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The Sedona Cult of Bentinho Massaro
- QAPereo 9y ago“My vision is to buy a large piece of land and start a new city with all of you…As with everything I will succeed.” Run roh, bit of a flashing red warning sign with hints of Jonestown.
- 659087 9y agoI can't figure out whether to upvote this to expose this person, or downvote it to avoid giving this person exposure. It never ceases to amaze me just how many fools are out there just waiting to fall for something like this. It's terrifying. Instagram douche meets cult leader has got to be the worst personality combo I've ever seen in my life. On another note, this stuff makes scientologists sound completely reasonable and sane by comparison.
- natoliniak 9y agoI agree. But despite the bizarre fact is that there is a real market for these kind of "Gurus" to fill, but unless someone is forced to join or kept in the cult by force then what's the problem? he chooses to lead and followers choose to follow.
- 659087 9y agoThe problem is that people who are weak-willed enough to fall for the "teachings" of and follow someone like this exist, and in large numbers.
- now_l93 9y agoThey are forced to stay in the cult through coercion. Members join willingly, and the cult slowly isolates them, encourages to shut out family and friends, takes all their money and makes them financially helpless. By the time they realize what's going on, they have no safe way to leave the cult. That leaves the members vulnerable to all sorts of abuse. That's why joining a cult should be seen as a problem, and not just as someone's preference.
- s73ver_ 9y agoWhat's your definition of "force"? Purely physical force? Or are you including brainwashing, emotional abuse, and economic/financial force as well?
- sbinthree 9y agoThe problem with narcissistic personality disorder is that all attention is good attention, all absence of attention is bad and drives the rage that leads to the abuse.
- kiddico 9y agoDoes anyone know what a "dharma battle" would consist of?
- b6 9y agoI can take a guess. After the Buddha was enlightened, he went back to his old friends the ascetics, and they didn't believe he was enlightened. But they talked and after a while they were convinced. Later, doubters would visit the Buddha and they'd have something like debates in front of the other monks. So I think Horn is saying he wants to show through debate that Massaro's views are bad, i.e., not the dhamma (truth).
- QAPereo 9y agoI mean... something like a battle over fulfilling your life's purpose, according to certain religious/philosophical points of view. Most religions have a concept of internal struggle, and most cults are just slight retellings of previous religions.
- cr0sh 9y agoIt's kinda like a rap battle, just with more incense and meditation. /s
- bleezy 9y agoThis is just a guy with a cult. It's similar to a startup/technology company in only the most superficial ways. The guy who runs this cult plays ping pong and wears sunglasses indoors? Oh what a scathing indictment of Silicon Valley culture.
- Apocryphon 9y agoThe NYT seems to be finding several of these new New Age cults: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/technology/silicon-valley-esalen-institute.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/technology/silicon-valley... (the Esalen Institute) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10906754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10906754 (the rationality cult related to Eliezer Yudkowsky and LessWrong)
- groby_b 9y agoThe NYT hardly "found" Esalen. The thing is around since the early 60s. And has been home to people like Timothy Leary, Buckminster Fuller, B.F.Skinner, Virginia Satir, Allen Ginsberg, Joan Baez... It's a rather well-known home of counter culture. Silly Valley simply hopes something rubs off on them. Because the realization is starting to set in that you, after all, really cannot take your toys with you. But really, "finding" is a pretty strong word for writing about one of the major touch stones of 60s culture.
- 659087 9y ago> The NYT hardly "found" Esalen. The thing is around since the early 60s. And has been home to people like Timothy Leary, Buckminster Fuller, B.F.Skinner, Virginia Satir, Allen Ginsberg, Joan Baez... > It's a rather well-known home of counter culture. ..which makes it both sad and amusing that it has become a place for a bunch of Silicon Valley executives to go try to "find themselves" and look for affirmation that their advertising and surveillance companies aren't detrimental to society.
- 659087 9y ago> "It means that we reach a level of maturity to where we as a collective are able to be contacted openly without us freaking out anymore, without it needing to be kept secret anymore, we have become > are < own government.” Apparently being god means you don't have to use the right words when communicating.
- smacktoward 9y agoThis appears to be Massaro's response: http://www.bentinhomassaro.com/read/our-first-official-response-to-the-cult-accusations http://www.bentinhomassaro.com/read/our-first-official-respo... It contains a sentence that may be the most perfect thing an "Instagram guru" could ever write: I have modeled many different jackets, teachings and examples within a short period of time.
- 659087 9y agoI couldn't get through it. Rarely have I seen more words used to say absolutely nothing while completely avoiding actually addressing anything in the article supposedly being addressed. "Love and Light," It looks like this guy might be getting his ideas from a certain show on Hulu.
- tanepiper 9y agoQuite a terrifying read, but not unexpected. These types of cults pop up in America, and usually at least once in a generation there is one that somehow captures peoples imaginations (People’s Temple, Branch Davidians, Heaven's Gate, etc). I don't include Scientology in this list - no matter how insidious that organisation is, it's never lead to a mass suicide. The people who follow these leaders are lost, usually from broken background - some run away from home and fall in to it. The leaders tend to be diagnosed (mostly after the fact though analysts) as narcissists. Polyamory is usually a feature of their style, as well as mental and physical abuse of their followers. They have no problem in "breaking" people for their own sick fantasy.
- jvagner 9y agoIt's hard to get the appeal from these videos. He's... not a strong presence.
- calbear81 9y agoEspecially the early ones where he just seems to be making shit up on the fly and taking really long pauses to think about a good answer. Then again, maybe that makes him more relatable to the average person?
- jvagner 9y agoThe shit-eating grin must work for a particular kind of audience. It counter-signals hard to me. I know some real narcissists, and I think there's a moment before their narcissism is confirm-able that their "power" has more currency than it will later. I guess we can call it "charisma", but once it turns... it can feel rancid. I guess for some people, that rancid-ness doesn't show up.
- jondubois 9y agoI kind of hoped that we were moving towards an age of rationality and reasoning where people will finally be able to think for themselves but it seems that the opposite is happening. Literally everything these days is a cult. Including companies (e.g. Apple), and money itself (e.g. cryptocurrencies). It makes me think that there must be some really powerful evolutionary processes in place which make it so that irrational idolists have more children and live longer than rational people.
- strayamaaate 9y agoSomething like... https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/idiocracy https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/idiocracy
- danharaj 9y agoI think you are fetishizing rationality in a world that is intractably complicated.
- jondubois 9y agoPeople don't need to understand everything, but they should understand that nobody has the answers and that's why independent thinking is so important. Independent thinking is simply about questioning everything you're taught. Most people believe that if some idea is popular, then it must be right; but in reality, most of the time the opposite is true.
- majormajor 9y ago> Most people believe that if some idea is popular, then it must be right; but in reality, most of the time the opposite is true. Isn't this just as dangerous a heuristic as the reverse? Flat earth, fake moon landing, 9/11 was an inside job...
- danharaj 9y agoWhat does that mean? Brains are their own little worlds of thought, but they also communicate-- thinking has a social component as well. Both are absolutely crucial and trivially present in all thinking. The scientific method, for example, is founded upon a tension between independent and social examinations of scientific ideas. Clearly there's a good way to think independently and a bad way; a good way of thinking as a group and a bad. How is the line drawn? It's certainly not a line that can be drawn in advance. In your post you said: > It makes me think that there must be some really powerful evolutionary processes in place which make it so that irrational idolists have more children and live longer than rational people. That seems rather essentialist to me: Do you really think people are so transparent that you can not only judge whether they are intrinsically rational or irrational but also that quality is hereditary and also that there is a mysterious force that makes us idiots via natural selection? Better instead to ponder what social and psychological processes can draw someone into a cult and how those processes play out in your own life. We take for granted how thin the margin is between our own lives and the lives of others. It is almost surely the case that all of us hold absolutely absurd delusions about our lives and how we should go about them.
- strayamaaate 9y agoI’m still not 100% sure this is for real. It’s just so utterly insane.
- 659087 9y agoIt does seem almost like he started off just trolling people, then decided to run with it when he realized people were willing to pay and/or have sex with him in exchange for that trolling.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- nkrisc 9y agoSeems like the people who follow him are already predisposed to believe in fanciful ideas like gods and other supernatural beings. Doesn't seem so hard to fool people who already are willing to accept beliefs beyond evidence. > I’ve watched him control the weather a lot of times. We’ll be at a party and I’ll be like ‘Bentinho these clouds are not good, it looks like rain. Within ten minutes they’re gone. That's a laughably low standard of proof to accept for anything. Let me guess, he can turn invisible too when there's no one looking.
- pmoriarty 9y agoI am surprised he is not running for President of the United States.
- sunstone 9y agoSmells like Scientology redux. Meh.