I think there are just two different clusters (or, like a macrocluster and a microcluster) that need names, and we don’t currently have two good names other than maybe “cult” and “cultlike/cult-adjacent/cult-spectrum.” There’s clearly some spectrum of which academia, various flavors of extreme startups and high-commitment-but-basically-good ideologies, etc, are on – various shades of “it’s hard to leave, hard to imagine leaving, there’s pressure to think a certain way, it’s often unhealthy, there are leaders you can’t question, etc.”
And, it’s useful to be able to refer to scientology and various flavors of legit dangerous thing of which maybe the military is an instance (haven’t really thought about that exactly).
For that matter, “weird new intense ideology that absorbs person’s life” (even if totally healthy) is also a cluster that feels like it needs a name, and I also don’t have a great name for that either other than “kinda culty.”
Are you like “yep, that framing seems right, and it’s really important to reserve ‘cult’ for the middle one” or do you disagree with that framing?
Academia seems just really not that similar to anything I would call cult. The standard experience of anyone I know in academia is overwhelming loneliness, almost complete cynicism about the shared mission by almost everyone involved, and an almost complete absence of guidance on how you should structure your life.
Like, academia these days strikes me as mostly similar to working at a very large, very professional, badly paid organization.
And then in addition to that you actually do have one of the strongest cultural anchors of any culture in the world in rewarding genuine disagreement. It’s not perfect, but academia is much higher on contrarianism and status mobility. It’s also very low on controlling your public speech compared to anywhere else.
Like, I have very large disagreements with academia, and am not in love with it, but it strikes me as one of the least cult-like social systems out there. Almost every large corporation seems more cult-like to me, by almost any reasonable definition of the word. Startups are much more cult-like.
Okay, I am sold on “actually academia kinda does the opposite of love-bombing,” and that the disagreement with EVN was indeed about “academia” rather than “cult.”
I think there are just two different clusters (or, like a macrocluster and a microcluster) that need names, and we don’t currently have two good names other than maybe “cult” and “cultlike/cult-adjacent/cult-spectrum.” There’s clearly some spectrum of which academia, various flavors of extreme startups and high-commitment-but-basically-good ideologies, etc, are on – various shades of “it’s hard to leave, hard to imagine leaving, there’s pressure to think a certain way, it’s often unhealthy, there are leaders you can’t question, etc.”
And, it’s useful to be able to refer to scientology and various flavors of legit dangerous thing of which maybe the military is an instance (haven’t really thought about that exactly).
For that matter, “weird new intense ideology that absorbs person’s life” (even if totally healthy) is also a cluster that feels like it needs a name, and I also don’t have a great name for that either other than “kinda culty.”
Are you like “yep, that framing seems right, and it’s really important to reserve ‘cult’ for the middle one” or do you disagree with that framing?
Academia seems just really not that similar to anything I would call cult. The standard experience of anyone I know in academia is overwhelming loneliness, almost complete cynicism about the shared mission by almost everyone involved, and an almost complete absence of guidance on how you should structure your life.
Like, academia these days strikes me as mostly similar to working at a very large, very professional, badly paid organization.
And then in addition to that you actually do have one of the strongest cultural anchors of any culture in the world in rewarding genuine disagreement. It’s not perfect, but academia is much higher on contrarianism and status mobility. It’s also very low on controlling your public speech compared to anywhere else.
Like, I have very large disagreements with academia, and am not in love with it, but it strikes me as one of the least cult-like social systems out there. Almost every large corporation seems more cult-like to me, by almost any reasonable definition of the word. Startups are much more cult-like.
Okay, I am sold on “actually academia kinda does the opposite of love-bombing,” and that the disagreement with EVN was indeed about “academia” rather than “cult.”
Leverage was also much more lonely than love-bomb-ey