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.”
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