Have I recommended the book "Levi's Will" here? It is one of the few good books about the Amish, and what leaving does (loosely based on the author's father) - but it does give some decent pictures of what child-raising looks like in a mostly-good high-demand group.
That seems like a weird attitude to take towards religious or moral groups. Presumably your epistemic attitude toward the group should control not whether it's a pleasant or rewarding experience.
I mean the question at hand is whether the beliefs of the group are true, if they are and it is what God demands of you the fact you don't feel peaceful or even feel deeply uncomfortable seems neither here nor there. If Jim Jones really was the messiah you should drink the Kool aid even knowing it's poisoned. If god really told the prophet he gets to screw whoever he wants...well that's a small price to pay for eternal salvation.
Anyone who is even considering that advice should absolutely not join any high demand religious groups because, if they really believed, they were called by god that would be utterly overwhelming reason to ignore your criteria. If you aren't sure enough that god wants you to join the group to even consider this advice, don't join.
And even for secular beliefs often what is true is deeply upsetting and troubling. Taking animal welfare (hell even universal human welfare) seriously doesn't bring me peace. It makes me unhappy and guilty. Doesn't mean they aren't true.
Maybe the best way to do good is through a deeply flawed group. There is no guarantee from the universe that what is actually morally important is somehow compatible with not being exploited or having good mental health.
--
Having said that, I realize that in practice what you say is more likely to dissuade people from bad choices even if it seems suspect from and epistemic POV.
It has nothing to do with a vegan group. I just hate virtually all vegetables and I'm miserable when I try to eat them. As a child my aunt so didn't believe me about how I react to green vegetables she forced me to eat them even after they made me puke. I try to eat more vegetarian and I've cut out poultry but it is difficult because vegetarian food is generally aimed at vegetarians and things like impossible burger are ok but pretty expensive (and please don't give me suggestions .. I didn't say impossible)
I don't have an unhappy life or anything (and I have plenty of moral beliefs which don't make me feel bad or are even comforting) but it is quite clear to me that if I just assumed like everyone else that eating meat was fine and normal I'd be happier. Similarly, knowing that human suffering everywhere is equally morally important tends to be an unpleasant realization.
Different people have different psychology and I think it's deeply mistaken to assume that what is morally good won't make you miserable. I mean suppose you were Kim Jung Ill (or Hitler) and even recognizing what you've done would be horrendous and likely fill you with deep guilt and shame. But that doesn't mean it isn't true.
Why should we assume our position isn't like that of a horrible dictator or serial rapist? You can say you should just try to be better rather than beating yourself up and that's probably true but it doesn't mean that it is psychologically possible to do so. I suspect the only options for horrible dictators are deep self-loathing or continuing their evil/self-deception.
And if that is true for some people you can't assume a priori it won't be true for you.
I don't know, man. If I felt God were calling me to be a religious sister, that wouldn't necessarily mean I thought God was calling me to join, like, the first convent I came across. I think you're generally allowed to account for the possibility that you're making an error in judgment in any case. "This place has beautiful tranquil gardens and the work they're doing is important, but everyone here looks miserable and I got bad vibes from the superior - maybe there is a different place that would be better for me" seems like a wise consideration.
My experience with most people who take religious orders is they usually believe they have been in some sense been called to be part of that order. Sure, they may first decide they are going to become a nun and then pray about what order to join but no one I knew who picked a religious order ever gave some prosaic secular answer -- it was always based in a feeling they prayed and listened for god's plan. If you don't feel at some level that you are called to your religious order (if it's like picking a nice college) you probably aren't really taking the calling part that seriously.
Of course, as someone who doesn't believe I tend to think all that praying and listening for god's plan *is* just weighing these factors -- but you shouldn't join if you believe that is what is going on which makes taking the advice consciously kinda hard. Hence the bit at the end since I do think even if it's epistemically weird this may stick in people's brains and come out that way.
Seconding all of this (with more emphasis on that last caveat).
I often feel that the key TRUE reason I'm not Christian is that if Christianity was true, and assuming I accepted it as a cognitive/intellectually compelling fact rather than via some psychotic adjacent conversion experience, the life I'd need to live as a consequence -- as an absolutely logical and straightforward consequence of Christianity being true -- would be so utterly miserable and antithetic to all that I hold valuable as an individual that it'd just end up either actually or by proxy killing myself.
"That which you did not do for the least of this, you did not do for me," is a demanding rule for people who take it seriously. Most modern Christians either ignore it almost completely (which seems to be rather missing the point), or treat it as a request to do a bounded amount of good for the unfortunate. It's often treated as an obligation that can be discharged via some combination of tithing, volunteering some time for the "less fortunate", and helping people in urgent need who happen to cross your path (the Good Samaritan clause, basically).
Another way to approach "the least of these" might be to assume that Jesus would be a Very Important Guest who should be treated very generously, but not to point of self destruction. This would also produce a bounded commitment.
"Taking animal welfare (hell even universal human welfare) seriously doesn't bring me peace. It makes me unhappy and guilty."
I don't know what you consider "seriously", but I change my diet and donated to GiveWell and Animal Welfare and some amount to X-risk, and make some other choices in life taking into account the possibility of singularity, so i think I take things seriously.
It didn't make me unhappy or guilty. it sometimes male me LESS guilty - as I can tell myself that even if I don't do anything else with my life, my donations did a lot of good.
I don't say there is never trade-off, but, it's actually both possible and desirable to not be unhappy and guilty.
(The post's claims look to me like they are about The Movement, not The Ideology)
You and I may not have the same psychology. I'm not saying it will do that for everyone but that you can't assume that doing the right thing won't make you feel less at peace and more disturbed.
I think a big part of how you react depends on whether you like the kind of things that are claimed to be virtuous on that moral theory. I've cut chicken out of my diet but (and I know most vegetarians don't believe this) I just find green vegetables all super disgusting and bitter and I just generally dislike any vegetarian options...the impossible parties are decent but not affordable enough to eat primarily.
My suspicion is that most people are letting what kind of life they find comfortable do a huge amount of work in determining what is morally required. But there is no reason that should be epistemically true. Maybe God wants you to spend a life devoted to prayer and quiet contemplation but instead of finding that peaceful it drives you nuts.
I know not all people find peace in doing the right thing. i was reacting mostly to demonstrate there is another way (as i find that sometimes know that something is possible open the option to do it), and also because i wary of a dynamic where negative emotions considered virtuous, and this create needless suffering.
for example, yesterday, on very different topic, someone wrote that people who adapt and try to make the best of bad situation behave psychopathicly.
my own suspicion is that leaving morally can be much nicer then it is, if you invest in it, but people generally under-invest, because the loud suffering-is-virtuous crowd and the suffering virtue signaling effect, and because this distort the information people have, so when calculating the chance of success they get it artificially low.
(i didn't cut chicken, i buy humanely raised one, and i consider it good, and i very suspicious toward vegans that just... ignore humane rising as impossible, or something. it may not help you - it is definitely not affordable. but a lot of vegans are doing some purity thing, that sometimes backfires.
also, i probably have very different way of thinking about morality then you. i go for something CEV-like, so thinking about "morally required" looks importantly wrong to me. )
I don't necessarily disagree with you. I picked specific examples where those beliefs made me less happy. Other beliefs I have about morals go the other way.
My point is just that epistemically it's wrong to assume *any* a priori connection. Saying believing moral truth should bring you peace or anything like that seems to presume such a connection. I mean imagine you are literally Hitler, probably the only things that will make you feel peace will be justifications of your behavior.
Indeed, I as a utilitarian I ultimately tend to agree that you are probably not being particularly effective if you spend all your time being miserable. I mostly don't dwell on the moral beliefs I have which make me substantially less happy. But that is an inference I'm making from my particular moral beliefs not something I can assume holds and use to evaluate the wisdom of those beliefs. If I had a different moral system that put intrinsic weight on something like holiness or had a notion of sin I might feel I did have to wallow in guilt and self-hatred. I'm very glad I'm no longer Catholic but I don't think 'but I'd be miserable' is a valid reason to disbelieve.
"My point is just that epistemically it's wrong to assume *any* a priori connection"
It's my experience that the feeling of Doing The Right Thing is pleasant, and that the feeling of failing to do the right thing is unpleasant, and that moving from wrong to right tend to come with feeling of relief.
this is unrelated to whatever doing or avoiding doing something is hard or unpleasant in itself. i think it's fairly generalized sentiment. also, the feeling of finally doing the right thing, and feeling relief, despite negative consequences, is story that i heard more then once.
i don't think miserableness is reason to disbelief, but ,y own prior is the doing the right thing is satisfying and net-positive.
Yes, of course it is in fact true that people tend to believe what makes them feel good. Most slave owners didn't think of themselves as monsters etc. But obviously we don't think that because believing that slavery was awful might have required them to do some unpleasant things (like liquidate their wealth) that was reason not to believe that. In fact, I think it's pretty safe to say the moral arc of history shows us that the normal human state is pretending what is socially and culturally normal is morally fine when it isn't because doing otherwise would be unpleasant.
What you have pointed out only tells us that it feels bad to think you are doing something wrong. Of course, if you believe X is wrong then stopping doing X makes you feel better. But that doesn't tell you that because believing X is wrong makes you feel worse it must not be true.
As per the example of joining a convent. Conditional on believing God has called you to join a convent you will probably feel better to join a convent than living with the constant feeling of 'I know I should join a convent but I won't'. But you can't infer that just because you would be happier believing God didn't exist and you had no obligation to devote your life to him it follows that he doesn't and you shouldn't.
---
My point is that ultimately, if you are asking yourself 'does this make me feel good' to decide if it is true you aren't really taking the moral claims of that group seriously. Practically I think that religious claims are pretty much all bullshit so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but my point is that if you are testing whether the group makes you feel good about yourself then you are implicitly evaluating the demands of the group against a different standard than truth.
When I got to the "are you happy?" test, I was like, what? I am kind of unhappy, and I know plenty of kind of unhappy people, and many of them are involved in effective altruism in one way or another, and I just don't really buy that the former is because of the latter, or that distancing themselves from the movement would be a positive change for those people.
Do you have to be part of the movement to be an effective altruist, though? Can't you just earn to give, donate to malaria nets and X-risk charities, go vegan, and donate kidneys? Most of their insights seem applicable outside of the community; an average person donating a large fraction of their salary to charity, eating vegan, and driving the minimum amount would seem to be doing pretty well.
It doesn't seem like there's a lot of them outside of the Bay Area anyway.
No, you can have all sorts of levels of engagement (which is part of what makes it less scary in my view, because the exit rights are strong). Though kidneys plural is not recommended. But I meant people who were engaging socially.
(There's a lot of them (us) outside of the Bay. I would guess there's several other cities that have a lively social scene that is like, big enough to support multiple independent interest groups and so on. I'm sure there's demographic surveys around somewhere.)
> “I am in a high-demand group: effective altruists. Effective altruism has a say in my career choices, my spending, my diet, my discourse norms, and even whether I’m a kind and friendly person.”
I’m still struggling with the premise that these things are demands. They sound like culture norms. A demand, to me, says “you must do x or face y consequences”. High-demand groups are often looked down upon *because* of those consequences.
I’d be interested in your working definition of “demand” to help me see what I might be missing.
I kind of disagree with this take, actually—it seems more vibes-based: do these guys seem chill? do I feel happy? Realistically, a lot of people in high-demand groups probably like their leaders a great deal and are enjoying themselves most of the time, at least until right before things start rocketing downhill.
I think the things to look for are more structural, and have to do less with the average experience than with the consequences for people who are having a bad one.
The baseline question is: how hard is it to leave? Some high-demand groups require all money and property to be held in common, so that if you leave, you leave with nothing. Some high-demand groups shun members who leave—no one is allowed to talk to you if you go. Some high-demand groups will actively harass people who leave the group.
Sometimes, the pressures are more subtle: if everyone in your high demand group works, lives, socializes with, and dates one another, what happens if someone wants to move out (but keep working and dating and socializing) or quit their job (but keep living and socializing together)?
Healthy groups have exit ramps. They encourage members to preserve relationships with people outside the group; to embed themselves in a broader community. Even the members of the most isolated monasteries understood themselves as part of the broader order of monks, which was part of the hierarchy of Catholicism as a whole.
Any group so small and so isolated that there can be a single leader who comes in regular personal contact with all the members, but whose authority goes unchecked by anyone at a higher level is—in my opinion—running at a high risk for exploitation.
Finally, the last thing to remember is that all high demand groups feel healthy until they don’t. People wouldn’t join them if they didn’t get something out of them. The problem is that these groups feel so good in the beginning that they don’t feel the need to maintain an exit strategy, so when things turn toxic, they’ve invested their whole lives in the groups and have nowhere to go.
Rather than ask, is this high-demand group healthy, it might make better sense to ask, is my relationship with this group healthy? And the answer to that question depends on what would happen to you if your relationship to the group fell apart.
Hard to square "necessary" and "bad" together. When suffering could be freely removed I'm pretty clear on removing it, but life has physics and rules and at any given moment we can't freely tune things however we want. And it doesn't make sense to imagine impossible things, like the same situation but without the suffering. It makes sense to imagine actual different possible futures, those where you get broadly the good outcomes with less of the suffering and aim for those.
Getting a few hours away to talk with a trusted person is precisely what toxic high-demand groups forbid.
The damage to children of members is more fallout from toxic high demand groups.
Now I'm wondering how good high-demand groups handle child-raising.
Have I recommended the book "Levi's Will" here? It is one of the few good books about the Amish, and what leaving does (loosely based on the author's father) - but it does give some decent pictures of what child-raising looks like in a mostly-good high-demand group.
That's supposed to be how abusers work too, right?
That seems like a weird attitude to take towards religious or moral groups. Presumably your epistemic attitude toward the group should control not whether it's a pleasant or rewarding experience.
I mean the question at hand is whether the beliefs of the group are true, if they are and it is what God demands of you the fact you don't feel peaceful or even feel deeply uncomfortable seems neither here nor there. If Jim Jones really was the messiah you should drink the Kool aid even knowing it's poisoned. If god really told the prophet he gets to screw whoever he wants...well that's a small price to pay for eternal salvation.
Anyone who is even considering that advice should absolutely not join any high demand religious groups because, if they really believed, they were called by god that would be utterly overwhelming reason to ignore your criteria. If you aren't sure enough that god wants you to join the group to even consider this advice, don't join.
And even for secular beliefs often what is true is deeply upsetting and troubling. Taking animal welfare (hell even universal human welfare) seriously doesn't bring me peace. It makes me unhappy and guilty. Doesn't mean they aren't true.
Maybe the best way to do good is through a deeply flawed group. There is no guarantee from the universe that what is actually morally important is somehow compatible with not being exploited or having good mental health.
--
Having said that, I realize that in practice what you say is more likely to dissuade people from bad choices even if it seems suspect from and epistemic POV.
You can be vegan on your own! If a vegan group is making you a miserable wreck, get the fuck out of there.
It has nothing to do with a vegan group. I just hate virtually all vegetables and I'm miserable when I try to eat them. As a child my aunt so didn't believe me about how I react to green vegetables she forced me to eat them even after they made me puke. I try to eat more vegetarian and I've cut out poultry but it is difficult because vegetarian food is generally aimed at vegetarians and things like impossible burger are ok but pretty expensive (and please don't give me suggestions .. I didn't say impossible)
I don't have an unhappy life or anything (and I have plenty of moral beliefs which don't make me feel bad or are even comforting) but it is quite clear to me that if I just assumed like everyone else that eating meat was fine and normal I'd be happier. Similarly, knowing that human suffering everywhere is equally morally important tends to be an unpleasant realization.
Different people have different psychology and I think it's deeply mistaken to assume that what is morally good won't make you miserable. I mean suppose you were Kim Jung Ill (or Hitler) and even recognizing what you've done would be horrendous and likely fill you with deep guilt and shame. But that doesn't mean it isn't true.
Why should we assume our position isn't like that of a horrible dictator or serial rapist? You can say you should just try to be better rather than beating yourself up and that's probably true but it doesn't mean that it is psychologically possible to do so. I suspect the only options for horrible dictators are deep self-loathing or continuing their evil/self-deception.
And if that is true for some people you can't assume a priori it won't be true for you.
I don't know, man. If I felt God were calling me to be a religious sister, that wouldn't necessarily mean I thought God was calling me to join, like, the first convent I came across. I think you're generally allowed to account for the possibility that you're making an error in judgment in any case. "This place has beautiful tranquil gardens and the work they're doing is important, but everyone here looks miserable and I got bad vibes from the superior - maybe there is a different place that would be better for me" seems like a wise consideration.
My experience with most people who take religious orders is they usually believe they have been in some sense been called to be part of that order. Sure, they may first decide they are going to become a nun and then pray about what order to join but no one I knew who picked a religious order ever gave some prosaic secular answer -- it was always based in a feeling they prayed and listened for god's plan. If you don't feel at some level that you are called to your religious order (if it's like picking a nice college) you probably aren't really taking the calling part that seriously.
Of course, as someone who doesn't believe I tend to think all that praying and listening for god's plan *is* just weighing these factors -- but you shouldn't join if you believe that is what is going on which makes taking the advice consciously kinda hard. Hence the bit at the end since I do think even if it's epistemically weird this may stick in people's brains and come out that way.
Seconding all of this (with more emphasis on that last caveat).
I often feel that the key TRUE reason I'm not Christian is that if Christianity was true, and assuming I accepted it as a cognitive/intellectually compelling fact rather than via some psychotic adjacent conversion experience, the life I'd need to live as a consequence -- as an absolutely logical and straightforward consequence of Christianity being true -- would be so utterly miserable and antithetic to all that I hold valuable as an individual that it'd just end up either actually or by proxy killing myself.
"That which you did not do for the least of this, you did not do for me," is a demanding rule for people who take it seriously. Most modern Christians either ignore it almost completely (which seems to be rather missing the point), or treat it as a request to do a bounded amount of good for the unfortunate. It's often treated as an obligation that can be discharged via some combination of tithing, volunteering some time for the "less fortunate", and helping people in urgent need who happen to cross your path (the Good Samaritan clause, basically).
Another way to approach "the least of these" might be to assume that Jesus would be a Very Important Guest who should be treated very generously, but not to point of self destruction. This would also produce a bounded commitment.
"Taking animal welfare (hell even universal human welfare) seriously doesn't bring me peace. It makes me unhappy and guilty."
I don't know what you consider "seriously", but I change my diet and donated to GiveWell and Animal Welfare and some amount to X-risk, and make some other choices in life taking into account the possibility of singularity, so i think I take things seriously.
It didn't make me unhappy or guilty. it sometimes male me LESS guilty - as I can tell myself that even if I don't do anything else with my life, my donations did a lot of good.
I don't say there is never trade-off, but, it's actually both possible and desirable to not be unhappy and guilty.
(The post's claims look to me like they are about The Movement, not The Ideology)
You and I may not have the same psychology. I'm not saying it will do that for everyone but that you can't assume that doing the right thing won't make you feel less at peace and more disturbed.
I think a big part of how you react depends on whether you like the kind of things that are claimed to be virtuous on that moral theory. I've cut chicken out of my diet but (and I know most vegetarians don't believe this) I just find green vegetables all super disgusting and bitter and I just generally dislike any vegetarian options...the impossible parties are decent but not affordable enough to eat primarily.
My suspicion is that most people are letting what kind of life they find comfortable do a huge amount of work in determining what is morally required. But there is no reason that should be epistemically true. Maybe God wants you to spend a life devoted to prayer and quiet contemplation but instead of finding that peaceful it drives you nuts.
I know not all people find peace in doing the right thing. i was reacting mostly to demonstrate there is another way (as i find that sometimes know that something is possible open the option to do it), and also because i wary of a dynamic where negative emotions considered virtuous, and this create needless suffering.
for example, yesterday, on very different topic, someone wrote that people who adapt and try to make the best of bad situation behave psychopathicly.
my own suspicion is that leaving morally can be much nicer then it is, if you invest in it, but people generally under-invest, because the loud suffering-is-virtuous crowd and the suffering virtue signaling effect, and because this distort the information people have, so when calculating the chance of success they get it artificially low.
(i didn't cut chicken, i buy humanely raised one, and i consider it good, and i very suspicious toward vegans that just... ignore humane rising as impossible, or something. it may not help you - it is definitely not affordable. but a lot of vegans are doing some purity thing, that sometimes backfires.
also, i probably have very different way of thinking about morality then you. i go for something CEV-like, so thinking about "morally required" looks importantly wrong to me. )
I don't necessarily disagree with you. I picked specific examples where those beliefs made me less happy. Other beliefs I have about morals go the other way.
My point is just that epistemically it's wrong to assume *any* a priori connection. Saying believing moral truth should bring you peace or anything like that seems to presume such a connection. I mean imagine you are literally Hitler, probably the only things that will make you feel peace will be justifications of your behavior.
Indeed, I as a utilitarian I ultimately tend to agree that you are probably not being particularly effective if you spend all your time being miserable. I mostly don't dwell on the moral beliefs I have which make me substantially less happy. But that is an inference I'm making from my particular moral beliefs not something I can assume holds and use to evaluate the wisdom of those beliefs. If I had a different moral system that put intrinsic weight on something like holiness or had a notion of sin I might feel I did have to wallow in guilt and self-hatred. I'm very glad I'm no longer Catholic but I don't think 'but I'd be miserable' is a valid reason to disbelieve.
"My point is just that epistemically it's wrong to assume *any* a priori connection"
It's my experience that the feeling of Doing The Right Thing is pleasant, and that the feeling of failing to do the right thing is unpleasant, and that moving from wrong to right tend to come with feeling of relief.
this is unrelated to whatever doing or avoiding doing something is hard or unpleasant in itself. i think it's fairly generalized sentiment. also, the feeling of finally doing the right thing, and feeling relief, despite negative consequences, is story that i heard more then once.
i don't think miserableness is reason to disbelief, but ,y own prior is the doing the right thing is satisfying and net-positive.
Yes, of course it is in fact true that people tend to believe what makes them feel good. Most slave owners didn't think of themselves as monsters etc. But obviously we don't think that because believing that slavery was awful might have required them to do some unpleasant things (like liquidate their wealth) that was reason not to believe that. In fact, I think it's pretty safe to say the moral arc of history shows us that the normal human state is pretending what is socially and culturally normal is morally fine when it isn't because doing otherwise would be unpleasant.
What you have pointed out only tells us that it feels bad to think you are doing something wrong. Of course, if you believe X is wrong then stopping doing X makes you feel better. But that doesn't tell you that because believing X is wrong makes you feel worse it must not be true.
As per the example of joining a convent. Conditional on believing God has called you to join a convent you will probably feel better to join a convent than living with the constant feeling of 'I know I should join a convent but I won't'. But you can't infer that just because you would be happier believing God didn't exist and you had no obligation to devote your life to him it follows that he doesn't and you shouldn't.
---
My point is that ultimately, if you are asking yourself 'does this make me feel good' to decide if it is true you aren't really taking the moral claims of that group seriously. Practically I think that religious claims are pretty much all bullshit so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but my point is that if you are testing whether the group makes you feel good about yourself then you are implicitly evaluating the demands of the group against a different standard than truth.
When I got to the "are you happy?" test, I was like, what? I am kind of unhappy, and I know plenty of kind of unhappy people, and many of them are involved in effective altruism in one way or another, and I just don't really buy that the former is because of the latter, or that distancing themselves from the movement would be a positive change for those people.
Do you have to be part of the movement to be an effective altruist, though? Can't you just earn to give, donate to malaria nets and X-risk charities, go vegan, and donate kidneys? Most of their insights seem applicable outside of the community; an average person donating a large fraction of their salary to charity, eating vegan, and driving the minimum amount would seem to be doing pretty well.
It doesn't seem like there's a lot of them outside of the Bay Area anyway.
No, you can have all sorts of levels of engagement (which is part of what makes it less scary in my view, because the exit rights are strong). Though kidneys plural is not recommended. But I meant people who were engaging socially.
(There's a lot of them (us) outside of the Bay. I would guess there's several other cities that have a lively social scene that is like, big enough to support multiple independent interest groups and so on. I'm sure there's demographic surveys around somewhere.)
> “I am in a high-demand group: effective altruists. Effective altruism has a say in my career choices, my spending, my diet, my discourse norms, and even whether I’m a kind and friendly person.”
I’m still struggling with the premise that these things are demands. They sound like culture norms. A demand, to me, says “you must do x or face y consequences”. High-demand groups are often looked down upon *because* of those consequences.
I’d be interested in your working definition of “demand” to help me see what I might be missing.
I kind of disagree with this take, actually—it seems more vibes-based: do these guys seem chill? do I feel happy? Realistically, a lot of people in high-demand groups probably like their leaders a great deal and are enjoying themselves most of the time, at least until right before things start rocketing downhill.
I think the things to look for are more structural, and have to do less with the average experience than with the consequences for people who are having a bad one.
The baseline question is: how hard is it to leave? Some high-demand groups require all money and property to be held in common, so that if you leave, you leave with nothing. Some high-demand groups shun members who leave—no one is allowed to talk to you if you go. Some high-demand groups will actively harass people who leave the group.
Sometimes, the pressures are more subtle: if everyone in your high demand group works, lives, socializes with, and dates one another, what happens if someone wants to move out (but keep working and dating and socializing) or quit their job (but keep living and socializing together)?
Healthy groups have exit ramps. They encourage members to preserve relationships with people outside the group; to embed themselves in a broader community. Even the members of the most isolated monasteries understood themselves as part of the broader order of monks, which was part of the hierarchy of Catholicism as a whole.
Any group so small and so isolated that there can be a single leader who comes in regular personal contact with all the members, but whose authority goes unchecked by anyone at a higher level is—in my opinion—running at a high risk for exploitation.
Finally, the last thing to remember is that all high demand groups feel healthy until they don’t. People wouldn’t join them if they didn’t get something out of them. The problem is that these groups feel so good in the beginning that they don’t feel the need to maintain an exit strategy, so when things turn toxic, they’ve invested their whole lives in the groups and have nowhere to go.
Rather than ask, is this high-demand group healthy, it might make better sense to ask, is my relationship with this group healthy? And the answer to that question depends on what would happen to you if your relationship to the group fell apart.
Related: https://www.benlandautaylor.com/p/my-moms-rules-for-cults
Re "suffering, though necessary, is always bad"
Hard to square "necessary" and "bad" together. When suffering could be freely removed I'm pretty clear on removing it, but life has physics and rules and at any given moment we can't freely tune things however we want. And it doesn't make sense to imagine impossible things, like the same situation but without the suffering. It makes sense to imagine actual different possible futures, those where you get broadly the good outcomes with less of the suffering and aim for those.