Joe Szimhart is a wealth of real knowledge about what is and is not a cult.

http://www.molyneuxrevealed.com/2009/07/mr-szinhart-offers-another-comment.html

I have to say, I really appreciate that an actual expert is commenting on the subject. Thank you Joe.

The top two posts on the site are his comments.

Again, amazing and insightful information. Thank you Arthur for contacting Joe for us. This is the kind of information that is priceless when attempting to understand what is happening at FDR. I would like to hear how Joe feels that victims can be rescued from FDR.

To reach ultimate freedom, follow these orders.

Yeah - that is something I have never understood about the mind set of the FDR members. It is all about freedom from coercion, right. Members spend all of this time figuring out how to not be coerced by their parents, their families, their friends, religion, government, their neighbors, etc, etc, etc. In the meantime, they are reading Molyneux's books, listening to his podcasts, reading and posting on his website, associating mainly with his other followers, and sending him their money. And, how are they escaping coercion again?

Well what they're after is control over their own lives. When you feel powerless and misunderstood, a bondage into which you deliver yourself can be a welcome change from a freer situation from which you feel alienated. The important thing is that it's their choice to be a part of FDR.

Or could they be trading a form of coercion that they are conscious of (or that Moly makes them conscious of) for a form of coercion that they are unconscious of?

Well it depends how you define coercion. According to one definition, to be coerced is to be made to follow someone else's plans besides your own. But if what the FDR folks want is to be a part of FDR and to participate actively in the community there in whatever way they think is good, then I think it would be difficult to say that they're being made to follow someone else's plans besides their own. The problem is that their own plans in this case may involve submission, openness to undue influence, etc.

It's sort of like how pot isn't really a physically addictive substance, but people do get hooked and in some cases their choices can produce some really unfortunate consequences. It's certainly worrisome that these people would choose to smoke pot irresponsibly, and their choices can affect who they hang out with, how they interact with people, what they decide to do with their lives, etc. But it doesn't seem like they're being coerced; they're just making really bad decisions.

This was sort of Memeverse's point in the discussion we had a while back. It ultimately is up to the FDR person whether or not they want to continue their participation, and as soon as they decide to quit, there really isn't even a mechanism in place to try to stop them, as far as I can tell. My counterpoint was that Molyneux should take responsibility for making sure that the people who were choosing to participate in his community were not putting themselves in a dangerous position. Non-coercive things can still be morally objectionable, and this seems like one of those cases to me.

It seems to me that Stefan is, in a manner of speaking, somewhat like a pot dealer whose livelihood depends on continued support from people who wouldn't continue smoking it if not for him, and who clearly can't incorporate it into their lives without screwing themselves up. I don't think the pot dealer is coercing anyone, but can you imagine if such a person started going around saying that his pot is the answer to all of the most difficult problems faced by mankind and the key to happiness, and that people who don't approve of smoking it are abusive or insane? We would say that he was taking advantage of his customers, even if they were happy to keep patronizing him.

And of course, none of that is to say that pot can't be a part of a healthy lifestyle, or even an aid to achieving a better lifestyle. Maybe it can. Similarly, it's at least possible (though I'm extremely pessimistic) that Stefan's ideas can be useful and helpful. But to the extent that they're applied in the way that they seem to get applied, and to the extent that Stefan continues to administer them in the way that he seems to administer them, they will very probably cause a number of people to really screw up their lives. That just doesn't seem becoming of the most ethical set of people to ever walk the face of the Earth.

Danny,

It doesn't seem as if you have read Szimhart's posts. He pretty much answers / addresses the issues you are raising.

You might have the right analogy, Danny, but you may have the wrong drug. I'd consider heroin instead.

While it certainly isn't true for all--and maybe not even most--FDR members, there is a sizeable subset of the group who have willingly turned over their executive decision-making functions to someone else.

Like heroin--there's a time early on when everything you do is a matter of personal choice. But then you reach a point when, even though you retain the awareness of right and wrong and what is good and bad for you, you are no longer capable of freely making choices.

If Molyneux's group is exerting Undue Influence, then some percentage of the members in that group is experiencing a similar bifurcation. They are like two people now--the person they were is still there, but there is a second, executive personality now calling the shots that is very aligned to the leader's personality.

That's why you'll often see things that look perfectly normal to us--say, a loving letter written by a relative, friend, or family member hoisted up on the board as trophy while other members are invited to pick it apart and "discover" the cruelty hidden between the lines. The same letter, a few months earlier, wouldn't have been perceived that way by the recipient.

But addiction changes you.

I'm not sure if I agree, Arthur. Szimhart points out that in many cults, "No one is literally trapped in a cage or chained to a leader here! It is all in thy head." And I agree that these cults are problematic even if they don't literally detain people. But I don't think that all cults are necessarily coercive (though again, they may have other morally problematic features).

I am not seeking to justify the patterns of behavior that we're observing at FDR. I think I've been as outspoken as anyone here in raising serious doubts about what's been going on over there. I'm just saying that "coercion" is a particular thing, and I don't think the characterization clearly applies in this instance. It's like if someone said that Hitler was a child molester and I responded that I didn't think he was; that's not saying I love Hitler!

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QuestEon, I wrestled with that a bit before posting, and I decided on pot instead of heroin, meth, or cocaine because the latter drugs produce physical addictions that I didn't want to taint my analogy. In defense of the choice, though, against your objections:

I smoked pot in earlier times, and it wasn't ever a problem for me. I had a great time with it, even though I acknowledge it probably led me to be a little more apathetic about things than I might have liked, and I don't regret using it. When I decided it was no longer worthwhile, I quit, and that wasn't a problem either. But I wasn't talking about people like me.

The people I had in mind are the ones whose social and personal lives revolve around pot. The ones who smoke a joint when they wake up, only hang out with other people who smoke lots of pot, don't really have any hobbies that aren't connected with being high, etc. These people aren't physically addicted to anything; their withdrawal from pot would be physically uneventful. But the pull to go back to smoking would be immense: their entire identities would be constructed around their habit, and they may not be able to function in an unfamiliar drug-free world.

Is the pot coercing them? I can't see how we would say so; coercion seems like an active sort of thing that someone does to someone else, which would put us in category error if we said "the pot coerces." What you seem to have in mind is the sort of "unfreedom" that Isaiah Berlin had in mind in discussing "negative" varieties of liberty: the freedom to act in line with the desires of one's "true" self (where this is understood in some idealized way). To the extent that using pot impedes someone's ability to choose in line with their "true" or ideal desires, we can say that using pot decreases the scope of their freedom, understood in Berlin's negative sense. And so I would be happy to say the same about participation in FDR. But this, I think, is a bit different from coercion (in much the same way that I wouldn't want to say that an untreated bipolar individual is "coerced" by his condition).

That being said, I'd definitely want to say that Berlin's negative liberty seems to be something that we should care about to at least some extent. And so to the extent that participation in FDR restricts the scope of one's negative liberty, and Molyneux knows about it, I think it would be unbecoming for him to continue operating in the manner that he does. So again, I'm not defending Molyneux or what goes on at FDR; I'm just saying I don't think it's coercive per se.

Okay. I have a question for you. Here is a sample conversation between an FDR member and a friend (target recruit). How would you define the member's tactics? Is it coercion? Is it manipulation? Consider that the target really wants to be a good friend to the FDR Member. (Sorry - this is blending two threads a little - but I think this conversation is a good example of one way FDR members do their recruiting job):

Member: I am giving you some information about Bible verses that show that Christians are commanded to kill non-believers.

Target: I have never really seen these verses before.

Member: Are you my friend?

Target: You know that I want to be a good friend to you.

Member: If you really want to be a good friend to me, why would you associate with people who are commanded to murder me?

Target: I would never knowingly associate with someone who is ordered to murder you.

Member: If you read this you will see that is what you are doing when you associate with Christians.

Hmm...I guess that really does blur the lines. But I mean, consider the following:

Quote:

Store owner: Do you want to continue shopping at my store? Customer: You know that I want to shop at your store. Store owner: If you really want to shop here, then why would you come in here without shoes on, in clear defiance of my "No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service" sign?

Perhaps the problem would be clearer with a different example:

Quote:

Friend 1: Are you my friend? Friend 2: You know that I want to be a good friend to you. Friend 1: And do you know that I am Jewish and your friend Bill is a neo-Nazi who has been plotting to kidnap me?

There are, I think, two observations to make here. First, friends hold each other to certain standards, and in some situations it's perfectly normal and acceptable to demand that someone do something or not do something if they want to remain your friend. Second, it seems like at least part of the problem I think we both have with the conversation in your last post is that the request being made is based on a completely pigheaded understanding of Christianity. It seems like we have a problem with the Member's request because it's unreasonable and ignorant.

But I think we run the risk, when we label this sort of thing "coercive," of coming to the conclusion that friends and relatives coerce each other all the time. When my dad says that he really wants me to pick something up for him at the store, the implication is that if I love and respect him, I'll do it, even if I don't really want to. Does that mean he's coercing me? Or does it mean that he's taking advantage of my own values and introducing factors into my decision-making that I would prefer not to be there and which may affect what I choose to do? I would tend to say it's the latter, but I agree the line isn't totally clear.

So, if we are discussing semantics, what would an appropriate term be? In the conversation I posted I am thinking that the member is attempting to cause the target to feel guilty if they continue to associate with Christians. I can imagine that if the target deeply values the member's friendship, they will struggle with what to do. This technique is but one of several that is used to encourage members, recruits, and potential recruits to conform to Moly's belief system. If you are my "friend", if you want to "belong to the community", if you want to "be one of us", you will conform.

You're just playing with words, here.

Danny wrote:

When my dad says that he really wants me to pick something up for him at the store, the implication is that if I love and respect him, I'll do it, even if I don't really want to. Does that mean he's coercing me? Or does it mean that he's taking advantage of my own values and introducing factors into my decision-making that I would prefer not to be there and which may affect what I choose to do? I would tend to say it's the latter, but I agree the line isn't totally clear.

First you state exactly what is happening, in a physical sense, between you and your father. Then you ask, rhetorically, "Is he coercing me?"

The answer to that question cannot possibly change what actually occurred between you and your father. In principle, then, it can only change (or reassert) what we mean by the word "coercion." In practice, this approach is used to apply existing or new connotations of the word "coercion" to desired experiences.

That is, by getting someone to agree that the experience was or was not coercion, you can either influence how they see that event or other events which they classify as coercive. But it can't change the facts at hand, which are presumably already known.

In case it's not clear, Danny, I'm arguing that your use of analogies is a coercive form of undue influence.