cae_jones
15d ago
I'd say it's more "emotionally abusive MLM" than Jim Jones. It isn't the affection that gets me; it's how much it reminds me of the legendary Bay-area Rationalist cuddle culture.
But mostly, after attending a couple workshops and listening to the other people there, I'm increasingly convinced that it's stoking suffering while claiming to improve situations, kinda like what therapy has become, only worse by using charismatic church tactics and emotional intensity to convince people it feels amazing and must therefore be working.
cae_jones
15d ago
Yeah. I'd describe it as slightly LDS-Flavored mystical hippy stuff that is totally not new age, for real you guys.
The main thing it reminds me of is discount Scientology, but way less scientology about it. The guy mentions his books, services, and other workshops ... occasionally. It has the structure of a lot of 30-50min Youtube ads, where they tell you something cool's coming, then spend half an hour on vague anecdotes, but there are also exercises (which are actually more scary than the part where the guy heard his toddler say he was Jesus, once, and did everything short of saying outright that he believes it, still, decades later).
What makes it work for the participants, I think, is a mix of insistent but meaningless afirmations (formally showering people with complements, talking about enough universal love and transcendant joy that he had to have met the cactus man in the 60s or 70s, telling people how awesome their spirit-realm self is). And there's the thing where people are encouraged to work through their issues with conversations crafted to get them crying and/or screaming by the end, incidentally revealing some very sensitive personal trauma at the top of their lungs to the whole room in the process, and ... OK, it's clearly not actually therapudic. Rather, it's getting people high on intense emotional expression, and using that to get them hooked.
Mainly, though, the people who stick around are clearly emotionally or relationally vulnerable, or the boyfriends that said vulnerable girlfriends convinced to join them. My friend says she's grown a lot and improved since she started going, but her resentment toward her family feels like it's grown (I also heard her complaining about how they're encouraging her to get out of it and move back in with siblings, the latter part of which would bother me more if her entire social circle weren't made of people involved in the thing), she's gone from the anxious but determined and genuinely positive person from a few years ago to a generally grumpy and discontent person using "inner child" / "energy work" things to cope. Other people were in much darker places, and it seems like the workshops are the only outlet they practically have, but it does nothing to improve the underlying issues, and, IMO, trains them to get high off expressing their suffering and just kinda hoping that enough love-bombing and emotionality-induced ecstacy will get them to project a more positive countenance for all the people they're encouraged to invite.
Also, a dad brought his 12-year-old daughter, who is already getting pressured by women in the group to come to "the awakening" in a couple months. Cue the first time I've heard a 12-year-old use the "I'm only 12" excuse totry and end an awkward conversation (which backfired and got her showered in more encouragement).
I tried going along with the exercises to see what would happen, but since I don't have daddy/mommy issues and get the impression that Spider-man's mantra was not going to fit in with all the "I AM PERFECT! EXPRESS LOVE!" speeches, and I already suck at communication period, that ... did not go well. I can't theatrically get in front of everyone and loudly weep about regretting ... Hold on, I think I just realized why I'm immune to the bullshit. Namely because it's the distilled and unrestrained essence of the hippy style stuff that was pervasive in 90s edutainment and motivational PSAs, turned up to 9001, and I took that stuff seriously in elementary school, only to unwittingly become a jerk by 11, and spend the next decade progressively recovering from the problematic stuff that was mixed in with my arrogant teenaged worldview. They might have gotten me before, let's say 2010 or so.
Mostly, at this point, it seems like 90% of my friend's life now revolves around this thing, every day she talks about how brilliant the leader is (he emphatically is not and 90+% of what he's said has been garbage at best, but, uh, a less toxic way of communicating that would be helpful ... ), she's taking on a leadership role and started a coaching business, and lost other friends who she brought in and crashed out hard by this point in the process. Also, I haven't asked her how she found it, yet, but she somehow revealed on the second night that her boyfriend's ex (who he was dating whhe first got with her but told neither woman about this) was there. And the only interactions I've any evidence of between her and him is one conversation (facilitated by another member, over the phone) and a few texts. She's actually in my hotel right now, because she let another member have her bed and couldn't get her boyfriend to host her for the night. (Bro, if he'll cheat with you, he'll cheat on you. And she desperately wants to get married.) Everything she wants mostou of this, as she expressed it to me, is directly harmed by her being involved, and I have no idea whatsoever how to deal with this.
cae_jones
18d ago
So... I'm in the Salt Lake City Area visiting a friend. She's invited me to a workshop, but was worried about doing so because multiple people she's invited before have said it's culty, and some got very upset and went no-contact.
I have not gotten to the workshop yet (that's tonight), but the half-day and ... the past half hour, that I've spent with her and her housemates has ... made it seem very likely that the Culty vibes people were getting were accurate.
Mostly though, I'm concerned about the teenager I'm sitting here listening to get stressed out by all this creepy emotional exercise stuff. She's seemed pretty stressed out the entire time I've been here, and I feel like I should be doing something about some part of this but I can't quite identify what specifically to do that would help.
Also all the dads in the house are worrying me. It is difficult to organize this into the kind of details that would get the point across. The ways people talk about feelings and conversations, the way touch is used... the way both my friend and the afore-mentioned teen hugged me when we parted at the train station last night was disturbingly intense for goodbye hugs (also I have known the younger one like 24h at this moment).
I also want to continue sneakily writing this comment because I was casually invited to sit in on my friend and the teenager's dad's emotional pressurethon and I am ever-so-slightly uncomfortable listening to this weird brute-force ... therapy? Or whatever you'd call it. Which means I'm missing most of what's being said because it feels rude to listen closely but I'm also trying to understand the situation enough to problem-solve ...
... Help?
I get the impression that the DR largely is the antiwar left, who got kicked out of the left because reasons.
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