Every franchise system has someone playing the role of Nurse Ratched.

I have suggested here that franchise systems are an example of a total institution as defined by Erving Goffman.

Mental hospitals are a traditional example of a total institution.

The CDN Nurse Ratcheds in Oakville are simply being replaced by USA franchise executives.

Look to those that create and control the levers of control, not only to those acting-out and -in.

 

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Franchising is processed as if it were a prison.

Phil Zimbardo says evil comes from hierarchy.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

• Franchising harms people, over time by both sides (see Clay/Prisoner 416 and mock guard talk: start at 2:46). No regret, guilt. Only after upon reflection.
• Prisoner 8612 @ 1:36 (after 36 hours ‘incarceration”)
• Let me in on some knowledge…I know you’re a nice guy (You don’t know that).
• People didn’t say anything.
• Prisoner 819 did a bad thing… I have to prove I’m not a bad prisoner.
• The situation degrades over time.
• How program dissenters are treated by peers and guards (one sign of resistance: Prisoner 416). The guards go crazy. Not a hero but a troublemaker.
• The Stanford Prison Experiment Slide Show

Problems with authority. Breaks from reality. Damaged feeling function. Lack of trust. Anger. Barrenness.

What do you think they chose? Most elected to keep their blanket and let their fellow prisoner suffer in solitary all night.

Why does Blue MauMau exist?

To make people give up.

To humiliate. To ridicule. To scapegoat.  To shame.

To silence.

Remember: the problem is not corruption or greed. The problem is the system that pushes you to give up. Beware not only of the enemies. But also of false friends who are already working to dilute this process. 

— Slavoj Žižek, Slovenian philosopher

Wash away my sorrow, wash away my shame

In Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Shambhala is a mythical kingdom hidden somewhere in Inner Asia…Shambhala gradually came to be seen as a Buddhist Pure Land, a fabulous kingdom whose reality is visionary or spiritual as much as physical or geographic. It was in this form that the Shambhala myth reached the West, where it influenced non-Buddhist as well as Buddhist spiritual seekers — and, to some extent, popular culture in general. Wikipedia

The official commentary included in the CD set Celebrate: The Three Dog Night Story, 1965-1975 states that vocalist Danny Hutton’s then-girlfriend June Fairchild suggested the name after reading a magazine article about indigenous Australians, in which it was explained that on cold nights they would customarily sleep in a hole in the ground whilst embracing a dingo, a native species of wild dog. On colder nights they would sleep with two dogs and if the night was freezing, it was a “three dog night” Wikipedia

Shambala, Three Dog Night, 1973

Wash away my troubles, wash away my pain
With the rain in Shambala
Wash away my sorrow, wash away my shame
With the rain in Shambala

(chorus)
Ah, ooh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Ah, ooh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Everyone is helpful, everyone is kind
On the road to Shambala
Everyone is lucky, everyone is so kind
On the road to Shambala

(repeat chorus)

How does your light shine, in the halls of Shambala (2xs)

I can tell my sister by the flowers in her eyes
On the road to Shambala
I can tell my brother by the flowers in his eyes
On the road to Shambala

(repeat chorus)

How does your light shine, in the halls of Shambala (2xs)
(repeat chorus reprise)

Franchisees normally just slink away into the dark

Cut a deal, sign the gag order and keep your mouth shut.

That was the advice given to me by a group of my peers at Nutri-Lawn when I rented one of those lawn care franchises in the 1990s.

I didn’t go quietly into the night as 98.2% of franchisees do.

I felt I had nothing to be ashamed of and kinda resented the dehumanization of it all.

I guess I still do. I never imagined so many people feel the same way.

[eXperi-MENTAL]

Franchisee advisory committees are frequently chaired by Nurse Ratched

I have suggested here that franchise systems are an example of a total institution as defined by Erving Goffman.

Mental hospitals are a traditional example of a total institution.

There are lots of Nurse Ratcheds in franchising and lots of acting out franchisees.

Look to those that create the environment, not those who have to endure it.

Original draft:

Anyone’s spirit can be shattered if mental pressure is applied skillfully enough

Franchising is like being in a war zone.

My experience and training suggests that running a franchise provides the same type of mental conditioning that happens in total institutions (ie. patient in a mental health hospital, recruit in military basic training, life on a naval vessel) without any form of appeal.

Many former franchisees see their time as a franchisee as they would imaging doing time in prison would be like. Most will confidentially talk openly of being mentally tortured. Many require significant mental health intervention to recover some degree of normalcy. Even years after their experience, the mere mention of their experiences triggers the strongest emotional response possible, many of which revolve around shame.

clinical depression :: affective disorders :: violence (self & others) :: divorce :: hospitalizations :: estranged children :: broken extended families :: suicide

Dr. Meerloo’s insights ring very true to me as a former franchisee and provide tremendous hope because they use a quantifiable and scientific approach rather than a one-dimensional, ad hominem attack- and shame-based legal view.

The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide and Brainwashing (free online), Joost A. M. Meerloo, M.D., 1956

In Book: It is Dr. Meerloo’s position that through pressure on the weak points in men’s makeup, totalitarian methods can turn anyone into a “traitor.” And in The Rape of the Mind he goes far beyond the direct military implications of mental torture to describing how our own culture unobtrusively shows symptoms of pressurizing people’s minds. He presents a systematic analysis of the methods of brainwashing and mental torture and coercion, and shows how totalitarian strategy, with its use of mass psychology, leads to systematized “rape of the mind.” He describes the new age of cold war with its mental terror, verbocracy, and semantic fog, the use of fear as a tool of mass submission and the problem of treason and loyalty, so loaded with dangerous confusion…

The first two and on-half years of World War II, Dr. Meerloo spend under the pressure of Nazi-occupied Holland, witnessing at firsthand the Nazi methods of mental torture on more than one occasion. During this time he was able to use his psychiatric and psychoanalytical knowledge to treat some of the victims. Then, after personal experience with enforced interrogation, he escaped from a Nazi prison and certain death to England, where he was able, as Chief of the Psychological Department of the Netherlands Forces, to observe and study coercive methods officially.

In this capacity he had to investigate not only traitors and collaborators, but also those members of the Resistance who had gone through the utmost of mental pressure. Later, as High Commissioner for Welfare, he came in closer contact with those who had gone through physical and mental torture. After the war, he came to the United States, where his war experiences would not permit him to concentrate solely on his psychiatric practice, but compelled him to go beyond purely medical aspects of the problem.

As more and more cases of thought control, brainwashing, and mental coercion were disclosed…his interest grew. It was Dr. Meerloo who coined the term menticide, the killing of the spirit, for this peculiar crime.