I wish this post was a little more careful to disambiguate between (1) things that are normal in monasteries and not evidence of a cult and (2) things that are abnormal and are evidence of a cult.
Whether or not MAPLE is a cult, I learned some things from this post that further update me in the direction of believing that Soryu is not serving his students well and should step back from teaching and leadership for a time to reconsider whether the path he is on really is benefiting all beings.
I do want to point out that you’re implicitly assuming monasteries are good and desirable, and not cults.
If I’m feeling blithe, I want to just be like, oh, monasteries are totally cults, and actually monasteries are often harmful. But also maybe this is fine anyway. Or, insofar as it’s bad, it’s not even because cults are bad. [But this is me being a bit schizo so shrug somewhat.]
Sure, maybe there’s some line here, but I think the kind of person who shows up to LessWrong is selected against the kind of person who would be happy and thrive in a traditional monastery.
My general take is that monasteries are good for some people, but for a bunch of reasons I’m not choosing to live in one, and that’s fine, I’m glad they exist for people with minds very different from mine, but also if I had reason to live in a monastery it would probably be fine, even if I wasn’t maximally happy about it.
I was also wondering about this … but insofar as some of the apparently-concerning things discussed here are “normal in [zen?] monasteries”, this doesn’t seem like a positive signal about those monasteries. It seems to me like you somewhat disagree?
That depends on exactly which things we’re talking about, and how they end up affecting the people overall. Compare that militaries also practice extensive behavioral control, yet society is generally okay with this and many people who’ve served in the military are happy to have done so.
I mostly think the case for the military breaking you as a person is that the state has a legitimate use of violence case to make you become the type of person to be willing to sacrifice your agency and civilian moral instincts so you can literally and more efficiently kill for the greater good.
I’m not confident that this reason is good enough, but it currently seems more likely than not.
However, I don’t buy that other reasons to break people are sufficiently analogous (not saying the military is the only legitimate reason).
I wish this post was a little more careful to disambiguate between (1) things that are normal in monasteries and not evidence of a cult and (2) things that are abnormal and are evidence of a cult.
Whether or not MAPLE is a cult, I learned some things from this post that further update me in the direction of believing that Soryu is not serving his students well and should step back from teaching and leadership for a time to reconsider whether the path he is on really is benefiting all beings.
I do want to point out that you’re implicitly assuming monasteries are good and desirable, and not cults.
If I’m feeling blithe, I want to just be like, oh, monasteries are totally cults, and actually monasteries are often harmful. But also maybe this is fine anyway. Or, insofar as it’s bad, it’s not even because cults are bad. [But this is me being a bit schizo so shrug somewhat.]
Sure, maybe there’s some line here, but I think the kind of person who shows up to LessWrong is selected against the kind of person who would be happy and thrive in a traditional monastery.
My general take is that monasteries are good for some people, but for a bunch of reasons I’m not choosing to live in one, and that’s fine, I’m glad they exist for people with minds very different from mine, but also if I had reason to live in a monastery it would probably be fine, even if I wasn’t maximally happy about it.
I was also wondering about this … but insofar as some of the apparently-concerning things discussed here are “normal in [zen?] monasteries”, this doesn’t seem like a positive signal about those monasteries. It seems to me like you somewhat disagree?
That depends on exactly which things we’re talking about, and how they end up affecting the people overall. Compare that militaries also practice extensive behavioral control, yet society is generally okay with this and many people who’ve served in the military are happy to have done so.
I mostly think the case for the military breaking you as a person is that the state has a legitimate use of violence case to make you become the type of person to be willing to sacrifice your agency and civilian moral instincts so you can literally and more efficiently kill for the greater good.
I’m not confident that this reason is good enough, but it currently seems more likely than not.
However, I don’t buy that other reasons to break people are sufficiently analogous (not saying the military is the only legitimate reason).