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Morley wrote:It remains that way until, one day, his wife asks him, "Why do you do spend so much time doing this, Bertrand?" then "And why did you, here at the end of your life, decide to become a painter?"

Hearing these questions, Dr Russell is, at first, flummoxed. He has given almost no time to contemplating to his own motivations.

It's rare we get your psychological insights, Morley, so really enjoying this. I can't hold a candle to your knowledge here, but allow me to nuance my theory of lying, beginning with your observation.

I made the point that the testimony narrative doesn't seem to fit the actual testimony experience, members are broadly aware of this, but the testimony tradition rolls forth powered by Mormon culture itself, not necessarily the leaders making demands. For now I have to throw out BKPism.

That Dr. Russell's explanations for himself are ad hoc reminds me of the first stimulus that got me here, and this is not ad hoc as of today, this has been on my mind for years. Dennett's Stalinist theory of perceptions. Perception isn't immediacy, it's a staged verdict. Likewise, Dr. Russell's explanation for his fascinations are after the fact, and perhaps had he been asked the question on another day in another mood, his answer would have been entirely different.

I think Dennett's insights are some of the most interesting in phil mind, but I don't know what to do with them. I can't convince myself that pain is a Stalinist trial. However, it struck me long ago that something like spirituality, sans DMT, sans intensive stimuli to evoke emotional responses, such as I believed to be the general case in Mormonism, that spiritual experiences in context with the expectations of testimony bearing could very much be explained by a Stalinist trial of the mind.

That was thought 1.

I can't properly credit thought 2 as It's something I scanned online in a psychology paper one day and then couldn't find it again. The observation being made as I recall it, was that facets of religious culture mirror the social phenomena of a down zipper. In polite society, we pretend we don't see it and expect the same courtesy be afforded to us should we be in the position. Substitute the testimony bearer and receiver here and that's the basic model I have in mind, and you can see where dishonesty is nuanced.

I have to go now, so that isn't much of an explanation but I tend to ramble so maybe it's better to leave it at this for now.

Marcus wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 20, 2023 8:34 pm

But of course you would think that.

Because we have been down this road so many times before, with you misreading what I write and attributing to me your two-dimensional readings of my writing. So . . .

Yeah.

makes sense. I still don't agree that defining something as a cult can be simplified to a type of 'buyer's remorse', but it does help to explain that this comment is based on one's experience:

Ah, but if you were paying to attention to everything I wrote on this thread . . . And I never expected you to . . . Then you wouldn’t even bother writing that. So . . .

Yeah.

the end however, the outward, agreed-upon definition of a cult doesn't depend on whether one uses the term to hide embarrassment. If anything, one could argue that the embarrassment expressed actually lends credence to the use of the term 'cult.'

Whose outward, agreed-upon definition? I think the point here is that there is none, and people here are discussing that problem . . . So . . .

Yeah.

Morley wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 20, 2023 8:50 pm

I've not read it, but am aware of her theories on so-called repressed memories and childhood sexual abuse. I'm guessing this is in the same vein.

It is. She wrote this book because the issues are very similar but the topic is less of a hot potato.

Kishkumen wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 21, 2023 12:37 am

Marcus wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 20, 2023 8:34 pm

But of course you would think that.

Because we have been down this road so many times before, with you misreading what I write and attributing to me your two-dimensional readings of my writing. So . . .

Yeah.

makes sense. I still don't agree that defining something as a cult can be simplified to a type of 'buyer's remorse', but it does help to explain that this comment is based on one's experience:

Ah, but if you were paying to attention to everything I wrote on this thread . . . And I never expected you to . . . Then you wouldn’t even bother writing that. So . . .

Yeah.

the end however, the outward, agreed-upon definition of a cult doesn't depend on whether one uses the term to hide embarrassment. If anything, one could argue that the embarrassment expressed actually lends credence to the use of the term 'cult.'

Whose outward, agreed-upon definition? I think the point here is that there is none, and people here are discussing that problem . . . So . . .

Yeah.

you are adorable, dear Reverend. I really am not 'the enemy' though.

Gadianton wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 20, 2023 11:47 pm

99.999999% of what I say on this board would not be acceptable from the perspective of active Utah Mormons. Note, however, that I am Mormon, and it acceptable to me.

Ah, OK. Didn’t know, or we are talking about Mormon in a different sense of the word.

Kishkumen wrote:Yet, criticizing the Church is mere cognitive dissonance? It seems they are doing better than I am, for sure.

My theory about lying is a bit more nuanced than I've illustrated so far. If you're interested, I'm going to get into that in my response to Morley. the BKP theory was a great callout on your part, it's a can of worms for my theory though; not sure how to deal with it.

I think it is a cognitive dissonance. Mere? There is no “mere” cognitive dissonance. The forces that lead to conversion are serious. The outcome is consequential. Not sure where “mere” is coming from.

Marcus wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 21, 2023 12:40 am

you are adorable, dear Reverend. I really am not 'the enemy' though.

You’re a peach, too. When did I call you an enemy?

Those two-dimensional readings.

Me oh my.

PG wrote: t seems to me that we have subliminal machinery in our minds that does a lot of this pre-logical work without us consciously noticing. Cultish thinking, I think, must be a kind of glitch in how this machinery works—something like cancerous growth, where a lot of the same stuff goes on that also goes on in healthy metabolism, but important limits are missing.

If cults are analogous to tumours, then probably the analog of growth is resiliency—the resistance of a world view to change. We all need a certain amount of resiliency; we can't be experiencing traumatic conversions every few minutes because every funny crinkle in a Corn Flake opens up whole new worlds and makes us reassess all our implicit assumptions. This resiliency is overgrown, in a cult, though.

I like this point, but rather than liken it to a tumor, i would argue cults (eventually) come to rely upon conditioning-nurture- that starts at birth. This has the same effect as your tumor analogy, but it's much more straightforward regarding causality.

It also encompasses your idea of resiliency of cultish thinking, again in a very straightforward way. Conditioning from birth has a resiliency that's difficult to deny. Of course getting a cult to this point requires extreme isolation and a lengthy time period of a focus on many births, maybe like Utah Mormonism? Hmm..

PG wrote:Cultish thinking, I think, must be a kind of glitch in how this machinery works—something like cancerous growth, where a lot of the same stuff goes on that also goes on in healthy metabolism, but important limits are missing.

Interesting. To me cultish thinking resonates with our deepest and most tribal impulses. In a certain context, cultish thinking offers a small group of people the greatest chances of survival. The easy point to make is that some really unoriginal and dumb people have suckered far smarter people. It's like a simple beat with a cheap hook of a melody that reaches an ancient part of our psyche and many of us could find that groove in the right situation.

Marcus wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 21, 2023 12:52 am

PG wrote: t seems to me that we have subliminal machinery in our minds that does a lot of this pre-logical work without us consciously noticing. Cultish thinking, I think, must be a kind of glitch in how this machinery works—something like cancerous growth, where a lot of the same stuff goes on that also goes on in healthy metabolism, but important limits are missing.

If cults are analogous to tumours, then probably the analog of growth is resiliency—the resistance of a world view to change. We all need a certain amount of resiliency; we can't be experiencing traumatic conversions every few minutes because every funny crinkle in a Corn Flake opens up whole new worlds and makes us reassess all our implicit assumptions. This resiliency is overgrown, in a cult, though.

I like this point, but rather than liken it to a tumor, i would argue cults (eventually) come to rely upon conditioning-nurture- that starts at birth. This has the same effect as your tumor analogy, but it's much more straightforward regarding causality.

It also encompasses your idea of resiliency of cultish thinking, again in a very straightforward way. Conditioning from birth has a resiliency that's difficult to deny. Of course getting a cult to this point requires extreme isolation and a lengthy time period of a focus on many births, maybe like Utah Mormonism? Hmm..

Rather than a tumour, might an alternative analogy be a symbiotic mechanism? Or a 'selfish meme'?

Gadianton wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 21, 2023 3:33 am

Interesting. To me cultish thinking resonates with our deepest and most tribal impulses. In a certain context, cultish thinking offers a small group of people the greatest chances of survival. The easy point to make is that some really unoriginal and dumb people have suckered far smarter people. It's like a simple beat with a cheap hook of a melody that reaches an ancient part of our psyche and many of us could find that groove in the right situation.

That aligns well with my views on the topic.