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We are sorry to inform you that you are in a cult

labskausleben.bearblog.dev

251–260 of 327 posts

Re: We are sorry to inform you that you are in a cult

#251
post #7

I was waiting for the part that would make it clear what was being satirized, and it never came? I feel like I'm missing context?

I think people are reading too far into it. It's just a joke... The point is that they're telling the subject of the story (in second person so it's addressed to "you") that you're in a cult and they're going to rehabilitate you - but as you read on, you might notice that the rehabilitation is describing, you guessed it, a cult! It's not actually making a comment that everybody is actually in institutions that are li…

Thanks. It was such a wordy rehash of cult deprogramming literature that I couldn't read through it.

Re: We are sorry to inform you that you are in a cult

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, not all cults are religious Now we're well into the map vs territory. In the attempt to define a cult (something which we intuit) we end up fixated on the boundary between what is a cult and what is not a cult, and try to create a taxonomic rule-based classification. The mistake is then to assume that that rule-based classification defines what a cult is (rather than attempts to describe what is a cult) and y…

Some people have been saying we are a cult, but they are not using the correct definition of "cult," in our opinion.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/are-yall-with-the-cult

Re: We are sorry to inform you that you are in a cult

#253
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In summary, every religion.

> every religion The world's beliefs are many and varied. There are plenty of religious groups that provide a foundation for a healthy life instead of insisting they are the only means to achieving it. You'll be hardpressed to apply this list of grievances to the average Buddhist community, for instance. Sikhs, Jains, Baha'i, Quakers -- many more come to mind.

You know, I was just thinking about how closely the Baha'i communities I knew fit this definition. #1 and #6 apply to Baha'u'llah, of course, but since he's been dead for quite a while it's less of an issue. More concerningly, they could plausibly be applied to many LSA, NSA, and UHJ members: there are explicit injunctions in the writings against using the secular legal system to resolve disputes among Baha'is, and in most communities there are people in the LSA who the LSA will definitely never rule against in any dispute. In general, criticizing members of the LSA, NSA, or UHJ is strongly discouraged as "creating disunity", even more strongly than publicly criticizing other people.

#2 and #3 are pretty extreme. If you have social contact with a Covenant-Breaker you are likely to lose your voting rights.

#4 is of course somewhat true because most Baha'is know someone who has been imprisoned or killed (in Iran) for being Baha'i, or at least know someone who knows someone. You'd have to be pretty irrational not to be somewhat paranoid under those circumstances.

I'm not sure what is meant by #5, but shame of course has a prominent place in the Baha'i faith, as in any religion.

Going through the list, though, I think that to a significant extent it's just a rough definition of "religion" or "culture", plus elements of leadership. Is Thomas Jefferson "above the law"? Is Muhammad? Of course they are, you can't prosecute them. Is the US Government? Yes, it has "sovereign immunity". You'd be hard-pressed to find any culture that didn't consider itself superior to the outgroup, yet vulnerable to attacks from it, or that didn't enforce some degree of ideological conformity, or that didn't shame deviations from its norms.

Re: We are sorry to inform you that you are in a cult

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both things are programs that run in your head. The difference is how much the program makes you search inside yourself and ALONE for the answers you seek as opposite to reaching for an external authority. If you feel you are dependent on an external human the most likely event is that they or their group made you dependent on purpose via some sort of manipulation.

>If you feel you are dependent on an external human Absolutely not, I’m a free trapper who built its own computer from scratch. Joke apart, who is thinking really that interdependence is inherently bad? Things like symbiosis are generally connoted rather positively, aren’t there? Now, being dependent on a group which is applying rigid rules which are systematically leading to toxic behaviors for all or part of its me…

I was speaking of emotional and decisional independence. Look at enmeshed family dynamics for an example of a terribly unhealthy symbiosis.

Re: We are sorry to inform you that you are in a cult

#255
post #63
post #7

I was waiting for the part that would make it clear what was being satirized, and it never came? I feel like I'm missing context?

All of your unquestioned cultural norms and biases. Everything your parents, your family; your community and your society taught you. The heuristics that keep you navigating life without having to scrutinize every single choice from first principles.

> The heuristics that keep you navigating life without having to scrutinize every single choice from first principles.

Thanks for these words. Scrutinizing every single choice from first principles is exactly what i promote and what i find people are deeply resistant to, yet i haven't had this description of what's happening until now.

Re: We are sorry to inform you that you are in a cult

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean you could do the same thing with the abstract ideas of post-marginal revolution economics and its adherents and get a positive result so the test is obviously wrong.

I can't even tell if this is a poe. Well done.

Thank you.

Re: We are sorry to inform you that you are in a cult

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this! The attempt to reduce "cult" to a strict rule-based definition means you can be endlessly mired in semantic debate rather than actually address the operational parameters that make an organization or association unattractive to join, which is usually what people mean when they say "that's a cult". "Cult" carries a ton of baggage. You say "hey, that MLM you want to join satisfies 4/10 properties of a cul…

As far as I can tell you’re the only one mired in a semantic debate. The list of signs of a cult above is a useful rubric for determining if an organizational is harmful. And as others have noted the technical term “high-demand organization” has grown specifically to leave behind the religious implications of “cult”, though language moves slow and many will still use that term day to day. Are there any organizations…

Well, I wouldn't say "mired", but I do agree that I'm the only one directly addressing the distinction between substance and semantics.

I do not agree about the list. That list is there to win semantic arguments about whether something is a cult or not. Nothing to do with harm; you can argue that some of the criteria, like "shame cycles" are harmful in and of themselves, but most are harmless attributes. Apply it to a kid's soccer team to see this.

I have never been involved in a cult. But sure, calling things a cult is cheap. I'm Jewish, I have been a Ron Paul supporter, card-carrying ACLU member. All of those things have been called cults.

Re: We are sorry to inform you that you are in a cult

#258
The word cult has different meanings when used academically and colloquially [1]. The academic meaning has more to do with analyzing shared-culture groups by identifying clusters of material culture and beliefs. I.e. the cult of Apollo, or the cult of St. Nicholas.

Cult in the sense used in this article is in the modern sense of a group of people heavily controlled by a charismatic leader via a belief system.

Some academic "cults" certainly fit the definition of modern colloquial "cults", but not all. Some are just religious/cultural clusters.

1. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3511972#:~:text=...a%20cult%20i...

Re: We are sorry to inform you that you are in a cult

#260

It’s an interesting piece, and I think it’s intended to be satirical (and done rather well). But, I grew up in an actual cult. The comments here to the effect of “everything’s a cult” and “startups are cults” and “HN is a cult” - oh gosh. Nothing could be further from the truth. HN is not a cult, folks. I’m glad people can make those jokes though, because I immediately know they didn’t experience what I did. They hav…

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