Diane Benscoter

Activist, Atheist, Change Agent, Consultant, Educator/Teacher, Gay, Idea generator, Parent

Diane Benscoter is the founder of Antidote.ngo and the author of Shoes of a Servant – My unconditional Devotion to a Lie. She is a speaker and workshop facilitator. She owned and operated a business serving the technology industry much of her adult life. Drawing from her own experience inside a religious cult and later as a deprogrammer, Diane came to realize the need for an organization that recognizes psychological manipulation as a public health problem. Her experience in the technology industry informs her understanding of the need to utilize technology, and especially social media, to reach those who are most at risk of being taken advantage of. Antidote is the result of her many years of effort to find a comprehensive solution to the problem of psychological manipulation. Diane is determined to build a solution that is proportional to the dangerous and harmful effects these deceptive tactics have on individuals, families and society at large.

Exposing how psychological manipulation works and helping those who have fallen prey to it.

Society must reach a tipping point of understanding how psychological manipulation works. When this happens sociopaths who utilize tactics of manipulation to feed their addiction to power and/or money will have less success taking advantage of human vulnerabilities.

Cults, Extremism, Psychological manipulation

I discovered TED nearly 10 years ago while searching for signs of intelligent life in the universe, as Lili Tomlin would say. It immediately became a life goal to attend the conference. I had the great honor of attending TED, and also presenting a TED talk 2009. My talk was about about the 5 years I spent inside a religious cult in the early 70s and the subsequent 5 years spent as a deprogrammer. In the talk, I drew a parallel between what I had been through and extremists such as suicide bombers. In 2010, I attended TED Active. In 2011 I attended the TED conference. Since then I have been to numerous TED events. Attending TED feeds me like nothing else could. It's not just the talks, but also the attendees that make these events so spectacular. I now know there is intelligent life - very intelligent life, and very inspiring life on this planet. Because of TED I am convinced we are evolving toward peace on this planet.

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