Bad Argument: Blame game and god-complex

God-complex is a psychological condition where the afflicted has inflated belief of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility. It is not a clinical term but it was coined by psychoanalysis pioneer Ernest Jones. Basically the afflicted believe that one's a minor deity.

And MLM, due to its persistence in "positive thinking", as well as tap into one's innate belief that one "deserves better", often encourages participants to develop god-complex: that the individual is better at sales than s/he actually is, that the individual deserves to be treated with respect (more than s/he has earned), and the individual is infallible and any proof to the contrary must be wrong.

Here's a very clear example of such: You all are wrong, I am right (trust me).

A person that goes by screenname Shufel posted the following on BehindMLM about Lyoness, a suspect ponzi scheme on multiple continents.

You are all very , but very wrong. My respectful advice is to check everything very well before you do some statement. Do not collect your information from some random blog in internet or you may be collecting wrong information (Like in this one) .

Shufel posted the message twice, without providing ANY proof for his viewpoint (i.e. "you are all wrong") and merely insinuated, with a lot of condescension, that whatever posted at BehindMLM was not the truth, without providing anything to prove such.

Shufel expect you to believe him or her without proof, which is faith, and ignore any evidence to the contrary.  Thus, a nearly perfect example of god-complex.

But it points at something slightly deeper... the "blame game"... as demonstrated by Shufel in the same post later:

 if some one have a big Lifeline (translation: group of Lyoness downlines) and don’t have income that’s only one option : He is not doing is work right. (sic)

Ah, the familiar "if you fail, it must be your own fault" blame game in MLM.





Consider the slightly restated version of Shufel's accusation:

if someone who build a large downline at Lyoness still don't have income, he's not doing it right. 

How does s/he know 'someone' is not doing it right? Why can't it be the environment? Lyoness? His upline didn't teach him? Why did Shufel immediately accuse the participant of being the cause of failure? Again, asking you to believe without proof... faith again.  And it was quite common.

What's worse, this sort of accusation does NOT even ATTEMPT to find the root cause of the failure.

Cause is automatically assumed to be the participant. The leader and organization are infallible.

Any evidence to the contrary is "negativity" and are to be avoided.

These are signs of cult mind control, specifically

8. Rejection of rational analysis, critical thinking, constructive criticism
9. Forbid critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy allowed
10. Labeling alternative belief systems as illegitimate, evil, or not useful

People in the organization who bring up other potential causes of the failure were silenced through gaslighting and other forms of hazing and group shaming, and sometimes threatened with expulsion and forced surrender of their invested money or effort. Any other system of thought to the contrary, i.e. "___ is a pyramid scheme" is automatically labelled "wrong" or sometimes, "not useful", with slogans such as "you can't be positive while thinking negative thoughts".

(Use of slogans to stop thought is yet ANOTHER sign of cult mind control)

So where does that leave you?

Up ****'s creek, without a paddle.

Beware of people with god-complex, and quick to assign blame rather than do a proper failure analysis.