Thanks to Anonymous for a provocative and important post.
From my perspective as a middle-aged evolutionary psychologist who studies sexual selection, EA certainly can give off some cultish vibes, insofar as cults tend to have some key features centered around controlling the mating effort and money of young adults.
Considered as a cultural way to hack human mating psychology, cults tend to involve mostly young single people, recruited into an ideology that alienates them from their extended families and the broader mating market, that channels their status-seeking and mating-effort instincts into some project ‘for the greater good of humanity’, and that expects high levels of donations to cult causes, combined with a frugal and self-effacing lifestyle.
The cult leaders discourage formation of pair bonds or polyamorous networking among the cult followers, and discourage marriage and kids, which could distract from the all-important mission. The normal human efforts to attract mates through intelligence, creativity, wit, and verbal fluency are channeled into arcane and endless debates about details of the cult ideology, rather than leading to actual mating and reproduction. The cult members end up speaking with an odd, somewhat pretentious lexicon that’s off-putting to outsiders, and that limits their ability to attract mates outside the cult.
The monetary benefits to the cult leaders are usually money-laundered and status-laundered through official organizations (church, charity, foundation, or think tank), in the form of generous salaries, perks, and grants, rather than through outright criminal theft of donations (as in the usual Ponzi schemes).
The cult promotes ageism and distrust in older, professionally successful outsiders, who could provide some skeptical counter-balance against the cult’s youthful, utopian ideology.
By these criteria, EA can sometimes look a bit cultish. But then, by the same criteria, most academic disciplines are also quite cultish. As are most start-up companies. As are most organizations that end up having high impact in the world....
Thanks to Anonymous for a provocative and important post.
From my perspective as a middle-aged evolutionary psychologist who studies sexual selection, EA certainly can give off some cultish vibes, insofar as cults tend to have some key features centered around controlling the mating effort and money of young adults.
Considered as a cultural way to hack human mating psychology, cults tend to involve mostly young single people, recruited into an ideology that alienates them from their extended families and the broader mating market, that channels their status-seeking and mating-effort instincts into some project ‘for the greater good of humanity’, and that expects high levels of donations to cult causes, combined with a frugal and self-effacing lifestyle.
The cult leaders discourage formation of pair bonds or polyamorous networking among the cult followers, and discourage marriage and kids, which could distract from the all-important mission. The normal human efforts to attract mates through intelligence, creativity, wit, and verbal fluency are channeled into arcane and endless debates about details of the cult ideology, rather than leading to actual mating and reproduction. The cult members end up speaking with an odd, somewhat pretentious lexicon that’s off-putting to outsiders, and that limits their ability to attract mates outside the cult.
The monetary benefits to the cult leaders are usually money-laundered and status-laundered through official organizations (church, charity, foundation, or think tank), in the form of generous salaries, perks, and grants, rather than through outright criminal theft of donations (as in the usual Ponzi schemes).
The cult promotes ageism and distrust in older, professionally successful outsiders, who could provide some skeptical counter-balance against the cult’s youthful, utopian ideology.
By these criteria, EA can sometimes look a bit cultish. But then, by the same criteria, most academic disciplines are also quite cultish. As are most start-up companies. As are most organizations that end up having high impact in the world....