I think there's a simpler foundational answer as to why Rationalism seems to produce cults or cult-adjacent groups. It's perhaps not a comfortable one. Autistic people are overrepresented in rationalist spheres. While some traits of autism are protective against vulnerability to cults, others make autistics more vulnerable. Especially when there are risk amplifiers like trauma history (from what I know, the Zizians, for example, are quite traumatized individuals).
I say this because I've been around the community for a while, am very interested in cults (in an academic sense), and am autistic myself.
To be clear, having trauma doesn't make murdering people an okay thing to do. The Zizians are, in my opinion, batshit.
i think there's also a lot to be said for how the movement attracts people with a lot of math/verbal intelligence and very little social intelligence. makes for people who are easily manipulated, and who will write you a 10,000 word essay about how they're not being manipulated if confronted
This is a good point. You also have a perfect stew of tendencies, such as the use on insider terminology terminology, elitism, doomsday beliefs, and in this case trans and vegan beliefs, all of which tend to create alienated insular communities. Combine that with people who are highly literal, struggle with metaphor, and already feel alienated from society- itтАЩs the perfect environment for a cult to form.
Came here to see if the OP mentions this because since I learned the details of this story, I've been trying to figure out the hows and whys of it, in a semi rationalist fashion and came with AS as a big part of the puzzle.
I think there's a simpler foundational answer as to why Rationalism seems to produce cults or cult-adjacent groups. It's perhaps not a comfortable one. Autistic people are overrepresented in rationalist spheres. While some traits of autism are protective against vulnerability to cults, others make autistics more vulnerable. Especially when there are risk amplifiers like trauma history (from what I know, the Zizians, for example, are quite traumatized individuals).
I say this because I've been around the community for a while, am very interested in cults (in an academic sense), and am autistic myself.
To be clear, having trauma doesn't make murdering people an okay thing to do. The Zizians are, in my opinion, batshit.
i think there's also a lot to be said for how the movement attracts people with a lot of math/verbal intelligence and very little social intelligence. makes for people who are easily manipulated, and who will write you a 10,000 word essay about how they're not being manipulated if confronted
100%
This is a good point. You also have a perfect stew of tendencies, such as the use on insider terminology terminology, elitism, doomsday beliefs, and in this case trans and vegan beliefs, all of which tend to create alienated insular communities. Combine that with people who are highly literal, struggle with metaphor, and already feel alienated from society- itтАЩs the perfect environment for a cult to form.
Came here to see if the OP mentions this because since I learned the details of this story, I've been trying to figure out the hows and whys of it, in a semi rationalist fashion and came with AS as a big part of the puzzle.