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The Man Who Saves You from Yourself (2013)

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Re: The Man Who Saves You from Yourself (2013)

#61

Post by api »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #54
api wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> morality and self-restraint. ... and hope. Note the lack of hope among so many skeptics. Start talking to them about the future and you quickly discover that not only is life meaningless and success essentially random, but human civilization is doomed to extinction due to ecological overshoot soon so who cares... This lack of hope can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. It causes people to disengage and stop investing i…

Says who? All of the atheists I know tend to have some like of Star Trek-like futurist beliefs. Or watered-down Tim Leary beliefs of mind expansion and space migration. Also, its probably not in our best interest to pretend that extinction events don't happen. If anything, if we're seeing some paranoia, it might be healthy paranoia. Imagine if Al Gore was a "everything happens for a reason" type person and didn't car…

I think we are firmly in YMMV territory here. :)

I always noticed that at academic conferences the casual greeting seemed to be agreement about the impending human die-off due to global warming / ecological doom / whatever.

Re: The Man Who Saves You from Yourself (2013)

#62

Post by lilsunnybee »

jqm wrote: post #52

Many years ago I had a friend who became involved with a Dahn yoga center. (No offense to yoga, I do it myself). It started off innocently enough, but soon became (in my opinion) very obviously a cult. Not only did they make ridiculous claims and demand large amounts of money, it became all consuming, especially for his wife. My friend sometimes talked about "enlightened masters" and if that phrase doesn't ring the C…

Vulnerable people are often still just as vulnerable even when you can convince them to leave one harmful, controlling influence in their lives; they will often just search out another right after.

Re: The Man Who Saves You from Yourself (2013)

#63

Post by iwasphone »

rgbrgb wrote: post #42

> Cult leaders and con artists are opportunists who read the times and the ever-changing culture and adapt their pitch to what will appeal at a given moment. Multi level marketing, in particular a company called Nerium [1] is the closest thing I've seen to a cult lately. [1]: http://www.nerium.com/

All multi level marketing companies are cultish by nature. Realities such as market saturation simply don't exist, you're just not working hard enough / recruiting hard enough.

I spent a lot of time in south Florida, where it seems everyone in non-professional careers is hustling the newest MLM. The MLM recruiters are in turn driving their recruits into workshops like Landmark Forum, which is not a cult but is certainly cult-like. It promises the participant a "breakthough" in personal or professional life, but nearly everyone who participates in Landmark is there primarily to increase their MLM recruiting fu.

Re: The Man Who Saves You from Yourself (2013)

#64

Post by ap22213 »

javajosh wrote: post #38
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #20

This is a long article with a lot of items to discuss, but my take is that its "easy" to "brainwash" people because a lot of what's being offered is actually good, but, of course, used cynically and for social control. The Hare Krishna kid didn't know it before, but he now realizes that meditation helps with his social anxiety. Except now, he's in bed with the Krishna's, instead of finding a personal and secular path…

>a lot of what's being offered is actually good...meditation...society Indeed. >I don't see too many gen-x'ers and gen-y's dying to get up early to go to church to be sermonized by the ravings of 1st century zealots. I don't see how that's remotely in their interests. Here you hint at a problem: when you take away religion you leave a vacuum. What fills that vacuum? In our society, today, by default it is filled with…

I never 'had' religion - I was raised by atheists. So, I never had a 'void' to fill.

So, what does that make of me? I feel like a 'moral' person - do I need something other than common sense, empathy, and civility to be moral?

Re: The Man Who Saves You from Yourself (2013)

#65

Post by tremols »

brazzy wrote: post #21
silverbax88 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although not precisely related, I always say 'follow the money' to find out why you see certain political ads, or certain magazine articles, or anything like to figure out who is really in power. Find out who benefits from people believing certain things and it will be like magically being able to understand a language you don't currently speak.

It can be used as a tool to deceive and lead you deep into conspiracy theory delusions as well, however. Records and studies show that vaccinations have saved millions of lives? No, that's just Big Pharma propaganda to make you inject your children with expensive poison! Follow the money! Scientific evidence shows that homeopathy doesn't work? No, again it's Big Pharma, attacking a superior competition! Follow the mo…

Believing in reptilian illuminati or the AH1N1 pandemia, both are delusions... one invented by internet freakos and the other invented by big pharma and mass media.

Re: The Man Who Saves You from Yourself (2013)

#66

Post by turar »

hkarthik wrote: post #30

I encourage anyone interested in cults to watch the documentary film "Kumare" which is available on Netflix and Itunes [1]. It's the story of a film maker of Indian origin who creates a cult persona and gains followers in the Phoenix area. It's really fascinating to see what kinds of people fall for it and how they are increasingly more drawn to him. [1] http://www.kumaremovie.com/

Wow. There was actually a nice, sweet comedy about this exact scenario, called The Guru: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEIEb5jPhhA

Re: The Man Who Saves You from Yourself (2013)

#67

Post by squozzer »

Tasty. Too bad people like him don't practice deprogramming us from greater evils than two-bit cults - for example, communism, capitalism, patriotism, orderism.

Each of these isms also demand suspension of thought and beliefs in either magic or the greater wisdom of authority figures.

Re: The Man Who Saves You from Yourself (2013)

#68

Post by explorigin »

ap22213 wrote: post #64
javajosh wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a lot of what's being offered is actually good...meditation...society Indeed. >I don't see too many gen-x'ers and gen-y's dying to get up early to go to church to be sermonized by the ravings of 1st century zealots. I don't see how that's remotely in their interests. Here you hint at a problem: when you take away religion you leave a vacuum. What fills that vacuum? In our society, today, by default it is filled with…

I never 'had' religion - I was raised by atheists. So, I never had a 'void' to fill. So, what does that make of me? I feel like a 'moral' person - do I need something other than common sense, empathy, and civility to be moral?

The trouble is when a serial killer says the same thing.

Re: The Man Who Saves You from Yourself (2013)

#69

Post by gress »

silverbax88 wrote: post #50
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... secular, non-cultish meditation schools? Spirituality without the guru-worship trap? This might be controversial here, but I'm going to say it anyway. There's a lot that the old spirituality of India did very well. They came up with an incredibly rich array of meditation techniques, suitable for just about any temperament and inclinations. But they had an Achilles' heel: the divinization of the guru. That was t…

People don't need gurus. That is just a mask to the problem. What they need is therapy. Real therapy. But we live in a culture where we think some mystical shaman in Mumbai has the answers we seek, not some medical professional who studies the mind and how it works. Many of the so-called 'swamis' of the world would be considered mentally ill in the Western world. I'm not being hyperbolic. Many of them are not well an…

Who determines what 'real therapy' is?
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