The Man Who Saves You from Yourself (2013) • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by paxtonab » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 6:18 PM UTC

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…

It is interesting to note that one of the cults he shut down used a juice bar to recruit candidates.

This fits well with his point that as the times change so do the "cults", as the leaders are just con-men praying on people's loneliness and insecurities.

Anyone would be skeptical of a group of people it had all of the earmarks of a cult from the 60's (robes, rituals, communes, dirty hippies, etc.), but what could possibly be more innocuous and "normal" than a group of attractive women wearing yoga pants indulging in the latest diet fad? So what if there if there is a side helping of brainwashing, you're part of a hip new community!

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

#52

Post by jqm » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 6:19 PM UTC

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 CULT bell I don't know what will. I became a bit concerned and suggested he stop going. He didn't listen. Soon enough, his wife was spending lots of private time with one of the instructors or officials at the local center. My friend was not concerned because according to him, that particular individual had transcended the desires of flesh and was pure in intent. At least... until his wife confessed to having sex with the guy (I'm sure this is against Dahn policy and this particular incident doesn't indite the entire "cult".... it's just the kind of danger cults bring). So, after a few "I told you sos" my friend and (reluctantly) his wife agreed to quit the Dahn center. A few months after that they joined some kind of fringe pentecostal church (what is wrong with people?). I shook my head in disgust and stopped hanging out with him. Later he and his wife divorced and he moved away and we lost contact.

I still see ads for Dahn from time to time portraying them as a harmless yoga center set up in the strip mall. In fact, some people here may respond angrily that they are NOT a cult. But based on their rhetoric they most certainly are. They may be slightly less pernicious than some cults but they are harmful, are after your money, and can cause you trouble. I have seen it first hand.

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

#53

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 6:22 PM UTC

api wrote: post #44

borkabrak wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a humanist, and it has made my worldview much, much brighter . I don't walk around with a load of guilt anymore. The things that happen to me are not "God" punishing me for something my great^n grandparents did, but effects with causes, some of which I can control. I get out of bed. I believe in myself. It's nice. It's hopeful. It makes sense.

Unfortunately religious guilt often gets replaced by secular neo-Malthusian doomsday ideology. That might not be your experience but it seems to be common. It plugs into the same port: "forgive us nature for we have sinned... we have overshot our ecological carrying capacity..." Another thing about secularism that bothers me (and I am not religious) is the strong negative association with birth rates. Look up the sta…

[deleted]

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

#54

Post by drzaiusapelord » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 6:24 PM UTC

api wrote: post #39

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…

> 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 care to invest his political life into the environment. Instead he fought to popularize global warming and has helped moved policy forward. Policy that will probably make a difference to our grandkids. There's a lot of middle ground between the optimism of 72 virgins and the strawman doom-and-gloom person you describe.

The most hopeless people I know tend to be conservative religious types for whatever reason. "Get while the gettings good" seems to be their collective motto. Who cares about the future when Jesus/Buddha/whoever is coming back any day now!

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

#55

Post by unphasable » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 6:27 PM UTC

avn2109 wrote: post #47

pit wrote: post #31

There's a "Download PDF" button. Holy cow, my respect for Harper's, and perception of them as a serious publication, just skyrocketed. Are any other online publishers doing that? It's not even that I'm going to print it out or anything, but clearly it shows that their priority is readership, not ad conversions.

>> "...my respect for Harper's, and perception of them as a serious publication, just skyrocketed." Really? I have always thought of Harper's as first among equals in the respectable, serious-journalism cohort. I think it's the best grown-up publication available in America today.

clicking the "Reader" button on safari, located to the right of the URL bar gives a similar view.

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

#56

Post by thinkling » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 6:34 PM UTC

pit wrote: post #31

There's a "Download PDF" button. Holy cow, my respect for Harper's, and perception of them as a serious publication, just skyrocketed. Are any other online publishers doing that? It's not even that I'm going to print it out or anything, but clearly it shows that their priority is readership, not ad conversions.

The regular web version cuts off after hundreds of words with a "click here to subscribe to continue reading" wrapper, but the PDF has the complete article. Bizarre.

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

#57

Post by existencebox » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 6:39 PM UTC

api wrote: post #39

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…

> 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…

It's an empowering sort of hopelessness, though, at least for me. It's a dark world, with lots of horrible people, and humanity seems to only make bad or worse choices, but at the root of things, they are OUR choices, so it's for us to work our asses off to fix them. Even if success is essentially random, if you try more you'll succeed more. I've always felt that it was disingenuous to not look at all the terrible aspects of the world head on, but I also see no reason this shouldn't be a tool for those who can see it, depressing as it may be.

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

#58

Post by enraged_camel » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 6:49 PM UTC

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…

>>This is like saying, "Now that we don't have phrenology, we need a new phrenology." No, we just accept we can't figure out how people work or what kind of people they are by feeling their skulls. We live with the ambiguity and...

But that's the whole point: a lot of people simply cannot live with the ambiguity. For them, ambiguity means uncertainty, and uncertainty means fear and a lack of stability in general. Instead, they need to be told what to do and think and how to live their lives. They need some sort of compass, ideally one they share with a lot of others.

That is why religion has been so massively popular: some figures in the sky say, "this is how shit works and you can't question me/us about it" and that is sufficient for most people. They now have that area of their life handled and can comfortably think about other stuff. They can sleep well at night knowing that some omnipotent being is protecting them, and if shit goes wrong they have something they can attribute it to, like "we must have angered such and such omnipotent being."

Phrenology never played such an important role in people's lives, so its going away never created the type of vacuum that lack of religion creates for people.

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

#59

Post by lilsunnybee » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 6:50 PM UTC

thinkling wrote: post #56

pit wrote: post #31

There's a "Download PDF" button. Holy cow, my respect for Harper's, and perception of them as a serious publication, just skyrocketed. Are any other online publishers doing that? It's not even that I'm going to print it out or anything, but clearly it shows that their priority is readership, not ad conversions.

The regular web version cuts off after hundreds of words with a "click here to subscribe to continue reading" wrapper, but the PDF has the complete article. Bizarre.

If you click on that popup though, it displays the rest of the article without forcing a subscription. Much better than the New York Times in my opinion.

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

#60

Post by CapitalistCartr » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 6:51 PM UTC

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,…

Scientology usually actually helps people at the beginning. Just as you said, everything is aboveboard. That is what makes them so dangerous; they actually help people enough to get them hooked.