- esteemed texts which promise by adopting a strange method (Lisp) that you can achieve higher levels of wealth and self actualization
should I be worried?
show comments
pjc50
Some pull quotes, since people seem to be struggling with page loading:
> his client, a woman who had recently finished her master’s at a prestigious university, had been drawn into a scam job. It was essentially a pyramid scheme built around a health regimen. Before you could sell it, you had to try it, so you knew what you were selling.
> The regimen? Multiple enemas a day. “It escalated to 40 to 60 enemas a day,”
> All groups have a rhythm, like a pulse across the calendar year. We have holidays, and we have tax season. There are highs and lows.
> Furthermore, Kelly and Ryan urge their clients not to speak with the media. The firmest “no” I ever got was when I asked Ryan if I could speak to a former client.
> One of their cases in the 90s involved a cult leader who was systematically sexually assaulting the group’s members. [NB: do you have any idea how little that narrows it down]
> the girl’s uncle, their client, had a very difficult time finding anything positive about the group or the leader who had allegedly raped his niece
> What Kelly and Ryan mean when they say these groups are “offering something” to people, it is exactly that. There is a hole a group fills: alienation from community, family, sexuality; pressure to follow a certain life plan, addiction, unrealized spirituality, economic catastrophe – all reasons to join a group
show comments
stevemadere
Why did the original post for which these are the discussions disappear from HN?
I cannot even find it with a word search and it should not have been displaced from the top 30 yet.
derbOac
Interesting read. Framing things as a "cultic relationship" makes a lot of sense to me. The part about using your experience as a basis of truth determination being flawed and a source of vulnerability also was pretty insightful.
I'm a little surprised by mention of pushback and accusations of being cult apologists, only because what they're describing as their method is pretty similar in principle to some widespread and empirically validated therapies for more common things. It's just much more invasive, to understate things. I guess at some point there are probably basic immediate safety issues that arise, where taking time has its own risks.
The piece left me thinking that the reasons people become involved with and attached to cults might not be different at some fundamental level from a lot of other psychological problems they get themselves in — just a matter of degree or pervasiveness.
show comments
meken
Fascinating. I would totally watch a TV series on this.
simonw
The best thing I have ever read on this subject is https://harpers.org/archive/2013/11/the-man-who-saves-you-fr... - it is a truly wild ride, profiling David Sullivan, a private investigator who specialized in helping people get their loved ones out of cults and was based in the San Francisco Bay Area for many years.
I recently read the book "Combatting Cult Mind Control" by Steven Hassan, a professional who also helps people leave cults. His approach isn't as much of a "long game" as Ryan and Kelly's approach. One thing that Hassan explains is that MLMs are often very similar to cults, and he also explains the difference between cults and religion.
Another book to read is The Running Grave by Robert Galabraith (pen name for J.K. Rownling.) One of the detectives joins a cult to try and get someone out. The book is well researched and gives an insider's view of a cult.
show comments
mikkupikku
I went down the rabbit hole of researching both cults and deprogramming groups a few years ago and one of the things which I found remarkable was how much overlap in methods there was between the two. Different groups go to different extremes, but the overlap between the two is such that in many cases they can only be distinguished using social context, and in some cases I am pretty sure the deprogramming groups are in fact cults masquerading as groups to help former cult members because those make the best members for new cults.
Interesting space. I'm glad I don't have any personal reason to be involved.
skeezyjefferson
i stopped after reading these two were taken in by promises of levitation. i dont care how attractive the cult is, youre an idiot to believe it
show comments
stevenjgarner
Okay I'm going to ask. Is anybody else here playing Living Colour's "Cult of Personality" while they read this? [1]
I’d strongly recommend the documentary “Behind the Curve”. The close look at people in (not quite a cult) gave me a visceral appreciation for what draws people to it (it provides acceptance for people who sorely lack it) and why it can be so hard to leave (one’s identity becomes so tied up in it).
internet_points
So that works if it's possible to actually reach the person and the family agrees that they need help to get out. What if the family is part of the problem or is tricked? (I recently read https://elan.school/ about this unimaginably horrible Kids for Cash-like scheme/cult. The only thing I can think of to prevent such things would be to get parents, teachers, lawmakers and social workers to read those stories too.)
dzink
Trying to read this to the end feels impossible - the Guardian keeps flicking the page to show ads and the page refreshes for no reason and I’m sure their ads impressions numbers are going through the roof. Feels like ad fraud.
show comments
FooBarBizBazz
Fantastic article. And their "light touch" approach seems very correct.
Now --
What counts as a cult?
One sufficient condition, in my opinion, would be ritualized sexual abuse, especially of children.
But this is baked even into several mainstream religions, if you only open your eyes.
What is good, at least, is that, like viruses, cults/religions generally evolve to be less harmful to their hosts over time. (This is over time scales of multiple human generations. Within a single generation, a cult may do just the opposite, as it becomes marginalized from society and increasingly normalizes deviance, e.g. Aum reacting to humiliation in Japanese elections by releasing Sarin.)
Examples of this "taming" process: Flayed prisoners of the Aztecs are now dancing skeletons, "local color", used in America to sell tacos. Likewise the Abrahamic religions are an evolution of animal sacrifice cults, themselves echoing earlier human sacrifice cults; they are still shaking off frankly-insane practices, but could be worse. The history of LDS provides a less dramatic example, but one recent-enough that early stages are still well-documented in the historical record.
And if all this sounds New Atheistic, note that I am actually quite sympathetic to (almost apologetic for) certain aspects of religion (though I increasingly do wonder whether it is religions that teach goodness, or whether it is goodness that religions must attach themselves to for legitimacy, mixing it with other content). (For example I have pushed back, here, against characterizations of Christianity as "right wing", as that is not at all the content of the New Testament.)
One thing is certain: If a religious identity has bound itself to a person, then attacking the person will only strengthen the identity. The memetic parasite and the human victim must be clearly distinguished. Failure to do this results in violence against people which only strengths the meme. Blood for the blood god.
I suspect many of these memes can be tamed to the point of decency over multiple generations. Though they always carry the risk of reversion to older forms. Somehow the "DNA" is still there. So I'm not sure. They have to be stabilized to their nondestructive manifestations.
I also wonder about "non-religious" cult dynamics, e.g. those attached to political movements (both MAGA and woke), or financial/moral/credit systems, e.g. crypto.
One of my concerns also is the way that Silicon Valley leaders may study these methods not to defend against them but to exercise them in the formation of totalizing company cultures. Theil and Karp have been explicit about this. It distresses me: You should read about the scapegoat mechanism to destroy it, not to start using it.
show comments
delichon
cult (noun): A religion or religious sect generally considered to be extremist or false, with its followers often living in an unconventional manner under the guidance of an authoritarian, charismatic leader -- American Heritage Dictionary
Without the "generally considered to be extremist or false" it would be quite hard to even identify a cult. It's mostly used as way to slur a disfavored group. It's an element of a Russell conjugation, like I am part of a spiritual awakening, you belong to a religious sect, they are in a mind-control cult.
I was raised as a Jew. I consider that to be a cult, if one of the milder religious ones. My peewee football team was a cult. I belonged to a cultic political party, and worked for a startup that closely met the definition.
So getting someone to leave a cult is going to be the same as getting them to forsake any other community, just with the added coercion of social acceptability. There's no magic, no brain unwashing, it's the same kind of persuasion used to sell a vacuum cleaner.
wait a minute here..
HN:
- asks you to self-assign a new name upon joining
- has a leader
- has a hierarchy (rating system)
- esteemed texts which promise by adopting a strange method (Lisp) that you can achieve higher levels of wealth and self actualization
should I be worried?
Some pull quotes, since people seem to be struggling with page loading:
> his client, a woman who had recently finished her master’s at a prestigious university, had been drawn into a scam job. It was essentially a pyramid scheme built around a health regimen. Before you could sell it, you had to try it, so you knew what you were selling.
> The regimen? Multiple enemas a day. “It escalated to 40 to 60 enemas a day,”
> All groups have a rhythm, like a pulse across the calendar year. We have holidays, and we have tax season. There are highs and lows.
> Furthermore, Kelly and Ryan urge their clients not to speak with the media. The firmest “no” I ever got was when I asked Ryan if I could speak to a former client.
> One of their cases in the 90s involved a cult leader who was systematically sexually assaulting the group’s members. [NB: do you have any idea how little that narrows it down]
> the girl’s uncle, their client, had a very difficult time finding anything positive about the group or the leader who had allegedly raped his niece
> What Kelly and Ryan mean when they say these groups are “offering something” to people, it is exactly that. There is a hole a group fills: alienation from community, family, sexuality; pressure to follow a certain life plan, addiction, unrealized spirituality, economic catastrophe – all reasons to join a group
Why did the original post for which these are the discussions disappear from HN? I cannot even find it with a word search and it should not have been displaced from the top 30 yet.
Interesting read. Framing things as a "cultic relationship" makes a lot of sense to me. The part about using your experience as a basis of truth determination being flawed and a source of vulnerability also was pretty insightful.
I'm a little surprised by mention of pushback and accusations of being cult apologists, only because what they're describing as their method is pretty similar in principle to some widespread and empirically validated therapies for more common things. It's just much more invasive, to understate things. I guess at some point there are probably basic immediate safety issues that arise, where taking time has its own risks.
The piece left me thinking that the reasons people become involved with and attached to cults might not be different at some fundamental level from a lot of other psychological problems they get themselves in — just a matter of degree or pervasiveness.
Fascinating. I would totally watch a TV series on this.
The best thing I have ever read on this subject is https://harpers.org/archive/2013/11/the-man-who-saves-you-fr... - it is a truly wild ride, profiling David Sullivan, a private investigator who specialized in helping people get their loved ones out of cults and was based in the San Francisco Bay Area for many years.
See https://www.deccanherald.com/world/china-woman-counsels-mist...
For those who are interested:
I recently read the book "Combatting Cult Mind Control" by Steven Hassan, a professional who also helps people leave cults. His approach isn't as much of a "long game" as Ryan and Kelly's approach. One thing that Hassan explains is that MLMs are often very similar to cults, and he also explains the difference between cults and religion.
Another book to read is The Running Grave by Robert Galabraith (pen name for J.K. Rownling.) One of the detectives joins a cult to try and get someone out. The book is well researched and gives an insider's view of a cult.
I went down the rabbit hole of researching both cults and deprogramming groups a few years ago and one of the things which I found remarkable was how much overlap in methods there was between the two. Different groups go to different extremes, but the overlap between the two is such that in many cases they can only be distinguished using social context, and in some cases I am pretty sure the deprogramming groups are in fact cults masquerading as groups to help former cult members because those make the best members for new cults.
Interesting space. I'm glad I don't have any personal reason to be involved.
i stopped after reading these two were taken in by promises of levitation. i dont care how attractive the cult is, youre an idiot to believe it
Okay I'm going to ask. Is anybody else here playing Living Colour's "Cult of Personality" while they read this? [1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xxgRUyzgs0
I’d strongly recommend the documentary “Behind the Curve”. The close look at people in (not quite a cult) gave me a visceral appreciation for what draws people to it (it provides acceptance for people who sorely lack it) and why it can be so hard to leave (one’s identity becomes so tied up in it).
So that works if it's possible to actually reach the person and the family agrees that they need help to get out. What if the family is part of the problem or is tricked? (I recently read https://elan.school/ about this unimaginably horrible Kids for Cash-like scheme/cult. The only thing I can think of to prevent such things would be to get parents, teachers, lawmakers and social workers to read those stories too.)
Trying to read this to the end feels impossible - the Guardian keeps flicking the page to show ads and the page refreshes for no reason and I’m sure their ads impressions numbers are going through the roof. Feels like ad fraud.
Fantastic article. And their "light touch" approach seems very correct.
Now --
What counts as a cult?
One sufficient condition, in my opinion, would be ritualized sexual abuse, especially of children.
But this is baked even into several mainstream religions, if you only open your eyes.
What is good, at least, is that, like viruses, cults/religions generally evolve to be less harmful to their hosts over time. (This is over time scales of multiple human generations. Within a single generation, a cult may do just the opposite, as it becomes marginalized from society and increasingly normalizes deviance, e.g. Aum reacting to humiliation in Japanese elections by releasing Sarin.)
Examples of this "taming" process: Flayed prisoners of the Aztecs are now dancing skeletons, "local color", used in America to sell tacos. Likewise the Abrahamic religions are an evolution of animal sacrifice cults, themselves echoing earlier human sacrifice cults; they are still shaking off frankly-insane practices, but could be worse. The history of LDS provides a less dramatic example, but one recent-enough that early stages are still well-documented in the historical record.
And if all this sounds New Atheistic, note that I am actually quite sympathetic to (almost apologetic for) certain aspects of religion (though I increasingly do wonder whether it is religions that teach goodness, or whether it is goodness that religions must attach themselves to for legitimacy, mixing it with other content). (For example I have pushed back, here, against characterizations of Christianity as "right wing", as that is not at all the content of the New Testament.)
One thing is certain: If a religious identity has bound itself to a person, then attacking the person will only strengthen the identity. The memetic parasite and the human victim must be clearly distinguished. Failure to do this results in violence against people which only strengths the meme. Blood for the blood god.
I suspect many of these memes can be tamed to the point of decency over multiple generations. Though they always carry the risk of reversion to older forms. Somehow the "DNA" is still there. So I'm not sure. They have to be stabilized to their nondestructive manifestations.
I also wonder about "non-religious" cult dynamics, e.g. those attached to political movements (both MAGA and woke), or financial/moral/credit systems, e.g. crypto.
One of my concerns also is the way that Silicon Valley leaders may study these methods not to defend against them but to exercise them in the formation of totalizing company cultures. Theil and Karp have been explicit about this. It distresses me: You should read about the scapegoat mechanism to destroy it, not to start using it.
I was raised as a Jew. I consider that to be a cult, if one of the milder religious ones. My peewee football team was a cult. I belonged to a cultic political party, and worked for a startup that closely met the definition.
So getting someone to leave a cult is going to be the same as getting them to forsake any other community, just with the added coercion of social acceptability. There's no magic, no brain unwashing, it's the same kind of persuasion used to sell a vacuum cleaner.