How to spot cult leader personalities
sashachapin.substack.com
How to spot cult leader personalities
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Re: How to spot cult leader personalities
#2Context is very important. With close friends anyone can say anything and it’s brushed off. In a tense business meeting where the difference in big money is how two groups speak and act, it makes sense to be calculating.
Re: How to spot cult leader personalities
#3[deleted]
Re: How to spot cult leader personalities
#4An accurate description of a good many politicians.
Re: How to spot cult leader personalities
#5Context is very important. With close friends anyone can say anything and it’s brushed off. In a tense business meeting where the difference in big money is how two groups speak and act, it makes sense to be calculating.
It's not talking about people who are "calculating," it is talking about people who switch between negging you and complementing you in a way that causes you to think about them too much.
Re: How to spot cult leader personalities
#6I feel like this is something where everyone does it to some extent I don't know. To me it makes more sense to focus on propensity towards behaviors that you find undesirable rather than labelling someone a bad name.
Re: How to spot cult leader personalities
#7It's interesting how many of these traits line up perfectly with the actions of Eliezer Yudkowsky. Especially the parts about lacking humility to the point where they think their ideology will save the universe from certain doom. Or making people who follow his words say that everyone who thinks he's crazy just "doesn't get it" and is tragically unable to absorb the wisdom or goodness.
Re: How to spot cult leader personalities
#8The author sounds like he has some jealousy issues to get sorted.
I found the last section shocking. Wanting to joust, jealous of this personality type? That’s.. really strange.
Re: How to spot cult leader personalities
#9There's lots and lots written about cults and cult leaders, which is worth reading, such as Combatting Cult Mind Control by Steven Hassan, or if you prefer a more traditional take, "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism" by Robert Jay Lifton. Or any of other dozens of good authoritative takes on the subject by people who have spent their careers formally studying such phenomena, which can draw lines between all kinds of different groups and political movements that actually have lots in common.
What's wrong with this blog post is that the author does not seem to have read any books at all on the subject, which IMO is fairly irresponsible considering how much there is to read about it and how critical it is that "cult behavior" is widely understood in order for society to progress. Seems to be off the cuff musings about the topic, alarmingly even considering that some "cult leaders" are "good" (no) or that they can be "reformed" (irrelevant, but also REALLY doubtful considering what it means to be a cult leader; cult leaders generally remain such leaders well after they've been sentenced to prison for decades, their followers show up to visit, etc., there is no "reform" here, sorry), and overall a lot of muddy, uninformed and made-up thinking that will only get more people into cults.
Re: How to spot cult leader personalities
#10An accurate description of a good many politicians.
Charismatic, polarizing and tactical.
I think politics only works for people with these traits.