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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)

#121

Post by Fuxy »

flatline wrote: post #33
TeMPOraL wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't matter; there are well known and effective ways of hacking the trust channels as well.

In Scientology one of the ways to do this was to address the person's views on "help". Is it okay for others to help you? Have you ever helped anyone else? What if your car broke down by the road, would you refuse help to get it back running? If it was a friend or family member who offered to help? It doesn't take long to make people see that we trust people to help us all the time, often with big, important things,…

That's mostly because they rely on the fact that once you help someone they feel indebted to you that all breaks down if the person your helping feels no obligation to return the favor.

A lot of people use this behavior to manipulate other people so it's a good idea deprogram it in yourself.

Whenever I help someone i don't expect anything back in return that's probably why I'm ok helping anyone regardless if i ever meet them again and i expect the same no string attached help.

Don't get me wrong though i never 'expect' anything from strangers however if they offer to help (which is a nice surprise) that the type of help i expect.

You want to help me? Fine.

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

#122

Post by tripzilch »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #48
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…

> What fills that vacuum? Religion is a cultural construct to address certain issues like morality, cosmology, etc. It didn't fill any void, its just an outward expression of culture. Current culture is to handle these things inwardly and via some level of rational inquiry. We don't need a turn-key replacement. The only turn-key replacement for religion is more religion. Religion as a category and part of human exper…

You seem to forget that we, as a species, are wired for religion. Remove it and it will leave a void, a god-shaped hole, that is going to be filled with something, no matter what. You can't just leave it empty in the general case, you need to replace it with a powerful heavy NOP, like an Indiana Jones switch. Otherwise you're just going to have a really bad time.

Sure there's people that can be secular on their own selves, without too much conflict about it. But I believe most of them have put something to fill that behavioural slot. And even if they didn't, you have to see that the majority of people are never going to bear that vacuum and be taken advantage, of the moment their belief-system is vacant.

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

#123

Post by pjc50 »

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…

People* like to belong to something.

Quite a lot of people like to delegate their worries to a leader with an answer. Other people like to feel that they're "in the know" (gnosis), that they know something other people don't that grants superiority. This goes for spirituality, politics, and JS frameworks alike.

There used to be essentially one option for meeting these needs: attend your local church.

Population growth, mass communication, and intellectual freedom have resulted in a huge explosion of things one can belong to and things one can be gnostic about. It's not that there aren't cults any more - Scientology is still strong, Mormonism arguably qualifies - but there are so many things you can cling to (mostly "fandoms" these days) that there's no reason to put up with a bad cult. Or a difficult or demanding one.

It's still too early to call the death of religion until the shooting has stopped in the Islamic world, though.

(*"I don't" is not a useful reply to this; I'm talking about people in general)

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

#124

Post by stephen_g »

arjn wrote: post #77

So here is a question : What is the difference between a cult and an established religion ? Is it the size of the following ? Is it the time of origin, i.e. recent vs long ago ? Is it the number of followers ? Or is it some combination of the above, or something else altogether ?

I don't think it's any of the things you listed.

I think the biggest difference is that cults (as the article mentions) generally are run by people who don't actually believe in what they teach. That does occasionally happen in established religion, but it is not common.

The other thing about cults is that they are mainly about the personal gain of the leaders, while at the same time requiring members to devote much or all of their money to the cult continue to be a member. This is unlike most established religion, which is generally giving is always optional and often more transparent (all of the religious organisations I work with supply full budgets to all the members). Sadly, of course, there are exceptions here too (but those exceptions often are heading towards cultishness).

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

#125

Post by solutionyogi »

turar wrote: post #66
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

'The Guru' is a bad movie. Kumare on the other hand is much better and it is based on real life experiment to boot.

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

#126

Post by shiven »

silverbax88 wrote: post #89
briantakita wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Therapy is a medical science, Therapy is a practice, not a science. > but every layperson seems to think they have enough knowledge to comment on what it is or whether it's needed. Ah, the "leave it to the experts" trope. Giving that responsibility to someone else is the same as relying on a guru or a religious personality to tell you what to believe & do. If you look into psychology & related fields, there are dif…

Medicine is based in science. Not sure what you are getting at by claiming it isn't.

Psychotherapy is still at a woo-woo stage in its scientific development. Primarily because nobody has a real clue as to what connects the "mind" to the "brain" at the fundamental functional level.

A century after Freud, Jung and a host of their 'intellectual' descendants, "therapy" might as well be a pseudoscience as much as it is (claimed to be) science. Sure, modern day variations may appear quite different in practice than what was being done a few decades ago, but just because "it works" (for some) does not mean we understand the working of the mind well enough to call it a science.

A (poor) analogy might be like saying that just because a 3 year old kid can use the iPad to play games (cause-and-effect learned from touching, moving the device), he/she understands the workings of the ARM processor inside. Or even the code that game runs on.

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

#127

Post by tremols »

demallien wrote: post #71
tremols wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, because we've never seen massive casualties as the result of a flu virus. Oh, wait... Worrying about what influenza viruses are doing is not in any way shape or form similar to worrying about reptilian illuminati.

Anything that questions mainstream media version of the truth is automatically labeled as conspiracy theory delusion and hence put in the same category as believing in reptilian illuminati . How is this different to cult brainwash mechanics? (to ridicule a view other than the cult-accepted view).

The sirya crisis is a perfect example: a few years ago the shariah law al'qaeda guys were the movie villains: religious fanatics that stone women to death and bomb our free countries, the media now portrays them as rebel democratic heroes because they oppose the siryan government, we almost send them an aircraft carrier as military support. If you don't see the contradiction and obvious attempt to manipulate your opinion to support an agenda, then (downvote me to zero karma if you want) you are a well educated fool.

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

#128

Post by gobots »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #110
gobots wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, Catholicism's / baptists / etc. hell, the Jehovah's Witnesses everlasting destruction, Mormon / Jehovah's Witness / Amish excommunication... ad nauseum.

Those are really passive techniques. Cults have active, planned techniques of mind control. Try this: http://www.scribd.com/doc/514598/How-Cults-Seduce

I was a Jehovah's Witness and since leaving three years ago I have been struggling to differentiate between cult tactics and the control tactics of that particular religion.

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

#129

Post by loup-vaillant »

tripzilch wrote: post #122
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What fills that vacuum? Religion is a cultural construct to address certain issues like morality, cosmology, etc. It didn't fill any void, its just an outward expression of culture. Current culture is to handle these things inwardly and via some level of rational inquiry. We don't need a turn-key replacement. The only turn-key replacement for religion is more religion. Religion as a category and part of human exper…

You seem to forget that we, as a species, are wired for religion. Remove it and it will leave a void, a god-shaped hole, that is going to be filled with something, no matter what. You can't just leave it empty in the general case, you need to replace it with a powerful heavy NOP, like an Indiana Jones switch. Otherwise you're just going to have a really bad time. Sure there's people that can be secular on their own s…

Living in a country where religiosity is low (France), I can attest I don't feel any void. What I often see however is other people pretending I have a void. Some even say I don't believe in anything. Well, I believe in the potential of Science, I believe in a small hope of actual immortality (if not for me, maybe for later generations), I believe in love, and lots of other fine things in life.

But if I were to out as an atheist in a deep corner of Religious America… I guess the resulting ostracism would leave a void.

As for being wired for religion, I don't believe it. Granted, we have some biases, like our tendency to see sentient agents everywhere, that tend to favour religious interpretations of our observations. To suggest however that more accurate interpretations leave a void is a stretch. If I have a God shaped hole, it is mostly filled with physics. Any remaining void just fuels my curiosity.

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

#130

Post by dragonwriter »

jqm wrote: post #90
arjn wrote: post #77

So here is a question : What is the difference between a cult and an established religion ? Is it the size of the following ? Is it the time of origin, i.e. recent vs long ago ? Is it the number of followers ? Or is it some combination of the above, or something else altogether ?

Easy. A "cult" is a disparaging term for a religion that someone other than yourself belongs to. YOUR belief group on the other hand is obviously not a cult, but a religion. (Actually I guess it might be size, but in common vernacular I think the above is actually often the case).

There are a number of uses of "cult" (both the disparaging term you use for a group, the neutral use "pattern of devotional practice" which refers to a set of actions rather than an organization, and various objective criteria for organizations)

Size usually isn't a criterion in the definitions used for groups, whether the disparaging ones or the more objective ones (e.g., in the approach used in Marc Galanters Cults: Faith, Healing, and Coercion.)

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