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In the book "1984," The place Winston Smith worked at was called "The Memory Hole." There, people sent in their old articles to be burned up as the government printed up newer versions to show that the "present reality" was how things had always been and how things would always be. In one scene, a picture of three outcast leaders fell into Winston Smith's hands. He sent the picture to be burned immediately, but he had already memorized the picture, recalling other moments when he had seen the three "thought criminals."
Later on, O'Brian showed Winston Smith another copy of the same picture. O'Brian then threw the picture into another "memory hole" and mocked Winston for holding the picture in his mind, saying in essence "You only have faulty memory, I control perceptual reality. You're going mad."
From 1982 to 1985 was a unique time for The World of Amway(tm). People were dropping out, books were being written, and network news programs were doing reports on them. Critical press was spreading faster than the Amway gospel, and Amway suffered from sales losses for the first time ever.
If you were involved in The World of Amway(tm), however, you hardly noticed. The news from Amway and the upline was as positive as ever. Recruiting was tough, but that was to be expected. Retailing was never considered seriously, and the upline was telling people that circumstances had developed that made retailing unnecessary. Conn's books were as plentiful as ever, both in the bookstores and from the upline; while books critisizing Amway were almost nowhere to be found. There was no internet, outside of a few computers connected to each other at a couple of colleges in North Carolina. "Tools" and "Motivation" kept flowing downline. The only clue that things were amiss was that the January 1984 back cover of the Amagram lacked the Amway's exponential growth graph that graced many a January Amagram back cover before then.
Many people who got out of Amway were stuck with voices telling them "You're A Quitter! You're A Loser! Your Children Will Hate You For Giving Up On Your Dream!" With at best a vague idea of what was the wrong with what they had gone through and hoping to regain old friends and family ties they found themselves pushing Amway to the back of their mind, preferring to consider it a shameful mistake better not talked about with anyone they knew lest they be shunned once more from the family and friends whom they had worked their butts off to bring back into their lives.
This is the Amway I experienced. Not fully, as I was more observer than active "distributor," but enough to leave a mark.
Again, we're in unique times. Once again press critical to Amway developed, again Amway's sales and bottom line were affected negatively; only this time the company has reacted differently.
The differences between last time and this time, however, are striking. There's the internet, which makes for a workable reference library for people wishing to do their homework. While changeable and sometimes forgetful (pages both change and disappear daily) there is information out there about almost anything you want to learn about, as long as you're willing to cut through the chaff.
The Amway facade has also changed, especially in the United States and Canada. First they've changed over their sales system over to an internet system they christened "Quixtar" (complete with the "Amagram" being renamed the generic sounding "Achieve"). Then Amway and Quixtar were organized under an umbrella corporation named "Alticor." Finally, there are no longer Amway distributors in the United States or Canada; all distributors are now Quixtar "Independent Business Owners" (another term for distributor, if you ask me).
All this with the thought that the shared memories of what Amway was like will be made useless by the dissapearance of the Amway name. A hope which seems to be having mixed effects; while I've seen some people sign up with Quixtar, the news on the wind is of upline losing their edification and Diamonds quitting to start their own corporations after failing to fix the Yager/Britt "system."
In addition, it appears that this "American" company is losing its American base even as it grows in the Asian markets. While it wouldn't be the first "American" company to gain the world and lose America, this would be the first time the home market has turned its back on a company the rest of the world seemed to be embracing.
Hence these pages. These pages deal with a time when Amway felt its home market was important enough to save it, and the president of the company was strong enough to go out and fight for it. Not only that, but an organization this dangerous doesn't pop up overnight; and my story is part of the Amway/AMO history- as much as the many stories from the mid-to-late nineties and the weblogs out today.
the web address for this page is http://hunza1.tripod.com/amway/pagewhy.html