It seems evident from the way he handles any sort of meaningful criticism, etc, even from MAPLE’s “spiritual father”:
Around the same time as the above, when Soryu was receiving scrutiny from donors and professional peers, this happened: Shinzen Young, a famous spiritual teacher who was a close collaborator with Soryu in the founding of MAPLE and a long time friend of his, attempted to hold him accountable and gave him some red-lines, which included (1) not speaking about societal collapse and climate/nuclear apocalypse so often to trainees, and (2) not having trainees work professional and intellectually heavy jobs as part of their unpaid training.
Soryu responded in this fashion: after he got off this call with Shinzen, Soryu organized an impromptu community-wide meeting. In this meeting he was pacing back and forth deriding Shinzen, questioning his integrity, debasing his “Materialist Humanist” worldview, and ultimately sabotaging Shinzen’s reputation in the community. While Shinzen helped found MAPLE and ordained most of the lay ordainees in the community (and was thus kind of a spiritual father to them), all formal affiliation between Shinzen and MAPLE was subsequently severed.
And on the outside view:
The high-control literature shows that the most reliable lever to produce positive reform in such groups is sustained public scrutiny. Even then, adequate reform is rare. The more common response is doubling down.
Soryu responded in this fashion: after he got off this call with Shinzen, Soryu organized an impromptu community-wide meeting. In this meeting he was pacing back and forth deriding Shinzen, questioning his integrity, debasing his “Materialist Humanist” worldview, and ultimately sabotaging Shinzen’s reputation in the community. While Shinzen helped found MAPLE and ordained most of the lay ordainees in the community (and was thus kind of a spiritual father to them), all formal affiliation between Shinzen and MAPLE was subsequently severed.
I was at this meeting, and remember it quite different. Soryu came and said that there were 3 things Shinzen recommended, and that it was great to finally have someone who actually gave concrete recommendations. He told us what they were verbatim, and then asked asked us to carefully consider them over the next little bit and see if we should implement them. We then carefully considered them and did implement some changes, although not everything Shinzen had asked for.
Kyle’s whole narrative here just seems to be wrong to me.
ETA: Also a concrete fact here re “spiritual severing”. While we can dispute the things that were said here until I check the recording, I do know for a fact that Shinzen was invited to run the next lay ordination, and he was the one who declined.
Soryu’s asking us if we should take on those “recommendations” from Shinzen were, by my understanding at least, largely rhetorical. With Soryu’s statements and tone within that talk it was clear he did not favor abiding by them at all.
The talk was so inappropriate[1] and derisive of Shinzen that the executive director and head of Care (the two other branches of the triumvirate you spoke of in another comment) immediately held a meeting with Soryu the next morning pressing him to begin receiving “help,” of the professional kind. Soryu didn’t concede to this.
I heard and was a part of multiple conversations with residents the next day who were either worried about Soryu’s mental health or were questioning if Soryu was truly as trustworthy as he claimed to be. One resident told me “well, I guess that’s the end of that long friendship (of Soryu’s and Shinzen’s).”
I named two of Shinzen’s demands, I can’t remember the third. Could you please share it? And what are the changes that you speak of that were implemented following this talk?
Also, I believe you phrasing them as “recommendations” from Shinzen as misleading. I understood them to be red-lines for Shinzen’s support. That Shinzen could no longer support MAPLE if these “recommendations” were not met.
If I’m wrong, one thing that could help clarify this would be finding and publishing the recording of the session (as all lectures at MAPLE are recorded). If that’s too public, we could also pick a few other people like Kaj Sotala to listen and give their takes.
I use the term inappropriate because hosting a community wide flash-impromptu meeting to berate someone with big standing in the community (helped found MAPLE, hosted multiple retreats there, ordained many MAPLE residents), without them there to represent themselves was not a healthy medium for resolving the situation
Soryu’s asking us if we should take on those “recommendations” from Shinzen were, by my understanding at least, largely rhetorical. With Soryu’s statements and tone within that talk it was clear he did not favor abiding by them at all.
If it was rhetorical (which I did not take it as), it was not treated that way within the community. The 3 recommendations were repeated many times, brought up and discussed in multiple group discussions, by multiple different people in leadership, discussed in all group meetings as well as leadership meetings, with, and without Soryu present.
Most of the changes I saw came around changing our admissions process to better filter people and doing a better job of explaining the rigour of the training.
Soryu had just had his close friend call him, screaming, and any attempt by him to talk or ask clarifying questions was met with him being screamed over. My sense of the situation was someone who had just dealt with that, nevertheless trying to take the feedback seriously.
This is the kind of objection I’m excited to see, and actually made me update down (tentatively, a bit) on the OP. Releasing that recording, or allowing trusted third parties to listen to it and attest to its contents would make me update more, and the more specific claims where you can say “no, indeed, Kyle is exaggerating” the more seriously I’ll take your objection in general.
(I have my own perspective already regardless of the OP.)
It seems evident from the way he handles any sort of meaningful criticism, etc, even from MAPLE’s “spiritual father”:
And on the outside view:
I was at this meeting, and remember it quite different. Soryu came and said that there were 3 things Shinzen recommended, and that it was great to finally have someone who actually gave concrete recommendations. He told us what they were verbatim, and then asked asked us to carefully consider them over the next little bit and see if we should implement them. We then carefully considered them and did implement some changes, although not everything Shinzen had asked for.
Kyle’s whole narrative here just seems to be wrong to me.
ETA: Also a concrete fact here re “spiritual severing”. While we can dispute the things that were said here until I check the recording, I do know for a fact that Shinzen was invited to run the next lay ordination, and he was the one who declined.
Soryu’s asking us if we should take on those “recommendations” from Shinzen were, by my understanding at least, largely rhetorical. With Soryu’s statements and tone within that talk it was clear he did not favor abiding by them at all.
The talk was so inappropriate[1] and derisive of Shinzen that the executive director and head of Care (the two other branches of the triumvirate you spoke of in another comment) immediately held a meeting with Soryu the next morning pressing him to begin receiving “help,” of the professional kind. Soryu didn’t concede to this.
I heard and was a part of multiple conversations with residents the next day who were either worried about Soryu’s mental health or were questioning if Soryu was truly as trustworthy as he claimed to be. One resident told me “well, I guess that’s the end of that long friendship (of Soryu’s and Shinzen’s).”
I named two of Shinzen’s demands, I can’t remember the third. Could you please share it? And what are the changes that you speak of that were implemented following this talk?
Also, I believe you phrasing them as “recommendations” from Shinzen as misleading. I understood them to be red-lines for Shinzen’s support. That Shinzen could no longer support MAPLE if these “recommendations” were not met.
If I’m wrong, one thing that could help clarify this would be finding and publishing the recording of the session (as all lectures at MAPLE are recorded). If that’s too public, we could also pick a few other people like Kaj Sotala to listen and give their takes.
I use the term inappropriate because hosting a community wide flash-impromptu meeting to berate someone with big standing in the community (helped found MAPLE, hosted multiple retreats there, ordained many MAPLE residents), without them there to represent themselves was not a healthy medium for resolving the situation
If it was rhetorical (which I did not take it as), it was not treated that way within the community. The 3 recommendations were repeated many times, brought up and discussed in multiple group discussions, by multiple different people in leadership, discussed in all group meetings as well as leadership meetings, with, and without Soryu present.
Most of the changes I saw came around changing our admissions process to better filter people and doing a better job of explaining the rigour of the training.
Soryu had just had his close friend call him, screaming, and any attempt by him to talk or ask clarifying questions was met with him being screamed over. My sense of the situation was someone who had just dealt with that, nevertheless trying to take the feedback seriously.
This is the kind of objection I’m excited to see, and actually made me update down (tentatively, a bit) on the OP. Releasing that recording, or allowing trusted third parties to listen to it and attest to its contents would make me update more, and the more specific claims where you can say “no, indeed, Kyle is exaggerating” the more seriously I’ll take your objection in general.
(I have my own perspective already regardless of the OP.)