I feel alienated by most advice about how to avoid ideologically abusive/spiritually abusive/cultic groups, because it assumes that there’s no cost to a false positive.
As I think I've mentioned here before (sorry), I was an atheist (or what we at least used to call a "secular humanist") most of my life and converted to Catholicism in middle age. I have to admit it's a strange choice! But after circling around Christianity like an airplane, I finally got permission to land there somehow. I could have chosen a branch of Christianity more in line with my (liberal) values, but to be honest I did not want to go to church every week and wonder, "Is this church progressive enough, while not succumbing to too much progressive stupidity? Is it possible any of these people voted for Trump? Does this sermon reflect my exact values? Is the altruism over here effective enough? What about the Church down the road that is 1% more/less liberal?" That's exactly what I do NOT want in my spiritual practice.
My priest is Indian and probably can't vote here. I'm pretty sure I know his positions on abortion (against) and caring for immigrants (for). He doesn't talk about politics. I know some of the people in the pews voted for Trump and some didn't, and this fact keeps people from talking about it one way or the other at church, which is lovely. The Church has positions to anger the left and the right.
Some of the demands (like not masturbating) are too high, but reassuringly, there is hardly any person of whom or any way in which the Church isn't demanding the impossible. Some of the demands - like weekly attendance, or fasting two days a year - are exactly the right height to keep you engaged.
Interesting that you mostly talked about the sorts vibe of the church and not the articles of faith. Like if I believed in most of the doctrines of catholicism (salvation by acts and faith) and the legitimacy of the pope I'd join the church and try and reform it even if in practice the priests gave awful sermons. If I rejected those doctrines I wouldn't join regardless.
No criticism, I just find that difference interesting. I ultimately left the Catholic church and that ultimately came down to whether I believed in the things in the catechism and I'd like to understand the other perspective better.
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As an aside the thing about masturbating in catholicism is that I'm pretty sure that it is no worse than using birth control in a marriage (though the later is at least still promoting marital unity so maybe you could distinguish them). It's always so odd how the Catholic laity get so hung up on some parts of the faith while not noticing the others (98% of American Catholics violate that).
It was always so funny growing up to see everyone in church agreeing w/ something on abortion or whatever when you looked around and all but the one really religious family had 1-4 kids.
Ah, I definitely do believe, but that's partly a consequence of being in the Church. It's complicated! I meant to have a substack about it but I never got around to writing anything. Anyway, it seemed even less relevant in a comment on this post than what I already wrote, which was at least semi-related to the demand level of being Catholic.
Very interesting. I've never purposefully joined or grew into any "community" of the kind you describe (mostly communities of choice, and quite life-encompassing). And when I tentatively tested I've always ended up with "these are not my people EITHER". Possibly because it all feels tad tribal, and tribal scares the fuck out of me.
And yet, in my dotage, I seem to have, to some extent, become a part of a very old fashioned type of community which is a geographical one (with caveats) simply through living in a low pop, remote, rural area. The caveats are that it's not quite "all people in the area" but it's also not defined by anything else specific. So it's geographical, reinforced by behaviour (eg attendance at certain kinds of events).
And THAT kind of low-key maybe belonging feels ok. It's not because it's low demand (at least practically I do quite a lot for certain events tho behaviour norms are non existent) but more because there IS no philosophical/value unity. So I'm wondering if it's even belonging lol. Or a community.
But those people, including some near strangers, literally didn't leave me for dead in the biggest crisis of my life. So there's definitely that.
As someone with a longterm side-interest in cults & high-demand groups, I don’t see a description of a high-demand group here. What are you sacrificing/compromising to be in the community? What are the consequences if you don’t meet demands or decide to leave the group?
You sort of stepped around this with your paragraph about how there’s a spectrum of demand among groups but you’ll be treating it like a monolith. That disappointed me, but I went with it. But what I couldn’t agree with was this statement:
> “My friends expect a lot from me. Another way of putting it is that my “community” makes a “high” level of “demands.””
I don’t think friends is equivalent to community, though I take less issue with that than with equating expectations & demands. And what makes them high? Your description of EA culture (which was sparse, to be fair) just sounds like any other group of friends with strongly shared values — which does not a high demand group make.
So I’m not sure if this didn’t land for me because I’m unaware of EA culture that wasn’t explicitly stated here or because it only baaaaarely fits a very loose definition of a high-demand group.
I realize that "high-demand group" is often used as a euphemism for "cult", which is why I tried to define it in the first paragraph. If there's an alternate word I should have used for groups that ask a lot from you, I'm happy to take suggestions!
I donate ten percent of my income to EA-approved charities, I don't eat meat or eggs, and I work an EA job (and as a freelancer choose to take on a fair amount of work I don't particularly like because it's EA). EAs tend to have a pretty short list of demands because they're always like "well, if you have spare energy, have you considered working more?"
I want to be in a high-demand community where they tell you nice things about your abilities, you have a light that is not to be hidden under a barrel, your talents illuminate the world, and so on. I associate it with being told to sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. Which is pleasant if you like not having the responsibility of thought but it isn't especially gratifying to the ego!
I think everyone intuitively understands that they can be better if you ask them in the context of a hunter-gatherer tribal society or in a military unit.
You'd prefer to be in a military unit where everyone is prepared to lay down their lives to protect each other than one in which you'll try to help each other unless it would be a big risk of death. In a situation where groups compete with each other your average outcome is actually better when you are part of a group that demands higher degrees of sacrifice from individuals for the good of the group. Not only does it allow you to better take advantage of net positive trade-offs within the group it gives you strong advantages -- politically, economically and militarily -- in inter-group competition.
The non-obvious part is why join a group that asks a lot in other seemingly non-advantageous ways. And that's where your good points about the role of signalling commitment and stopping free riders comes in. During the good times you need a way to ensure you don't get a bunch of members who will only stick around when things go bad if they are net beneficiaries.
So basically the same reason we put military units through common suffering and sometimes use collective punishment when a member breaks a rule.
The military is often mentioned as an example of a high-demand group that is not a cult. (Although I've seen one person comment that although the US Army isn't a cult, the Marine Corps definitely is. I don't know if they were joking.)
I don't think a community which has high expectations of its members, but only ones they agree with, is a high-demand group. That seems like a redefinition of the term. Not that there are, in any high-demand group, zero people who'd reflectively endorse all that was being asked of them even if it didn't cause them social consequences. There are probably several of those even in the worst, and I'd guess they're more than 5% in most. But if the majority are only reinforcing expectations they'd have of themself if they left, that demand's not actually high.
> [...] and the panic attack about disappointing my most intimidating friend compensated for the other panic attack and I did the important thing
My "get regular exercise" strategy is legitimately "remind myself I dread death and it will come sooner, and if that doesn't work, say that I'll be forced to admit deep down I'm just a little baby who can't REALLY do anything he puts his mind to". It's quite effective. (I agree it takes some getting used to; I don't recommend it if you can't drop it the second you actually have a injury and need to rest up.)
Working on LLM-based software systems has really driven this point home for me - the prompt that works is the right prompt. Sure, it'd be great if we all were just SO MOTIVATED, but if you can build a support structure by stacking up your neuroses, whatever; it looks exactly the same from the outside.
Having grown up in an evangelical community I really struggle with the idea of accepting a group identity. Realistically every group I might join has some point of philosophy I disagree with strongly enough that I'd have a hard time with it.
But I'm also really turned off by my secular friends' consensus that doing so is a bad thing. Especially as I get older, the insistence on not having the same character sheet as anyone else seems really self-destructive and dumb.
So I guess I'm so skilled at rejecting community I even reject low-demand community. Which sucks.
> Realistically every group I might join has some point of philosophy I disagree with strongly enough that I'd have a hard time with it.
There are some groups where people will see this as a feature, not a bug, because arguing about how everyone is Doing The Thing Wrong is one of everyone's favorite hobbies. Rationalists may or not be one such group. 😆
As I think I've mentioned here before (sorry), I was an atheist (or what we at least used to call a "secular humanist") most of my life and converted to Catholicism in middle age. I have to admit it's a strange choice! But after circling around Christianity like an airplane, I finally got permission to land there somehow. I could have chosen a branch of Christianity more in line with my (liberal) values, but to be honest I did not want to go to church every week and wonder, "Is this church progressive enough, while not succumbing to too much progressive stupidity? Is it possible any of these people voted for Trump? Does this sermon reflect my exact values? Is the altruism over here effective enough? What about the Church down the road that is 1% more/less liberal?" That's exactly what I do NOT want in my spiritual practice.
My priest is Indian and probably can't vote here. I'm pretty sure I know his positions on abortion (against) and caring for immigrants (for). He doesn't talk about politics. I know some of the people in the pews voted for Trump and some didn't, and this fact keeps people from talking about it one way or the other at church, which is lovely. The Church has positions to anger the left and the right.
Some of the demands (like not masturbating) are too high, but reassuringly, there is hardly any person of whom or any way in which the Church isn't demanding the impossible. Some of the demands - like weekly attendance, or fasting two days a year - are exactly the right height to keep you engaged.
Interesting that you mostly talked about the sorts vibe of the church and not the articles of faith. Like if I believed in most of the doctrines of catholicism (salvation by acts and faith) and the legitimacy of the pope I'd join the church and try and reform it even if in practice the priests gave awful sermons. If I rejected those doctrines I wouldn't join regardless.
No criticism, I just find that difference interesting. I ultimately left the Catholic church and that ultimately came down to whether I believed in the things in the catechism and I'd like to understand the other perspective better.
--
As an aside the thing about masturbating in catholicism is that I'm pretty sure that it is no worse than using birth control in a marriage (though the later is at least still promoting marital unity so maybe you could distinguish them). It's always so odd how the Catholic laity get so hung up on some parts of the faith while not noticing the others (98% of American Catholics violate that).
It was always so funny growing up to see everyone in church agreeing w/ something on abortion or whatever when you looked around and all but the one really religious family had 1-4 kids.
Ah, I definitely do believe, but that's partly a consequence of being in the Church. It's complicated! I meant to have a substack about it but I never got around to writing anything. Anyway, it seemed even less relevant in a comment on this post than what I already wrote, which was at least semi-related to the demand level of being Catholic.
Fair enough but I subscribed in hope you write that one day.
Very interesting. I've never purposefully joined or grew into any "community" of the kind you describe (mostly communities of choice, and quite life-encompassing). And when I tentatively tested I've always ended up with "these are not my people EITHER". Possibly because it all feels tad tribal, and tribal scares the fuck out of me.
And yet, in my dotage, I seem to have, to some extent, become a part of a very old fashioned type of community which is a geographical one (with caveats) simply through living in a low pop, remote, rural area. The caveats are that it's not quite "all people in the area" but it's also not defined by anything else specific. So it's geographical, reinforced by behaviour (eg attendance at certain kinds of events).
And THAT kind of low-key maybe belonging feels ok. It's not because it's low demand (at least practically I do quite a lot for certain events tho behaviour norms are non existent) but more because there IS no philosophical/value unity. So I'm wondering if it's even belonging lol. Or a community.
But those people, including some near strangers, literally didn't leave me for dead in the biggest crisis of my life. So there's definitely that.
As someone with a longterm side-interest in cults & high-demand groups, I don’t see a description of a high-demand group here. What are you sacrificing/compromising to be in the community? What are the consequences if you don’t meet demands or decide to leave the group?
You sort of stepped around this with your paragraph about how there’s a spectrum of demand among groups but you’ll be treating it like a monolith. That disappointed me, but I went with it. But what I couldn’t agree with was this statement:
> “My friends expect a lot from me. Another way of putting it is that my “community” makes a “high” level of “demands.””
I don’t think friends is equivalent to community, though I take less issue with that than with equating expectations & demands. And what makes them high? Your description of EA culture (which was sparse, to be fair) just sounds like any other group of friends with strongly shared values — which does not a high demand group make.
So I’m not sure if this didn’t land for me because I’m unaware of EA culture that wasn’t explicitly stated here or because it only baaaaarely fits a very loose definition of a high-demand group.
I realize that "high-demand group" is often used as a euphemism for "cult", which is why I tried to define it in the first paragraph. If there's an alternate word I should have used for groups that ask a lot from you, I'm happy to take suggestions!
I donate ten percent of my income to EA-approved charities, I don't eat meat or eggs, and I work an EA job (and as a freelancer choose to take on a fair amount of work I don't particularly like because it's EA). EAs tend to have a pretty short list of demands because they're always like "well, if you have spare energy, have you considered working more?"
I want to be in a high-demand community where they tell you nice things about your abilities, you have a light that is not to be hidden under a barrel, your talents illuminate the world, and so on. I associate it with being told to sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. Which is pleasant if you like not having the responsibility of thought but it isn't especially gratifying to the ego!
I think everyone intuitively understands that they can be better if you ask them in the context of a hunter-gatherer tribal society or in a military unit.
You'd prefer to be in a military unit where everyone is prepared to lay down their lives to protect each other than one in which you'll try to help each other unless it would be a big risk of death. In a situation where groups compete with each other your average outcome is actually better when you are part of a group that demands higher degrees of sacrifice from individuals for the good of the group. Not only does it allow you to better take advantage of net positive trade-offs within the group it gives you strong advantages -- politically, economically and militarily -- in inter-group competition.
The non-obvious part is why join a group that asks a lot in other seemingly non-advantageous ways. And that's where your good points about the role of signalling commitment and stopping free riders comes in. During the good times you need a way to ensure you don't get a bunch of members who will only stick around when things go bad if they are net beneficiaries.
So basically the same reason we put military units through common suffering and sometimes use collective punishment when a member breaks a rule.
The military is often mentioned as an example of a high-demand group that is not a cult. (Although I've seen one person comment that although the US Army isn't a cult, the Marine Corps definitely is. I don't know if they were joking.)
I don't think a community which has high expectations of its members, but only ones they agree with, is a high-demand group. That seems like a redefinition of the term. Not that there are, in any high-demand group, zero people who'd reflectively endorse all that was being asked of them even if it didn't cause them social consequences. There are probably several of those even in the worst, and I'd guess they're more than 5% in most. But if the majority are only reinforcing expectations they'd have of themself if they left, that demand's not actually high.
> [...] and the panic attack about disappointing my most intimidating friend compensated for the other panic attack and I did the important thing
My "get regular exercise" strategy is legitimately "remind myself I dread death and it will come sooner, and if that doesn't work, say that I'll be forced to admit deep down I'm just a little baby who can't REALLY do anything he puts his mind to". It's quite effective. (I agree it takes some getting used to; I don't recommend it if you can't drop it the second you actually have a injury and need to rest up.)
Working on LLM-based software systems has really driven this point home for me - the prompt that works is the right prompt. Sure, it'd be great if we all were just SO MOTIVATED, but if you can build a support structure by stacking up your neuroses, whatever; it looks exactly the same from the outside.
Having grown up in an evangelical community I really struggle with the idea of accepting a group identity. Realistically every group I might join has some point of philosophy I disagree with strongly enough that I'd have a hard time with it.
But I'm also really turned off by my secular friends' consensus that doing so is a bad thing. Especially as I get older, the insistence on not having the same character sheet as anyone else seems really self-destructive and dumb.
So I guess I'm so skilled at rejecting community I even reject low-demand community. Which sucks.
> Realistically every group I might join has some point of philosophy I disagree with strongly enough that I'd have a hard time with it.
There are some groups where people will see this as a feature, not a bug, because arguing about how everyone is Doing The Thing Wrong is one of everyone's favorite hobbies. Rationalists may or not be one such group. 😆