I was waiting for the part that would make it clear what was being satirized, and it never came? I feel like I'm missing context?
IMO, the text may be seen as a piece of advertising for a fictional "de-programming" (like they call it) treatment from a cult. However, it's written for an abstract general kind of cult, described only in terms of what is common about several cults. It's not specific about anything. Just like well done cold reading: it's right, but unspecific.
I believe the idea is that you identify some of the things you're doing in your life as a cult (guided by the general features given in the text) and pay more attention to them. The text, however, is vague enough to classify a lot of things as cults, even though you/I/we may believe these aren't.
This line stood out to me and seems very apt in these days. For ex, how it's now normal to go after people's jobs directly via social media pressure tactics or business's revenue (and subsequently their employees jobs) via Visa/mastercard/paypal/ad buyers/etc, merely for stepping out of line from mainstream opinions... as Wikileaks and many others experienced.
Making society more resilient to cult-like behaviour is always a good thing. Even when these tactics might benefit your pet beliefs, it's rarely worth the trade-offs and usually backfires.
When the system you promote exclusively benefits a particular ideology or exclusive set of organizations that's usually a good indicator it's cultish.
We are not designed or evolved or whatever to prowl alone, because it will always be in our nature to come together and some will exploit this. And so while you stand alone they will bring all their machinations to consume your very being.
Would you really be that strong to stand alone against all those that would look to exploit you.
And there's no particularly clear way to combat this. The internet has only made this worse. Now ever smaller groups can coordinate extremely effectively and instantaneously, while also simultaneously working to create the perception of far greater numbers than actually possessed.
It's brilliantly subversive and makes you think.
Maybe they're talking about the child genital mutilation.
The point is that they're telling the subject of the story (in second person so it's addressed to "you") that you're in a cult and they're going to rehabilitate you - but as you read on, you might notice that the rehabilitation is describing, you guessed it, a cult!
It's not actually making a comment that everybody is actually in institutions that are like cults or anything, that's just part of the (satirical) brainwashing that the cult is using to bring people in.
> They make you depend solely on others within the community for your every need...
Is followed by:
> We have partnerships with organizations that can connect you to schooling, work, housing, and medical care...
Perhaps I missed a meta level of satire with every cult starting out this way, however, but the point seems more about our existing cults.
As a bit of a libertarian, this struck me as anti-Statist (i.e. modern secular states are basically cults)
That might be directly related to the kind of person who joins a libertarian community (as seems to be the case with Mensa), or it might be an artifact of the fact that women hate libertarianism.
I wouldn't expect the Libertarian Party to become fascist but crazier things have happened.
There is an answer, I found it outside of the story.
But this a a good hint.
I incorrectly chose the wrong X from these lines. It does narrow it down. The "buttons" threw me. Still not sure what they represent.
Which is precisely what a cult leader would want their victims to think: "Nobody is free, so stay in the group!"
So it's funny x 2
The only real way out, it seems, is to create another cult with more humane values. Or go it alone, or with a small group of friends.
Bad news, one institution has monopoly rights on that role: Democracy. And if you have a problem with Democracy, you probably have unwittingly become a member of a cult (far right, likely) and indoctrinated into believing conspiracy theories.
Now: back to work, citizen.
You will experience unpleasant feelings here. Feelings your cult has told you are of the devil.
Part of our program involves exposing you to the idea that there are very rarely easy answers in life. People suffer for no reason. You will suffer, and have suffered, for no reason.
But people can also do great things for no reason, or rather unmotivated by some promise of godly exaltation or gift in a theoretical afterlife.But if they think this kind of thinking is directly linked to religion, then it's just ignorance and bigotry. Consider the folloing quote: "Everything happens for a reason. Sometimes the reason is you're stupid and make bad decisions." The people I know who most strongly connect with that quote have all been (right-wing) atheists.
By contrast, consider the following quotes:
'As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him."' (John 9:1-2)
'Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.' (James 1:2-4)
'In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.' (1 Peter 6-7)
'Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live! They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.' (Hebrews 12:7-11)
In other words, Christianity says that far from suffering always being a punishment from God for bad behavior, it is sometimes a gift from God to accomplish a greater purpose.
So consider three hypothetical universes:
1. Nearly all your suffering is your fault; the result of God's wrath and/or the natural consequence of your own bad choices.
2. Most suffering is pointless. It has no meaning or benefit or blame; it just happens.
3. Suffering can be valuable. It is allowed by God because it achieves higher purposes; we as individuals , and the universe at large, are both better off because of the suffering.
I agree with the authors, that universe #2 (if true) is better than universe #1. But universe #3 -- the universe actually described by Christianity -- is even better.
Besides, you know... Hell, lakes of sulfur and eternal damnation.
For those interested in knowing the actual Christian teaching on the topic of hell, just be aware that this comment is completely incorrect.
The above comment is reflective of one such interpretation of hell. Not an exclusive interpretation, but still a valid one.
This is only technically true in the sense that the weakest straw man still gets a seat at the table.
My comment is directed only to people who would be interested in investigating this topic with a sense of proportion. If you bring a sense of proportion to the investigation you will rule out fringe theologies and converge on a Christian teaching that looks nothing like the original canard.
If you want to claim that your Christian beliefs don't include that definition of hell, you’d have a much better argument. Just don’t claim you speak for all Christians…
This seems fishy to me. I'm sure you know (or know of) many people who you label in the category of devout Christians who believe in the existence of hell. It is a biblical teaching after all. But have you pressure tested their views in deep conversation to see if they hold to a 'literal fire and brimstone' view?
If you have, and feel confident that you are accurately representing their view, than I happily stand corrected. Just know that it doesn't track at all with my own direct experience, nor my studied understanding of the doctrinal teachings of the major Christian denominations.
> Just don’t claim you speak for all Christians…
This is an example of a statement that is so true it's devoid of information content. I would assume that a reasonable adult who is interested in investigating the bases for the theological doctrine of hell, is also well aware that there is denominational diversity of views within the faith.
The real problem with the 'not all Christians agree' public service announcements are that they have the insidious effect of leading people to believe that there is no subset of teachings on which Christians do agree and can speak coherently.
I know it's not your intention to undermine Christianity through this relativistic dilution and you are just trying to make sure the 'fire and brimstone and sulfur lake' view gets a fair hearing, but I do want to make the point that this pseudo-sophisticated bad faith argument is out there.
"But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” Revelation 21:8
"If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it from you. It is better for you to enter life with one eye, than to have two eyes and be cast into the fiery hell." Matthew 18:9
"And the beast was seized, and with him the false prophet who performed the signs in his presence, by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image; these two were thrown alive into the lake of fire which burns with brimstone." Revelation 19:20
You do believe the bible literally, right? Because if you were trying to avoid hell with your beliefs, and don't believe in biblical literalism, a large faction of Christians are certain that you will also be going to hell; a burning one. Take your pick which beliefs will save you, sure sounds important to make sure you don't accidentally choose the wrong one...
A rather large fraction of Christians don’t believe in literalism, and think it is not only a doctrinal error in itself, but also the source of numerous doctrinal errors.
For example, Jesus says: 'You are the salt of the earth.' He doesn't literally mean his followers are Sodium Chloride molecules.
Diving deeper in one specific interpretive case, the Roman Catholic Church teaches that the Bible is Inerrant but the 'literal' interpretation is not always to be prefered.
This should be obvious because the Bible is not a book it's a library, and how you read it depends on which section of the library you are in.
It's a topic worth understanding and studying with seriousness. Otherwise you'll be prone to interpret the teaching as just a capricious punishment from God for some bad things that you've done.
My original post was in response to a snarky comment made along those lines but it looks like that context has been lost.
You could argue that some people don't emphasize the worst bits, but trying to backpedal on Hell would certainly mean that you're going to there to my family, and they're not even particularly fundamentalist.
Many people I know who dislike religion say that if there is a god, they wish he would leave them alone. They want to live in a world where god does not exist.
This is what Hell is. Hell is simply a place where god is not, completely separate from god and his influence.
The reason Christianity describes Hell as a place of suffering is because god is the sole source of good in the universe. So Hell, a place without god, is a place without any good.
On the other hand there's atheists like Terry Pratchett who described himself as “rather angry with God for not existing".
Many Christians would likely take issue with this description because they don't want to be on the wrong side of the dirty word cult.
But I personally don't think it's much of a problem if the person you worship is Jesus of Nazareth.
I have not been pressured to cut off from friends or family, regardless of their belief systems; I am not controlled by guilt; and I genuinely try to engage the best I can with other belief systems. I'm pretty sure I could make a case for atheism at least as strongly as you could.
> In other words, Christianity says that far from suffering always being a punishment
I fail to see how the first statement is supposed to imply that any suffering is necessarily a punishment for some reason. For example, consider a despot whose stupid decisions only have bad effects on its powerless flock. And even it can bring the collapse of its society in distant future in which the despot no longer exists. This gives a perfectly reasonable description of events without implying that the despot either suffered in any moment of its life.
Also there is a difference between believing in causality and certitude that an absolute rationalism is reachable by humans.
> I agree with the authors, that universe #2 (if true) is better than universe #1. But universe #3 -- the universe actually described by Christianity -- is even better.
Is there any religion out there that propose an univocal description universe among which all its faithful agree on? Divergence in Christianity interpretations was often presented as a justification for war between Christians themselves.
Is there any belief system anywhere such that everyone allegedly on the same side believes exactly the same thing? Does atheism propose a univocal description of the universe which all the "unfaithful" agree on?
Do all physicists agree on everything? Do all economists agree on everything? Do all liberals (or all conservatives) agree 100% on every policy? Does a diversity of belief in any other area of life mean that the whole think is bunk, and that nobody is right about anything?
The world is a complicated place, and the truth is hard to find; moreover, even the best of us distort reality because we find the truth uncomfortable. That doesn't mean that there's no truth, or that some answers aren't better that other other answers. This applies as much to religion as to anything else in the world.
Much like physic, it doesn't prescribe what way is supposedly better to behave. This probably helps much on having broad consensus on very precise statements.
Economics, surely, is closer to a cult. It runs some quantification over the process, but there is always some core doctrine which prescribe what are the relevant metrics. Should biodiversity enter in the equation? Should the feeling of fulfillment of operators be considered? Is animal suffering a concern? Should next human generation be given a sustainable society?
Your one concrete accusation is about people "exiting organizations that do not allow you to leave with your dignity intact". But that's 1) not specific to religious organizations 2) not a feature of all religious organizations. Try leaving the Chinese Communist Party, for instance, without leaving China. And while I'm sure that my Christian friends and family would be disappointed if I became an atheist, I don't think their disappointment and opposition would really be that much more than you'd get from your atheist friends and family if you decided to become a Christian.
I know that there certainly are religious organizations where that's not the case -- where they're much more willing to use guilt, or social ostracism, or even harassment to try to punish you for leaving; but that's just wrong. That's never how Jesus operated.
Put it this way. Are people harmed by the current medical system? Yes. Should we completely get rid of all doctors and hospitals and everything? No -- we should strive to root out the bad actors and correct the systems and culture which allow harm to take place.
Are people harmed by bad police departments? Yes. Should we completely get rid of all police departments? Some people say yes, but I disagree. We should strive to root out the bad actors and correct the systems and culture which allow the harm to take place.
Are people harmed by bad governmental policies? Yes. Should we completely get rid of the government? Again, some people say yes, but I disagree. I think we should strive to root out bad actors and correct the systems and culture which allow the harm to take place.
Jesus' bitterest enemies were the religious leaders of his day: and what really made him angry was the harm they caused to ordinary people. (Some quotes at the bottom.) Insofar as the "harm" you have in mind is genuine harm, it's probably something Jesus has already objected to.
Getting back to "ignorant and bigoted": I said that if the think that "I'm suffering so I must have done something bad" has a 1-1 link with religion, they are ignorant and bigoted.
They're ignorant because they're wrong in both directions: Many atheists do think that way, and many religious people do not think that way.
It's not bigoted be ignorant: if you don't know that many religions teach that God allows good people to suffer to accomplish higher goals, then you don't know. But if you judge people without actually taking the time to find out what they actually believe, then you are bigoted.
---
Here are some things Jesus said about some of the religious people of his day. No Christian should read these without taking a good look at their own life to make sure they aren't implicated as well:
"Woe to you, [religious people], you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.
"Woe to you, [religious people], you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.
"...Woe to you, [religious people], you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.
"Woe to you, [religious people], you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.
"Woe to you, [religious people], you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.
"...You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?"
Everything your parents, your family; your community and your society taught you.
The heuristics that keep you navigating life without having to scrutinize every single choice from first principles.
Thanks for these words. Scrutinizing every single choice from first principles is exactly what i promote and what i find people are deeply resistant to, yet i haven't had this description of what's happening until now.
Decision fatigue will catch up with anyone who lives like that soon enough.
Time is a finite resource. Don’t waste it on perfectionism.
My guess is what's viewed as decision fatigue could be unaddressed emotional issues, such as automated judgment/criticism, fear avoidance, normalized disempowerment narratives (which is related to cultivating a growth-oriented mindset, as opposed to one that says "this is just how i am and it can never be different"). Practicing radical acceptance and ignorance, as well as maintaining a playful attitude toward what I'm doing have been monumental to deeply examining myself. All this helps with perfectionism, which i also stopped practicing. Attempting to be thorough and comprehensive in the application of principles to one's life is not an effort in perfectionism; perfectionism is more about how one approaches doing such a thing. I think another term for what I'm referring to here is "monasticism."
These days, I'm also caring for a 4-year old while trying to examine everything we do from a generational trauma perspective. I no longer believe in ego depletion and consider it to be justification for people getting tired of stuffing/processing emotions that arise in the course of things, and potentially needs they're not aware of going habitually unmet. This brings me to another monumental thing i think has helped me in living a principled and intentional life: learning nonviolent communication and developing an awareness of feelings and universal human needs. To my knowledge,there are no studies examining the impact of these practices on decision-making.
I can say this: choosing actions/things based on what I think will meet my needs vs deny them is easy in a society where most decisions aren't oriented toward needs. There are learning challenges along the way, since there can often be no options present that effectively meet needs, so acceptance of the situation and creativity to come up with new options are both really important skills to develop.
As an aside, ego depletion and decision fatigue seem to be concepts without a lot of reproducibility behind them, or with much smaller effect sizes than previously reported.
You should read my comments through an objective lens. I try to be as neutral/scientific/objective as possible with my words and I say this from my perspective as scientist/engineer.
The world is far too complex for any human to be able to model it at high fidelity; never mind compute the 1st, 2nd and n-th order consequences of any given choice on a long-enough time scale. It's one of the many reasons why we conceptually distinguish malice from ignorance - we are only human, not omnipotent/omniscient gods.
In practical terms when modeling dynamic systems there's the concept of Lyapunov time [1] - the timescale at which your "predictions" (first principles reasoning) falls apart.
None of this is meant to undermine individual attempts at being better; more thoughtful humans, but it's absolutely meant to discourage all pursuits of human perfection/exceptionalism. Holding oneself to impossibly high standards is equally psychologically harmful. Pragmatism before idealism.
My hell has been living with ADHD and undiagnosed autism and CPTSD/PTSD and addiction in an addiction-oriented ableist society. I lucked out on addiction, cause i got addicted to gathering/hoarding/consuming/analyzing/problem identifying/ problem solving/synthesizing information early on in life. Every addiction builds superpowers and most of mine are around metacognition. Recovery for me meant a very broad view of addiction and recovery were needed, since we ARE information. My recovery is an un-compiled/-published case study in addiction with unique and meaningful contributions to the field. Looking forward to doing that work once i get my family stabilized in a supportive community (anarchistically nurturing a new person means throwing out a lot of parenting guidance and can be very brutal without a like-minded community in close proximity, and takes my whole day practically every day). And I thoroughly enjoy my life as it is. We're working to start a carnival dedicated to learning to confront and heal through trauma and it means building a community of people normalizing loving intimate relationships through openly practicing vulnerability.
On a cloudless night, go to the last rest stop before Furnace Creek. There you will find...
Just a fun joke on the societal norms around you.
It was everything.