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Comment by ryanwaggoner | Hacker News Reader

I recently did the NWTA weekend retreat with the ManKind Project and found it a surprisingly profound experience. I would recommend it for most men I’ve known. Happy to answer any questions anyone has.

I’m not surprised to see so much pushback and gatekeeping here from other men, or suggestions that encouraging men to find spaces to “talk about their feelings” are a radical feminist ploy to subvert true masculinity, but I am saddened by them. That attitude reflects a deep sickness that is at the heart of what makes it so hard to be an authentic, open man in today’s culture. MKP and similar organizations are one of the few healthy forces I see working against this.

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It's a mainstream idea now that masculinity is toxic, so it's not surprising that people are projecting that onto this.

Calling it "New Warrior Training Adventure" comes across as super patronizing. "ManKind" isn't great either. The names alone are surely responsible for much of the pushback that you're seeing.

I did a bit of digging though, trying to keep an open mind, and I was surprised to find that MKP is indeed not a radical program to feminize men.

Their FAQ is pretty informative: https://mankindproject.org/frequently-asked-questions

Their YouTube channel gives a feel for it: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcR01KkQCYfHbzHwBlI8eeg

Basically, it's a small nondenominational religion for woke men. The leaders are a Marine Corps officer, a therapist, and a PhD of "curriculum studies". It's not very surprising to see all the comments here about how profound it was, because it was designed to be a spiritual experience.

It looks like a cult and is certainly weird (nudity is optional), but the leaders aren't getting rich off of it, and you are allowed to leave. There are regular meetings, rituals, a set of shared values, and a drive to recruit more members. It seems like mostly dudes who want to better themselves and the world at large. A lot of it is classic self-help stuff. They advertise NWTA as "Get Ready for a 48 Hour Adventure that Can Transform Your World as a Man", for example.

I think people are right to be skeptical of these types of groups, as they're playing to an audience of disaffected men and trying to improve lives with groupthink and rituals. I'd place MKP somewhere between Scientology and Tony Robbins. Probably a powerful experience in person, but best to avoid it or you might get roped into an organization.

I find the comparisons to cults to be completely bizarre. It's definitely not a cult. Or at least, not a very good one. You can leave if you want, you don't have to participate in anything you don't want to, there's no "drive to recruit more members", or even really to become a member at all, it's staffed by volunteers, there's no central figure or authority like most cults, there's very little pressure to participate after the NWTA beyond encouragement to consider attending the weekly or biweekly groups that the article talks about or perhaps volunteering to staff a future NWTA. Placing it between scientology and Tony Robbins is completely off base imo, but I have no direct experience with either. All I'd say is that if they're trying create a cult to rope people into an organization, they're doing a terrible job of it. And it's not even clear what the goal would be. The suggested monthly donation of $10 to support the nonprofit if you do become a member, which again, they don't really push at all? Seems like a pretty shitty cult to spend decades ramping up.

It's not a cult. Not even est/Landmark is a cult. You could say that it's a movement. I've only been near one cult: Heaven's Gate. And that was something to run away from.

I think you took my comment differently than intended. My fault for phrasing it poorly.

First, you are correct that MKP is not a cult and everything you're saying here checks out with the research I just did into MKP.

What I meant was that it is cult-like in appearance. It's an engineered experience for human bonding and introspection. The members are doing stuff that's out of the ordinary and trying to connect to some deeper spiritual thing. Sometimes people get naked. There's a big wooden phallus used as a talking stick. There's a bunch of oversharing. It's not a cult, but it's not exactly Rotary Club either.

As far as roping you in, of course it's designed for that. The group couldn't grow without getting you to come back. There's a good chance you're going to form bonds with the other people in the group if you do a bunch of emotional stuff with them on a retreat. That's a social situation that I'd much prefer to avoid.

I looked at your HN profile and I see that you're a life coach for freelancers, so you might be less sensitive to what's triggering me about MKP. Don't take this the wrong way, but your site gives me a similar feeling as the MKP stuff. I'm pretty sure I'm your target too, as a developer considering switching to freelance work. I wish I could give you something more useful than "feels scammy, stay away", but that's how it comes across to me. And you're blogging about "mastermind groups", which also give me the same feel. It's possible that I'm just hyper-sensitive, but I think you'll have an easier time getting through to developers if you aren't tripping the alarm that tells me "this is a cult" or "here comes a pitch for an ebook".

As a side note, I wonder if you get many calls from putting your number in your HN profile. That was definitely noticeable and didn't trigger my overactive skepticism at all (even though it's obvious self promotion, it feels authentic).

I hear you, but honestly, that just means you're not the target market. I sell training products and coaching to freelancers of all types, so not really "life coaching". My opinion after selling all types of products and services is that developers are, on average, a terrible market. We know the price of everything and the value of nothing, we value our time way too low, we under-invest in relationship, and we're overly skeptical and critical. Having a marketing message that polarizes people into love/hate is a good thing.

I've no experience with Scientology, except having a college professor who mentioned it occasionally. But I have done lots of work with est/Landmark, and some with NWT, Tony Robbins and NLP. Plus a bunch of random New Age stuff, and lots of psychedelics.

I'd say that NWT was the least aggressive about membership recruiting. And est/Landmark was the most. Because their goal is indeed to have everyone do their work. And they're pretty upfront about it.

Thanks for naming some other similar organizations. I did some searching and just learned that they're called LGATs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large-group_awareness_training

Right, large-group awareness training. The rationale being that we're a lot alike, and can learn from each other. There's typically lots of sharing, interspersed with material from the presenter. And usually, the person who's sharing is the last one to get the learning.

Hoffstadter's I Am a Strange Loop is mostly about the role that self-referential systems arguably play in consciousness. But it also argues that parts of someones consciousness can survive after death in others.

There's a lot of that in Landmark, but from the opposite perspective. That is, there's the insight that we are fundamentally a set of "stored procedures" that we've copied from our parents, family, friends, etc. And especially those that helped us survive traumas. Such as being told that we're wrong. Or being excluded by peers. Or feeling like we're on our own.

So you get that most of the time, you're just running that stuff automatically. But if you can learn to notice that you're doing that, you have an opportunity to choose. That is, you learn to be aware of the machinery.

The bad news, though, is that there's no escaping the machinery. It's an ancient evolutionarily honed thing, and you're running on it. So all you can do is notice.

Wow, you clearly have a wide range of experiences with these things, and I'm curious to hear what you could share.

How would you compare what you personally got out of NWT vs. est/Landmark?

I did NWT and est at about the same time. It was a very stressful time. And I was very unstable. I'm bipolar, and I was teetering between mania and depression. And between anger and self-hate.

From NWT, I mainly got that I was chronically insecure and fearful. And that I covered it up with aggressive edginess. I still get like that sometimes, but I'm never as unconscious about it as I was pre-NWT.

It's hard to summarize what I got from est and Landmark so glibly. A key piece is that the voice in my head isn't me, but rather stuff generated from the machinery. And that listening to it just gets me more of what I often didn't like getting before. So I learned to thank myself for sharing, and then to get in touch with what really mattered to me. As they say, my principles and values. As opposed to the ideals and standards that I'd been programmed with.

I also got lots of training in how to get stuff done. Promises and requests. The importance of tracking progress and performance. The concept that being comes before, and is the key to, doing and having. The stages of projects, and especially the idea that the relationship between effort and results is hugely nonlinear.

Edit: Also, I did NWT for maybe 2-3 years. But I did Landmark actively for over 25 years.

I would love to read everything you would write about this. I'm sure most people here would. I can't believe you've been doing a whole genre of activity for over 25 years that I just learned exists today!

I think that Landmark peaked in the US during the 80s-90s. The last I heard, it was growing the fastest in India and Israel. Werner Erhard did Scientology before starting est, and they never forgave him for recycling some of their stuff. And it's arguable that they were behind efforts to demonize est/Landmark, and paint it as a cult.

I do recommend it. But it's crucial to keep in mind that sharing your experience of the work, and encouraging others to participate, is an integral part of it. It's true that relationships of all sorts work better with people who have done the work. So there's some self-interest in sharing.

The courses themselves generally run from Friday evening through Sunday evening. About 12 hours per day, with breaks for lunch and dinner. Back in the day, they'd run a lot later, basically until everyone got the day's distinctions. But that's mellowed since the 90s.

For example, homework assignments involve sharing with family and coworkers, and inviting them to an evening session the following Friday. At the evening session aka graduation, guests spend some time with the main group, and then go to small introduction sessions.

Point of logic: it's a mainstream idea that there exists a type of masculinity that is toxic (strict subset) not that all masculinity is toxic.

Yeah, "toxic masculinity", but I can't name another type of masculinity that's in mainstream awareness. Can you?

If you google for "masculinity", "toxic masculinity" is the first thing that comes up. I'd never heard of "victorian masculinity" before, but that and "harmful masculinity" were the only other types I could easily find. Google also helpfully suggested "The culture of masculinity and its negative impacts on men" as a recent PBS Newshour segment that might interest me.

If you put the words next to each other for long enough, and you never see anything about "positive masculinity" or "altruistic masculinity" (which I just made up because I couldn't find any real examples), then you're going to create a culture that associates masculinity with toxicity. From my point of view, that's been happening for a few years.

The idea that brought masculinity into mainstream discussion was "there exists a type of masculinity that is toxic", but the way the public seems to have internalized it is "masculinity is toxic".

Incredibly late reply.

I agree with your concern about "toxic masculinity". However, I think creating a positive term to coexist with it is unhelpful.

Being masculine is always a good thing. When I was young, I was taught a certain set of things about being a man. Yes, masculinity implies strength. (Not necessarily physical!) However, abuse of that strength is not masculine.

Creating a term like "altruistic masculinity" implies that masculinity is a neutral thing that can be good or bad.

Expecting this kind of nuance (or any nuance, really) from the mainstream is hopeful thinking. Everything seems to collapse into simple viewpoints after awhile.

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