9 ms·

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 go

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 to meditation. The girl in the Christian cult discovered the power of community and forgiveness. Funny how white centric these articles are. If a kid becomes a Krishna its suddenly a bewildering thing, but if a kid joins a gang on the south side of Chicago, we just shrug. Both these things have a lot in common; society, family, etc not providing what they should and not projecting those values to kids. I think religiosity and cults rise when secular society fails at something. We're not telling kids that meditation can help them. We've not telling them that maintaining personal relationships is actually hard work and forgiveness even harder. Perhaps nowadays we are. I see a lot of what religion offers distilled into non-faith based practices. You can meditate without knowing the first thing about the buddha. You can engage in a personal spirituality without feeling guilted to show up for social functions (that only seem to empower the leaders of congregations). You can explore consciousness with drugs, lucid dreaming, or just via one's informed imagination, etc. Empowering individuals to discover information on a personal basis is what the information age is all about. There aren't anymore gatekeepers. I imagine this keeps cult activity low, not to mention a lot of cult stereotypes are from the 60s and built upon mindless baby boomer excess and dramatic parent attention baiting like 'dropping out of society.' Not only are we in the post-cult age, we are entering the post-religion age. 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.

prestadige 12y ago
Worth remembering though that there are many cultish aspects to the mainstream, e.g. political movements fight tooth and nail to influence what young children are taught at school.
- briantakita 12y ago
  Same with technology choices & favored practices.
- gwern 12y ago
  > there are many cultish aspects to the mainstream Quite literally, given how many aspects of 'cults' went mainstream. Environmentalism, meditation...
  - zachrose 12y ago
    ...anti-intellectualism, NASCAR...
    - ttctciyf 12y ago
      ... The Iraq war ...
      - briantakita 12y ago
        ... Anything social group that you don't agree with ...
        ttctciyf 12y ago
        ... and which offers illusory salvation (a safer, democratic Iraq, reduced terrorist threat) from spurious ills (WMD, Al Qaeda support by Saddam) delivered by a charismatic leader with access to a divine hotline (Blair, too!) and engages you by blatant falsehood, psychological manipulation and peer pressure ...
        prestadige 12y ago
        No, I think even groups I do on later reflection agree with are acting questionably if they try to influence my early education. They probably think it's usually wrong to do so but they make an exception in the case of their ideas because they consider them uniquely urgent and important. That's just an old mistake. Twas ever thus. The more important an idea is, the more important it is to be able to think freely about it.
at-fates-hands 12y ago
>>> You can engage in a personal spirituality without feeling guilted to show up for social functions (that only seem to empower the leaders of congregations). This. So many people equate spirituality with religion. The deepest things I've learned about spirituality was when I was studying Native American religions and Shamanism. I was brought up Catholic, but it wasn't until I realized my spirituality didn't have to be connected to my religious beliefs that I really started to see the world in a whole new way. It just opened up so many new paths of exploration and understanding. It truly was an "ah-ha!" moment.
- Florin_Andrei 12y ago
  If spirituality was an entirely new term that we invented today, we would call it brain hacking, or consciousness hacking.
javajosh 12y ago
>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 "the pursuit of wealth". Gordon Gecko was a fictional villain in 1987 cinema. Jordan Belfort is a real hero in 2013 cinema. People sense the emptiness of greed, and our nascent popular skepticism prevents them from filling the vacuum. Who can read this riddle? Clearly, we need something to fill the vacuum that religion leaves that is also compatible with our skepticism. What replaces it is not necessarily a religion, but it serves the same purpose: morality and self-restraint. Secular humanism is clearly not enough.
- api 12y ago
  > 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 in the future.
  - borkabrak 12y ago
    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.
    - api 12y ago
      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 statistics. The more rational your worldview is the less you reproduce, to the point that most very secular nations are in demographic decline. Difficult investments in the future such as child rearing seem to be replaced by an evolutionary dead end Epicurean lifestyle. I'm not arguing that everyone should join the Quiverfull movement, but it bothers me that fertility is inversely correlated to a rational worldview. Darwin is clearly on the side of fanaticism and superstition, in that if there is any genetic basis to these traits we are strongly selecting for them. Even if there is no genetic basis, beliefs propagate most strongly from parent to child so we are certainly culturally selecting for fanatical religious ideologies in the long term. A higher proportion of tomorrow's children will be the product of today's fundamentalists. I suspect this is why severe religious ideologies are historically so powerful. Those that didn't hold them left fewer descendants. I see a connection there -- between deep pessimism and lack of fertility -- that points to some kind of psychological vacuum related to motivation and hope. Seems like when you take away myth, you take away teleological action. Actions belong to the realm of narrative -- storytelling -- not fact. This is as true in the secular realm as in the religious -- progress is a myth, not a fact. In the extreme it takes on a quasi-religious tone in the form of "the Singularity" and similar ideas. Even companies have myths, and startup founders often have to put on at least a little bit of a guru hat. You also seem to take away the idea that one can stand up against overpowering adversity. It's certainly true that humanity faces difficult challenges, but those who have secular worldviews seem to easily default to hopelessness the minute their logical analysis turns up a probability of success that seems less than 50/50. Perhaps there's something adaptive about the craziness of faith... it causes us to actually try in the face of seemingly insurmountable adversity.
paxtonab 12y ago
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!
jeffdavis 12y ago
"I think religiosity and cults rise when secular society fails at something." I think it's more useful to think of it as a psychology hack that can strike almost anyone. Not any person at any time, but any person at one of their vulnerable moments.
thisrod 12y ago
After reading the relevant chapter of Cialdini's Influence, my take is that it's easy for cult leaders to brainwash people because they've read it too. And, of course, because they're evil, greedy bastards. Presumably, many people could do it but don't.
pjc50 12y ago
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)

prestadige 12y ago

Worth remembering though that there are many cultish aspects to the mainstream, e.g. political movements fight tooth and nail to influence what young children are taught at school.

briantakita 12y ago
Same with technology choices & favored practices.
gwern 12y ago
> there are many cultish aspects to the mainstream Quite literally, given how many aspects of 'cults' went mainstream. Environmentalism, meditation...
- zachrose 12y ago
  ...anti-intellectualism, NASCAR...
  - ttctciyf 12y ago
    ... The Iraq war ...
    - briantakita 12y ago
      ... Anything social group that you don't agree with ...
      - ttctciyf 12y ago
        ... and which offers illusory salvation (a safer, democratic Iraq, reduced terrorist threat) from spurious ills (WMD, Al Qaeda support by Saddam) delivered by a charismatic leader with access to a divine hotline (Blair, too!) and engages you by blatant falsehood, psychological manipulation and peer pressure ...
      - prestadige 12y ago
        No, I think even groups I do on later reflection agree with are acting questionably if they try to influence my early education. They probably think it's usually wrong to do so but they make an exception in the case of their ideas because they consider them uniquely urgent and important. That's just an old mistake. Twas ever thus. The more important an idea is, the more important it is to be able to think freely about it.

at-fates-hands 12y ago

>>> You can engage in a personal spirituality without feeling guilted to show up for social functions (that only seem to empower the leaders of congregations). This. So many people equate spirituality with religion. The deepest things I've learned about spirituality was when I was studying Native American religions and Shamanism. I was brought up Catholic, but it wasn't until I realized my spirituality didn't have to be connected to my religious beliefs that I really started to see the world in a whole new way. It just opened up so many new paths of exploration and understanding. It truly was an "ah-ha!" moment.

Florin_Andrei 12y ago
If spirituality was an entirely new term that we invented today, we would call it brain hacking, or consciousness hacking.

javajosh 12y ago

>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 "the pursuit of wealth". Gordon Gecko was a fictional villain in 1987 cinema. Jordan Belfort is a real hero in 2013 cinema. People sense the emptiness of greed, and our nascent popular skepticism prevents them from filling the vacuum. Who can read this riddle? Clearly, we need something to fill the vacuum that religion leaves that is also compatible with our skepticism. What replaces it is not necessarily a religion, but it serves the same purpose: morality and self-restraint. Secular humanism is clearly not enough.

api 12y ago
> 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 in the future.
- borkabrak 12y ago
  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.
  - api 12y ago
    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 statistics. The more rational your worldview is the less you reproduce, to the point that most very secular nations are in demographic decline. Difficult investments in the future such as child rearing seem to be replaced by an evolutionary dead end Epicurean lifestyle. I'm not arguing that everyone should join the Quiverfull movement, but it bothers me that fertility is inversely correlated to a rational worldview. Darwin is clearly on the side of fanaticism and superstition, in that if there is any genetic basis to these traits we are strongly selecting for them. Even if there is no genetic basis, beliefs propagate most strongly from parent to child so we are certainly culturally selecting for fanatical religious ideologies in the long term. A higher proportion of tomorrow's children will be the product of today's fundamentalists. I suspect this is why severe religious ideologies are historically so powerful. Those that didn't hold them left fewer descendants. I see a connection there -- between deep pessimism and lack of fertility -- that points to some kind of psychological vacuum related to motivation and hope. Seems like when you take away myth, you take away teleological action. Actions belong to the realm of narrative -- storytelling -- not fact. This is as true in the secular realm as in the religious -- progress is a myth, not a fact. In the extreme it takes on a quasi-religious tone in the form of "the Singularity" and similar ideas. Even companies have myths, and startup founders often have to put on at least a little bit of a guru hat. You also seem to take away the idea that one can stand up against overpowering adversity. It's certainly true that humanity faces difficult challenges, but those who have secular worldviews seem to easily default to hopelessness the minute their logical analysis turns up a probability of success that seems less than 50/50. Perhaps there's something adaptive about the craziness of faith... it causes us to actually try in the face of seemingly insurmountable adversity.

paxtonab 12y ago

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!

jeffdavis 12y ago

"I think religiosity and cults rise when secular society fails at something." I think it's more useful to think of it as a psychology hack that can strike almost anyone. Not any person at any time, but any person at one of their vulnerable moments.

thisrod 12y ago

After reading the relevant chapter of Cialdini's Influence, my take is that it's easy for cult leaders to brainwash people because they've read it too. And, of course, because they're evil, greedy bastards. Presumably, many people could do it but don't.

pjc50 12y ago

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)