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

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

#321

A lot of people here seem to be offended by this essay because of the literal definition of the term "cult" and start looking for potential cults they may be part of. I think they are mistaken. To me, this essay clearly speaks about the maladaptive conditioning we receive from our families and society in general during childhood and adolescence which causes us to suppress our feelings and authentic selves and treat t…

"authentic selves" I'm not sure there actually is such a thing.

There is such a thing. If you've ever been inauthentic for some time and then authentic, you know there's a massive difference in how you feel about yourself.

But it's true that the term is thrown about a lot without being explained, and I'm guilty of this as well of course. Being authentic means being able to express your opinions and preferences without feeling shame of fear of abandonment. That's how I would describe it in short.

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

#322

A lot of people here seem to be offended by this essay because of the literal definition of the term "cult" and start looking for potential cults they may be part of. I think they are mistaken. To me, this essay clearly speaks about the maladaptive conditioning we receive from our families and society in general during childhood and adolescence which causes us to suppress our feelings and authentic selves and treat t…

>maladaptive conditioning we receive from our families and society in general We adapted to the world through our families and society. A human alone 50,000 years ago was a delicious meal, not a rugged individualist. I would suggest that anything that encourages you to live an atomized life is maladaptive. We can get away with some degree of that now, but only due to thousands of years of various cult-like behaviors…

Choosing to isolate yourself from others or strive to be overly individualistic would be an example of maladaptation in my view. If you grew up in a emotionally nurturing familiy of origin you probably will have no intention to do so.

I think you misread me.

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

#323
post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It is an unrealistic and unwise expectation to live one’s life that way. Decision fatigue will catch up with anyone who lives like that soon enough. Time is a finite resource. Don’t waste it on perfectionism.

This has not been my experience in the past 7 years of addiction recovery. It's been imperative in order to root out as many ways my personality evolved to support addiction and has led to realizing many unconventional ways I've been avoiding my emotions than what's identified by most recovery or 12-step groups. Also, I've made arguments like what you're making before i entered into recovery to explain why i wasn't trying to make comprehensive changes to my life and explain away learned helplessness around changing myself.

My guess is what's viewed as decision fatigue could be unaddressed emotional issues, such as automated judgment/criticism, fear avoidance, normalized disempowerment narratives (which is related to cultivating a growth-oriented mindset, as opposed to one that says "this is just how i am and it can never be different"). Practicing radical acceptance and ignorance, as well as maintaining a playful attitude toward what I'm doing have been monumental to deeply examining myself. All this helps with perfectionism, which i also stopped practicing. Attempting to be thorough and comprehensive in the application of principles to one's life is not an effort in perfectionism; perfectionism is more about how one approaches doing such a thing. I think another term for what I'm referring to here is "monasticism."

These days, I'm also caring for a 4-year old while trying to examine everything we do from a generational trauma perspective. I no longer believe in ego depletion and consider it to be justification for people getting tired of stuffing/processing emotions that arise in the course of things, and potentially needs they're not aware of going habitually unmet. This brings me to another monumental thing i think has helped me in living a principled and intentional life: learning nonviolent communication and developing an awareness of feelings and universal human needs. To my knowledge,there are no studies examining the impact of these practices on decision-making.

I can say this: choosing actions/things based on what I think will meet my needs vs deny them is easy in a society where most decisions aren't oriented toward needs. There are learning challenges along the way, since there can often be no options present that effectively meet needs, so acceptance of the situation and creativity to come up with new options are both really important skills to develop.

As an aside, ego depletion and decision fatigue seem to be concepts without a lot of reproducibility behind them, or with much smaller effect sizes than previously reported.

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

#324
post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an unrealistic and unwise expectation to live one’s life that way. Decision fatigue will catch up with anyone who lives like that soon enough. Time is a finite resource. Don’t waste it on perfectionism.

This has not been my experience in the past 7 years of addiction recovery. It's been imperative in order to root out as many ways my personality evolved to support addiction and has led to realizing many unconventional ways I've been avoiding my emotions than what's identified by most recovery or 12-step groups. Also, I've made arguments like what you're making before i entered into recovery to explain why i wasn't t…

None of what I am about to say is meant to discourage you; or dismiss you - keep fighting the good fight. It sure sounds like you've been through hell.

You should read my comments through an objective lens. I try to be as neutral/scientific/objective as possible with my words and I say this from my perspective as scientist/engineer.

The world is far too complex for any human to be able to model it at high fidelity; never mind compute the 1st, 2nd and n-th order consequences of any given choice on a long-enough time scale. It's one of the many reasons why we conceptually distinguish malice from ignorance - we are only human, not omnipotent/omniscient gods.

In practical terms when modeling dynamic systems there's the concept of Lyapunov time [1] - the timescale at which your "predictions" (first principles reasoning) falls apart.

None of this is meant to undermine individual attempts at being better; more thoughtful humans, but it's absolutely meant to discourage all pursuits of human perfection/exceptionalism. Holding oneself to impossibly high standards is equally psychologically harmful. Pragmatism before idealism.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyapunov_time

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

#325
post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has not been my experience in the past 7 years of addiction recovery. It's been imperative in order to root out as many ways my personality evolved to support addiction and has led to realizing many unconventional ways I've been avoiding my emotions than what's identified by most recovery or 12-step groups. Also, I've made arguments like what you're making before i entered into recovery to explain why i wasn't t…

None of what I am about to say is meant to discourage you; or dismiss you - keep fighting the good fight. It sure sounds like you've been through hell. You should read my comments through an objective lens. I try to be as neutral/scientific/objective as possible with my words and I say this from my perspective as scientist/engineer. The world is far too complex for any human to be able to model it at high fidelity; n…

It sounds like we're on the same page when it comes to perfectionism.

My hell has been living with ADHD and undiagnosed autism and CPTSD/PTSD and addiction in an addiction-oriented ableist society. I lucked out on addiction, cause i got addicted to gathering/hoarding/consuming/analyzing/problem identifying/ problem solving/synthesizing information early on in life. Every addiction builds superpowers and most of mine are around metacognition. Recovery for me meant a very broad view of addiction and recovery were needed, since we ARE information. My recovery is an un-compiled/-published case study in addiction with unique and meaningful contributions to the field. Looking forward to doing that work once i get my family stabilized in a supportive community (anarchistically nurturing a new person means throwing out a lot of parenting guidance and can be very brutal without a like-minded community in close proximity, and takes my whole day practically every day). And I thoroughly enjoy my life as it is. We're working to start a carnival dedicated to learning to confront and heal through trauma and it means building a community of people normalizing loving intimate relationships through openly practicing vulnerability.

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

#326

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.

I can't even figure out what a poe is. Here at least.
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