrassed, and would then pick up the pieces of their former lives and try to live this mistake down. With only a very few exceptions, though, they did not do that. Instead, they found a way to make their consistent behavior make sense. When it was clear that the flying saucer wasn't coming, the cult leader went into a trance and she got new channelled messages from the Guardians who explained that the reason the flood and flying saucer did not come was because this tiny group had saved the planet! They were heroes to the world! The Guardians said that this little group was so spiritually pure that the wise beings from another galaxy decided not to destroy the planet that had produced them.

    There was logic to their response. Instead of being buffoons for acting the way they did, they were heroes. Instead of having made a mistake for believing in such silliness, they were justified in their beliefs because those beliefs had saved the planet. That is the whole point of consistency: once someone has made a decision, whether it's to stay in a relationship or a group, or a decision to follow a particular philosophy, it is often amazingly difficult to convince them that their decision is not correct.

  • Nate Merit
    Nate Merit
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        14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:Data nearly 50 years old, but still seems valid..., February 20, 2002

        Reviewer:William E. Adams (Lovington, NM United States) - See all my reviews
        (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
        This work first saw print in 1956. It is the story of a UFO cult in a large city in the Midwest...how it developed, how the leaders recruited followers, how predictions about the coming end of the world started flowing from the psychic members who allegedly channeled messages from the spacemen/pilots. The cult members were told they would be saved, picked up by saucers on an appointed date. The members quit jobs, sold possessions, and gathered, only to be disappointed. Did they all quit in a huff? No way. The first failure only made them more determined they were right, more anxious to be ready for the next announced departure date. Then a second failure. A few members fell away, a few suffered doubts, a few challenged for leadership themselves. The point of this book is that it takes "three disconfirmations" to kill a movement of true believers, and even then, some still hang on to the discredited "theology" by grasping at excuses. I found this book by accident about 30 years ago, and have read it at least four times. I find it fascinating. In the 1970's I knew two women in Albuquerque who were amateur psychics. They started bringing forth "space brethren messages" and eventually, although they failed to attract a following, they went up into the nearby mountains one night sure they would be lifted off before the coming unspecified disaster. They waited, but no ship appeared. I think people inclined toward UFO beliefs haven't changed much since this book was published. The basic data shown in this study can apply to religious or political groups as well. I am sorry it is out of print, but if you have an interest in this field, get a used copy...the prices are reasonable and the book will not disappoint!

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        16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:Great sociological study of a modern millenarian group., August 1, 1998

        Reviewer:Eric Olsen (McAllen, TX United States) - See all my reviews
        For anyone interested in the psychology and group dynamics of millenarian/prophetic groups, this book is essential reading. Sometime in the late 1950s or early 1960s the authors stumbled upon and infiltrated a group based on a prediction of imminent world destruction. When the prediction failed (after all, we are all still here in the late 1990s), the group underwent a severe crisis. This study details how that crisis developed and was resolved, drawing from it some general ideas about how groups based on prophecies survive the failure of those prophecies.

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        2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:Good read, interesting, but ethical?, February 1, 2005

        Reviewer:Clara Arak "Clara" (Wyoming USA) - See all my reviews
        I recently borrowed "When Prophecy Fails" from my psychology proffesor. I have been interested in the theory of cognitive dissonance since I first came across it in my general psychology text book, and was thrilled at the opportunity to read the source of it all.

        The book is an easy read; at times it feels more like a novel than a psychological study. After the initial first few chapters of background information, it falls into an easy description of Marian Keech and her fellow Seekers. Festinger and his co-authors do a fine job of illustrating Mrs. Keech's ideology and the history of her doomsday prophecies. The description of the group members on the days leading up to and after the predicted cataclysm is very detailed.

        However, this high amount of detail is also what makes me hesitant about truly endorsing this book as an ethical psychological study. Festinger & co. gave ample enough hints at the location and press coverage of the group that confidentiality cannot have been preserved. Just a few minutes with google provided me with the real identities of the cult members described in the book. Though I think the study may have been conducted before the APA created the ethical guidelines, I still found myself somewhat horrified by the looseness of the confidentiality. While "When Prophecy Fails" is an interesting read, it does very little to scientifically prove its hypothesis in a way that could not have been done in a less damaging way. Though my searches seemed to indicate that Mrs. Keech and her fellow believers moved on, I still feel a great deal of pity for the woman and her comrades. Even though their beliefs were absurd, did they really deserve to be so cruelly tricked? I am not sure about this. And so I am not sure that the means justifies the end in this particular landmark study.

        Nevertheless, the book is certainly a must-read for anyone who is interested in landmark studies and the history of psychology.

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        3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:Interesting + Funny = A Great Read!, June 4, 2004

        Reviewer:Jolly Roger (El Cerrito, CA USA) - See all my reviews
        It's fascinating what we humans can make ourselves believe! And frequently hilarious, too!

        This is partly a study of how followers of cult movements can paradoxically become more committed even when the central tenet has been disproven. The first few chapters are fairly dry, but they move quickly and are very interesting, especially since the hypothesis is so counterintuitive.

        Things really pick up once they get into the day-to-day details of the flying saucer group they've infiltrated. The group goes to extremes of self-deception to keep believing (and they want to believe so badly) that "the boys upstairs" (ie, flying saucer people) are in contact with them. The dry, scholarly tone reads as subtle dry humor when describing, for example, a woman in a suburban living room bellowing "I AM THE CREATOR" (she is supposedly "channeling" the Creator) and then complaining about the chair she is forced to sit in. I didn't expect this book to be laugh-out-loud funny but it certainly was in places.

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        3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:A classic with relevance today, August 3, 2003

        Reviewer:J. Trimpey "Jack Trimpey" (California) - See all my reviews
        (REAL NAME)
        In this book, Festinger, et. al., set forth the cognitive dissonance model, which helps any of us to observe the unfolding human drama with greater understanding. It compares with Julian Janes' masterpiece, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, as a work in which the reader is urged on by the awakening suspicion that perhaps on the next page, just beyond the horizon of comprehension, lies a unifying theory that will lay to rest the most vexing enigmas.

        On this note, Festinger came through, by observing social cultism in action and identifying its dynamic elements and tracing them to the common human condition. But he doesn't scrawl arcane formulae or speak in academic tongues to reach his readers. He simply explains in very simple, concise language why his very human subjects behave in such bizarre, but predictable, ways. His conclusions may be summed in a few sentences, derived from a very entertaining account of a UFO cult of his time, which is identical in form and content with the many varieties of social cultism running rampant today, especially the 12-step recovery group movement that, during the half decade since this book's publication, has silently possessed our social service system.

        Festinger's cult-founding protagonist, Marion Kreech, may be constructively compared to AA founder, Bill Wilson, but her bizarre message did not find the mass appeal that surrounds AA. Moreover, the disconfirmations of her improbable predictions did not have the resounding support of others of greater accumulated credibility, who ironically now include Festinger's own descendents in the social sciences who endorse the disease concept of addiction and require 12-step indoctrination for its remission.

        Interestingly, Festinger inserts a cameo-like discussion of Joseph McCarthy's ultimate failure, which in the cognitive dissonance model, resulted from his accusations of persons of greater credibiilty. It seems quite likely that AA's day in the sun will end when its prophets attack the character of famous "dry drunks" for whom the public has greater esteem than our de facto state religion, Alcoholics Anonymous.

        My last biased comments are an example of how Festinger's work may fit into anyone's subjective experience, to simply illuminate why people do the damndest things.

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      • Nate Merit
      • Nate Merit
        Nate Merit

        VM44, did you write that rather lengthy and involved synopsis in response to my post? Or had you already written in, and simply cut and pasted it here?

        Nate

      • VM44
        VM44

        Hi Nate,

        I copied the text from the website address I listed....

        Here is more from another site: http://www.excludedmiddle.com/tracks%20in%20desert.html

        Another little-known but influential saucer cultist was Dr. Charles Laughead, who with his wife Lillian published Williamson's Book of Transcripts in 1957. (Lillian Laughead was among the dedicated to Williamson's Other Tongues, Other Flesh, "for her contribution to the Lemurian interpretation of the tracks in the desert." emphasis added) Laughead is though to have emerged from the same pseudo-occult background as George Adamski, et al. In 1949-1950 he gave up a position at Michigan State University to help the famous Marion Dorothy Martin, aka "Mrs. Keech", who had lately been told by spacemen that the end of the world was imminent. The full story of what happened next is told in When Prophecy Fails (Festinger, Reicken and Schacter, University of Minnesota, 1956.) Laughead's role in that affair was basically that of agent provocateur. Without him, it is doubtful whether events would have turned out as they did. He is referred to throughout When Prophecy Fails as "Dr. Armstrong." His efforts on behalf of Mrs. Keech were rather akin to those of Thurber's Get-Ready Man, who "used to go about shouting at people through a megaphone to prepare for the end of the world." When the appointed hour came and went, and the world continued much as before, Laughead moved on to other things, and chanced to meet Dr. Andreja Puharich in a hotel in Acambaro, Mexico.
      • Lady Lee
        Lady Lee

        I found my copy of the book in a used book store. And I have dragged it half way across Canada and back.

      • VM44
        VM44

        Dorothy Martin, right, in a 1954 photo. She claimed to have channelled a spaceship commander named Sandana, who was to come to Earth as save her followers. She died several years ago, but many followers remain.

        http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:9uG4ln-tujEJ:www.ardmoreite.com/stories/040497/news/news14a.html+&hl=en

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