This is an extremely interesting review of some of the pathological cults that have arisen in Europe and the U.S. in recent centuries. I have had a longstanding personal and professional interest in gnosticism (I am a psychologist), and during the Eighties I worked with people exiting from cults that were popular at that time. The mind/body dualism that Mr. James discusses pervades the philosophies and delusions promoted by most cult leaders, as well as the philosophies and practices of most Western and Eastern religions regarded as traditional and legitimate. The resulting conflicts about human biological needs, including sex, food, sleep and pain avoidance are the basis for most of the extreme practices of such groups. Given the remarkable persistence of this particular form of craziness over millennia and cross-culturally, I have to conclude that it is a manifestation of some innate defects in human psychology.
Thanks for the comment, Sandra. I have no objection to dualism as a belief, but the conclusion that the body is unimportant to the self leads to terrible self-harms.
It appears that dualism rarely if ever places equal value on both sides of the duality. In religion around the world the "spirit" or "mind" is very much privileged over the body. In pop therapy since the Sixties, there has been a counter movement that values the body, or at least the somatic experience of emotions, over "thought." In this value system the term "too heady" was a grave insult, often used against people who engage in critical thinking. We are still seeing that type of value system in the woke left, where emotions and "lived experience" are privileged over cognitive analysis, but the body in which emotion is experienced is also subjugated. The conflict that inevitably arises from explaining humans in polarized, unrealistic concepts like "body" and "spirit" always then gets acted out in both directions, like a binge/starve eating disorder. Scientific reasoning is overtly denigrated, but so is the concrete reality of the body.
This is an extremely interesting review of some of the pathological cults that have arisen in Europe and the U.S. in recent centuries. I have had a longstanding personal and professional interest in gnosticism (I am a psychologist), and during the Eighties I worked with people exiting from cults that were popular at that time. The mind/body dualism that Mr. James discusses pervades the philosophies and delusions promoted by most cult leaders, as well as the philosophies and practices of most Western and Eastern religions regarded as traditional and legitimate. The resulting conflicts about human biological needs, including sex, food, sleep and pain avoidance are the basis for most of the extreme practices of such groups. Given the remarkable persistence of this particular form of craziness over millennia and cross-culturally, I have to conclude that it is a manifestation of some innate defects in human psychology.
Thanks for the comment, Sandra. I have no objection to dualism as a belief, but the conclusion that the body is unimportant to the self leads to terrible self-harms.
It appears that dualism rarely if ever places equal value on both sides of the duality. In religion around the world the "spirit" or "mind" is very much privileged over the body. In pop therapy since the Sixties, there has been a counter movement that values the body, or at least the somatic experience of emotions, over "thought." In this value system the term "too heady" was a grave insult, often used against people who engage in critical thinking. We are still seeing that type of value system in the woke left, where emotions and "lived experience" are privileged over cognitive analysis, but the body in which emotion is experienced is also subjugated. The conflict that inevitably arises from explaining humans in polarized, unrealistic concepts like "body" and "spirit" always then gets acted out in both directions, like a binge/starve eating disorder. Scientific reasoning is overtly denigrated, but so is the concrete reality of the body.