To Foil a Soul Trap

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Interesting! I see that Eric Raymond has a similar take on large group awareness training to mine:

What makes outfits like this truly dangerous is that they aren't entirely wrong. That is, their theory of how human beings tick (a jigger of Neuro-Linguistic Programing, a dash of cognitive behavior therapy, a few skooches of transactional analysis, and generally a substratum of Zen-by-any-other-name) actually works well enough that if you do the process you are in fact likely to clean up a bunch of the shit in your life. Even Scientology, the biggest and nastiest of the cult groups traveling as "therapy", teaches some useful things - Hubbard's model of the "reactive mind" is pretty shrewd psychology. [bold added]
Although Raymond is far more generous than I am about what he includes in the "not wrong" column, he is correct that it  is the "bait" by which souls are trapped. (He is also more optimistic than I about the amount of good it can do, even in the short term.) Here is what I said about a similar attempt, years ago, to induct me into a cult:
[The teachings are] an unholy mixture of food and poison, the food serving as bait and being offered from the hand of someone a potential customer trusts. The program, like some that advertise honestly, is a mixture of valid psychological techniques (I recognized some from cognitive psychology.) and some very loony and even dangerous ideas from Eastern, modern, and new-age philosophies.
There is more to this kind of soul trap than appealing (for a few moments, anyway) to reason. As one might expect of any dishonest huckster with an intuitive grasp of psychology, there are other irrational methods of persuasion at work -- such as peer pressure -- in such settings.

Raymond understandably left after twenty minutes. I would have, too, for all the similar warning signs I saw. However, I sat through for longer, anyway, because the problem of this cult was much closer to home for me, and I needed -- or so I thought -- to collect the ammunition of factual information to untrap a few others I cared about. Interestingly, I didn't need even that. Just voicing the suspicion that what we were dealing with was a cult proved to be enough to overcome the problem posed by the fact that someone we trusted had introduced us to it.

Sometimes, even naming the obvious can help overcome an untruth.

-- CAV

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Gus,
Funny enough, I read ESR's post on the topic before coming to your blog today. I had followed a link to his Gramscian Damage essay - I had read it previously but thought to refresh - and then thought to myself, "I wonder what he's written recently." Voila! (Or Viola, for the orchestrally inclined.)

I once witnessed this approach in Japan watching the Toitsu Kyokai (Unification Church aka Moonies) in their recruitment efforts except, in that case, the entire congregation was focused on just two individuals. As you can imagine, given the Japanese reluctance to go against social pressure, it was highly effective. Within 5 minutes of it starting, I was wise to their methodology and within 20 minues their 'converts' were already conforming.

There is a certain psychological high that comes from conformity with a crowd. The most intense example I've experienced was being in the audience in an Olympic event when the US Competitor won the Gold Medal. I had never experienced such euphoria and given that I came from an intensely religious background, that is saying a great deal. I can certainly understand the susceptibility of those who have not experienced such a thing, or having experienced it, attribute it to mystical roots; this would go trey-fold for those being targeted for nefarious reasons while vulnerable to manipulation of a common sort due to some recent bereavement or loss.

For those who don't know that emotions are not tools of cognition or who already hew to a mystical worldview, I can see them being co-opted by such practices. I wonder if that is why some people end up being 'serial-cultists', continuously joining different iterations of the same approach to life while learning nothing from the abuses that made them leave prior instances behind them.

c. andrew

Anonymous said...

Oh, and here is Dave Berry's take on a similar experience. I particularly like the ironic use of (TM) - unless he had to do that to avoid an infringement lawsuit. Which would actually be funnier.

http://web.archive.org/web/20021203130105/http:/www.lynxfeather.net/nest/humor/2002/alteredstates.html

c. andrew

Gus Van Horn said...

C.,

"For those who don't know that emotions are not tools of cognition or who already hew to a mystical worldview, I can see them being co-opted by such practices. I wonder if that is why some people end up being 'serial-cultists', continuously joining different iterations of the same approach to life while learning nothing from the abuses that made them leave prior instances behind them."

I think you're on to something here. I have observed serial cultists individually and, as an aggregate, when seeing that the same type of people (and sometimes even the same individual) fall for one cult-lke fad after another. Your question and observations would explain a lot.

Thanks for your comment and, of course for the Dave Barry link. I love his humor and look forward to reading that.

Gus

Jim May said...

Oooh, this was a good one Gus.

First: that religions mix in good and bad was already a familiar idea to me. The use of the good as "bait" is a new angle for me.

I think that idea generalizes beyond religions to any belief system, and can be related to the false "moderate/extreme" opposition, in that when a group dials up the "good" to counteract something like bad publicity, it's often called "moderation" -- and when the dial up the bad stuff that they were after in the first place, they are becoming more "extreme".

c. andrew writes:

"For those who don't know that emotions are not tools of cognition or who already hew to a mystical worldview, I can see them being co-opted by such practices."

I have in the past referred to the Left as AIDS, and primitive religion as the opportunistic infections that capitalize on a culture's decinimated immune system. Those people right there are the result; wide-open, undefended minds with their arbitrary filter disabled, ready to be led into anything.

I wonder if that is why some people end up being 'serial-cultists'

Again, this idea need not involve cults at all, IMO -- it describes anyone who jumps from creed to creed, trying them on like so many trendy outfits, but never settling on one and often ending up a "pox on all their houses" cynic. See Lee Stranahan, who has bounced from Objectivism to David Kelley to Daily Kos Leftism (from which he was freshly excommunicated when I tangled with him) to Breitbart's crew. Not sure where else there is for him to go but the cynic stage, but he's not showing signs of that yet.

Gus Van Horn said...

Jim,

Thanks.

Extending the idea beyond followers of serial cults, it is worthwhile to consider whether leaders of cults bounce around similarly, until they find something that "works" for them.

Gus