There are a handful of groups with systems of merit where you climb a social ladder/ranking hierarchy.
At a very high level, members will be invited to a retreat where they are given the option to commit a terrible crime. Usually this crime is a murder.
Those who choose to murder are given a "promotion". But what they don't know is that those who choose not to murder are given a similar "promotion".
Both of these two people will serve more or less together, and because of structural builtins, they don't discuss these rituals or promotions ever.
At the highest level, those who chose to commit the crime are the only ones who can achieve the highest ranks -
all the while, those who chose not to commit the crime are led to believe that was the only acceptable choice for the "organization".
It is not, and those people are just used for other things. Sometimes they are eliminated.
In the case that a person was to be murdered as the act of indoctrination; that person is always killed anyway.
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kobold ago
this is to tell the psychopaths from the normal people. it is the psychopaths who are desirable and sought after for the positions of power. most all secret societies will have something like this set up as an initiation to their executive leadership. if you kill someone, you will be blackmailable and controlled. those seeking power dont mind this at all and display their ruthlessness with great pride to the higher ups.
many organizations are like this, the freemasons at the highest level, but could be the mormons, jws, scientology, oto, thelema, law of one just as well. or any of the militant papal orders, like the jesuits, the knight of malta, the hospitalliers and the orders of the inquisition: the dominicans and the franciscans.
MHole ago
In a feudal/tribal situation that was a really powerful legacy mechanism they used. But as we evolved past the Industrial age and these same rituals were not broken, they turned into something even darker. You end up with the Podestas and organized Child Rape. And Podesta wasn't ashamed in the slightest, and wore it like a badge just like you said.