This is Part 4 on our series of sex-slaver Keith Alan Raniere teaching his sex-slave, former actress Allison Mack.
Part #1 Allison Mack Questions Her Sex Slaver Leader Keith Raniere on ‘What Is Creativity?’
Part #3 Sex-Slave Allison Mack Gets Lessons on Acting From Her Sex-Slaver Master Raniere
The work of transcribing was accomplished by Marie White working off a video of Keith Raniere’s conversation with Allison Mack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PTG0CB_biM&authuser=1
This is truly the most fascinating excerpt from the conversations to date. Here we have an actual semblance of a conversation between Raniere and Mack, at least in the beginning. In time, she sort of descends into a robotic yes-woman. But there are some real exchanges, as opposed to Raniere just pontificating.
In the beginning, he seems to be setting her up to be insecure, actually seeming to preach that insecurity [something he wants from her] is a virtue. Being confident is to be like a robot. Fear is good – for Allison.
She makes a startling admission in the middle of it saying, “I think in that moment – like I was thinking about that as we were talking – it feels like I’ll be unloved forever and for the rest of my life.”
This is a great reveal from Allison. She wants to be loved. She feels she is unloved [and she is not loved by Raniere] and she conceives, perhaps in a rare moment of insight, that she will be unloved forever. It’s sad and it’s sweet and it’s pathetic, all at once.
Speaking of insight – if not downright prophecy – Raniere describes a dream that Allison might have, a frightful dream wherein she is a major flop on stage and she is hauled off with a hook and everyone mocks her. Worse, the New York Times blazons in a headline that she is “terrible.” Everywhere she goes, people think she is a bad person.
Raniere meant it as some profound lesson – to the effect that it was only a dream, and her real self is alive and well.
Needless to say, this is exactly what happened to Allison – right down to the New York Times headline. She became an object of public scorn.
Here is there conversation, one truly worth reading:.
A. How is the source of your genius the same as the source of your insecurities?
K. Well, it’s if you knew everything and can do everything, then you would be a very predictable machine. You know, creativity, one could say, is possibly a direct reflection of that which we cannot quantify, not only about other people but about ourselves. And to some degree, you either have to accept that as …an article of faith, or really understand that there is really an insecurity to it.
A. Interesting, so it’s like looking at insecurities in terms of unpredictability, as opposed to the self-loathing way that I get insecurities right now.
K . What do you think of as insecurity?
A. I think insecurities is like stage fright, like the reason why I feel–
K . What’s the root of stage fright?
A. It’s like a fear of rejection a fear of–
K. Tell me more about that.
A. That was one of my questions, because after 30 years of acting, I still get so nervous sometimes when I’m about to do something and I can’t.
K. I believe that the best actors and athletes and, and ethicists, or whatever it is have a degree, a strong degree of fright and insecurity going into something, and they say Barbra Streisand is extremely, has extreme stage fright. I think George Soros, the investor, said if he thinks he understands an investment completely and doesn’t see a way that it would fail, he feels very insecure indeed. He has to see the uncertainty to feel good about it.
A. It’s interesting that you say that because I definitely find that insecurity keeps me sharp like keeping a room a little cold like keeps you awake, but there’s a difference between that kind of insecurity that drives focus and then the kind of insecurities that paralyzes expression,
K. Well I think you, you’re confusing insecurity with the effects of insecurity. Like do you know what I’m going to say right now?
A. No.
K. You’re insecure about that?
A. Yeah.
K. Is that scary for you?
A. No.
K. Why not?
A. Because I trust that what you’re going to say is going to be good.
K . And in the end, you are going to be okay?
A. I’ll be fine, yeah.
K . When we have insecurities, and this relates to vulnerability-
A. Um ha
K. Where are we, I think we may not be okay, then it becomes scary. See, it’s not the insecurity that’s the problem. It’s the fear of the insecurity and not even fear, as in an excited fear, like a roller coaster fear. It’s fear as an, a terrorized fear.
A. Yeah.
K. Um, and you can, of course, recognize that excitement isn’t really fear in the same way and that when we talked about fear, as in fight or flight fear, it’s a certain type of a thing, but it’s not the insecurity. Insecurities doesn’t bother you and security you know is wonderful if everything you can predict, everything, you can be dull and then we would be robots again.
A . Well yeah, and like you were saying about an unpredictability versus creativity, like you need a sense of insecurities and non-predictability.
K . So you’re going to go out on stage, and you’re scared you’re going to be rejected.
A . Yeah.
K. What’s the worst that’s going to happen, really the worst?
A. I think in that moment like I was thinking about that as we were talking, it feels like I’ll be unloved forever and for the rest of my life.
K. Well but let’s talk about the mechanics of it. Let’s get into – you go out on stage. You make your entrance, a Shakespearean, you are in a Shakespeare recently, yes?
A. Yes.
K. So you make your entrance.
A. umhum
K. And suddenly there’s silence.
A. Yeah.
K. Do you know why they’re—?
A. Cuz, I’m so bad.
K. You’re not either, you’re so bad or you’re so totally blank.
A. Yes.
K. You go out on the stage and everyone’s expecting and even the audience knows the lines supposed to come, they can. I’ll say it, but you just don’t know where you are. Maybe you just mutter something totally incomprehensible.
A. Yeah.
K. Okay, now what is going to happen? Oh, you do have some critics in the front row. They start writing.
A. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
K. So what’s going to happen?
A. I think in that moment I just feel so un like worth nothing.
K. Wait, wait, it’s going a little further, now I hear some booing coming from the audience and some guffaws and people clearing their–
A. That’s the worst.
K. No why and–
A. It just feels like so much rejection.
K. What do you mean rejection? You’re not, they’re not rejecting you, they’re rejecting your performance.
A. That’s where I get so confused.
K. Yeah, you’re, you are confusing you–
A. Right.
K. — yourself with what you do.
A. Completely.
K. If that’s removed, that doesn’t mean you don’t have a type of what I might say sharpening excitement for the challenge.
A. Uh-huh.
K. But you come in touch with a part of you that is invincible, authentic, congruent and unique and that is indestructible.
A. Right.
K. Everyone starts throwing things. They put a spotlight on you and then people start making fun and then they’re yelling you know, “Allison Mack sucks” and they do all this stuff and finally someone comes out with just a hook and just pulls you off the stage and the next day the picture in the front of the New York Times, full thing, is you on stage going with a hook pulling you off the stage and they say “biggest flop ever. Do not ever listen, to listen to Allison Mack again. She’s a bad actress, a bad person. Terrible, terrible, terrible.” And then just, and your name in the words, “Terrible, terrible, terrible” written and then not only that, they take it and they put, they put it all over, not only on all the street corners, but in everywhere where you go, they put, plaster that picture up, so everyone sees then. They have people following you holding that picture over your head and they point to her like “bad Allison,” right?
A, Yeah
K. Okay?
A. It feels awful.
K. So, okay, but are you alive.
A. Yeah.
K. Are you fine?
A. Yeah.
K. All right, and then the alarm rings and you wake up and it was all a bad dream and are you still all intact?
A. Yeah.
K. So ultimately it doesn’t, it doesn’t bother you, the self, it bothers your evaluation of yourself, of your performance.
A. Right
K. But there’s a part of you, if you believe in a soul, or creativity, or whatever that’s transcendent of your performance.
A. Right.
K And that’s the very part that allows you to change your performance. If you are hooked to the laws of physics without having any sort of separation then your performance, what determined your performance, which would determine your performance, which would determine your performance, which would determine your performance.
A. Hum
K. And just like a snowball rolling downhill, you really wouldn’t be able to change the course of events but the beauty of our possible delusion that we have free will is that we can change the course of our events.
[End of excerpt of conversation]
************************************
Keith Raniere led her to her front-page New York Times headlines. And the world thinks of her as “terrible, terrible, terrible.” And maybe she is to a degree.
In the end, despite her fame and beauty, she was seeking love and ran into Raniere. He ruined her. Not that she did not play a large role in her ruination.
What is it in a person that seeks to be loved and then goes to a man who only hates – and she ends up ruined? This is not a gender thing. This is not all women are victims. It could be reversed. A woman could be the hater and the man the fool.
But one thing is clear to me. Allison Mack did not come to Raniere seeking to hate or harm. She was insecure. She wanted answers. She wanted his love and from there, she trod downhill. I think at first she went downhill slowly. You know the kind of slow descent that when you are looking forward you cannot really see how much you have gone downhill. It is not until you turn around and look back on the road behind you that you can see the descent.
For a while, it was like that for Allison Mack as she slipped out of starring in TV to doing small plays and then quitting acting almost altogether to lead The Source, the acting school founded on principles promulgated by non-actor Raniere. Then she joined DOS and went on her extreme diets and was sleep deprived. All for the same quest – to be loved by Raniere and perhaps by the other women, his slaves, her sister-wives.
Then he took her right over the precipice with his blackmail and branding and sex servitude. Sure, she went along. She wanted him and wanted to belong and to be loved and she never quite got over her insecurities. He exploited that and enhanced that – and she toppled and fell almost as far as one can fall in life.
And before she fell, there is this conversation between them. He describes a scene of her ruin:
A. It feels awful.
K. So, okay, but are you alive.
A. Yeah.
K. Are you fine?
A. Yeah.
K. All right, and then the alarm rings and you wake up and it was all a bad dream and are you still all intact?
A. Yeah.
K. So, ultimately, it doesn’t, it doesn’t bother you, the self, it bothers your evaluation of yourself, of your performance…..
Yes, but it was a little bit more. Allison won’t be waking from this dream for some time. For the immediate future, she is likely going to prison. She will be a felon for as long as she lives. And the bad dream will last many years.
Still, in my mind, I see hope for Allison Mack, hope for all of them, except perhaps Raniere. She could wake up from her Raniere-dream and by realizing what happened to her [and what she did to others] and in time really working to ensure she does not do it again, and possibly helping others who are so afflicted, she might even be forgiven and, who knows, it’s not impossible, beloved again.
If we don’t believe in comebacks, we don’t have much faith in humanity at all.
