I am in favor of building communities. But there also needs to be a way to filter membership.
In the rationalist community, we had people such as Leverage Research or Zizians. How do Mormons keep this kind of people out? (Or perhaps they don’t.)
I am asking because if we don’t do this, then things like “Create a platform for facilitating virtual 1-1s, especially between people from distinct backgrounds or positions” could also cause a lot of harm, if it e.g. helps Ziz recruit more members.
Mormons give costly signals of their faith, such as spending a ton of their time on it. Rationalists would probably be unwilling to do that.
Mormons (and most successful strong-community groups) make it VERY hard to get the benefits of community without accepting their norms and behaviors. They claim (and socially enforce) exclusivity over spiritual life, which prevents a Ziz (or a benign Buddhist) influence. Deviation is apostasy.
One element of cults (including LDS) is that they work hard to be the ONLY cult a member in good standing follows.
The “rationalist community” is not as invasive/completist in terms of how it aligns the beliefs and behaviors of its members. It’s just a different thing, and the word “community” is not sufficient to talk about what elements of it you are looking for. That exclusivity (can you meaningfully be a member of more than one of this kind of community) is a strength of LDS that Rationalist doesn’t have or want. Because it’s also quite unpleasant to many of us.
I am in favor of building communities. But there also needs to be a way to filter membership.
In the rationalist community, we had people such as Leverage Research or Zizians. How do Mormons keep this kind of people out? (Or perhaps they don’t.)
I am asking because if we don’t do this, then things like “Create a platform for facilitating virtual 1-1s, especially between people from distinct backgrounds or positions” could also cause a lot of harm, if it e.g. helps Ziz recruit more members.
Mormons give costly signals of their faith, such as spending a ton of their time on it. Rationalists would probably be unwilling to do that.
Mormons (and most successful strong-community groups) make it VERY hard to get the benefits of community without accepting their norms and behaviors. They claim (and socially enforce) exclusivity over spiritual life, which prevents a Ziz (or a benign Buddhist) influence. Deviation is apostasy.
One element of cults (including LDS) is that they work hard to be the ONLY cult a member in good standing follows.
The “rationalist community” is not as invasive/completist in terms of how it aligns the beliefs and behaviors of its members. It’s just a different thing, and the word “community” is not sufficient to talk about what elements of it you are looking for. That exclusivity (can you meaningfully be a member of more than one of this kind of community) is a strength of LDS that Rationalist doesn’t have or want. Because it’s also quite unpleasant to many of us.