I recently had a frightening first-hand brush with socially induced irrationality. My parents are devout Catholics who are not too pleased with my “aversion” to their religion. They send me to a Jesuit School and naturally it works to my advantage with them to appear as if I’m engaged in deep “reflection” on the question of if a loving, Christian, god of the Bible exists (obviously I am not.) One of the implicit social expectations at my school is to attend a retreat called “Kairos” as a senior. It’s a 4 day deal with plenty of prayer and new-age garbage; typically something that’d be no match for my powers of rationality. I signed up to ease my situation at home, expecting no harm to come from the retreat.
At first I thought Kairos would entail your typical retreaty nonsense. It turned the “search for god” into a social activity, not-so-subtly building links from normal friendship to Jesus Christ Lord And Savior Of His Anointed Flock. This wouldn’t be a problem for me under normal circumstances; but Kairos was not your typical retreat.
We were deprived of sleep, didn’t have a single (waking) moment alone, weren’t allowed to know what time it was, and were forced to pray and “reflect” in a circle for hours at a time multiple times per day. This wasn’t just indoctrination. This was brainwashing. I wasn’t gullible enough to accept one iota of the spiritual garbage, but to understand my failing of mental hygiene it’s important to know that Kairos is a very secretive retreat. Its rituals, itinerary, and operations are supposed to be unknown to all but retreat alumni to ensure that future attendees get to experience all the great “surprises” and such.
One of my friends (who didn’t attend) has been involved with Lesswrong far longer than I have; and upon my return he asked me what specifically happened on the retreat. He asked with the intent to publish the information, exposing this blatant brainwashing for what it is. Then I did the (to me) unthinkable; I refused to disclose, solely to preserve Kairos’ secrets. I was so caught up in the social bonds I formed and the general emotional hokum that I was convinced to actually defend such a terrible institution.
Now, just a week later, I am ashamed. I utterly failed my art. Perhaps if not for the intervention of my friend I’d still be protecting the secrets of Kairos. I was so easily put in a position where I would knowingly allow minds to fall victim to brainwashing, and I gave my tacit sanction to the ritualistic breaking of my peers’ psyches for the sake of a retreat whose singular goal is to convert them to Catholicism. All of this because I got lost in the sociality of the retreat. I’ve since resolved that I must never permit my mental integrity to be compromised. Not for the sake of a group, not for the sake of a better social life, and not for the sake of my emotions. I think it’s definitely warranted to be incredibly selective in who you associate with and how; the effects they have on your mind could be devastating under the right conditions.
I just got back from the same Kairos myself. I went out of curiosity about the aformentioned secrets, plus the chance to get to know new people. I am generally annoyed by wrong ideas, but I didn’t mind Kairos as much as Ciphermind. Also I think he’s exaggerating a little.
We did get some sleep, probably less than seven hours a night but more than four. I’m guessing that based on my mental state, because we really didn’t have any clocks. We did have occasional breaks during which we could be alone and sleep if we chose (I think around 4 hours of this on the 4-day retreat, of which I used 1.5 for sleeping). The secrecy is for real, though. Nearly everything in his reply to ZankerH is true, but we didn’t have to hold a cross (we could just hold the candle), and I didn’t pray and got away with it. Just for clarification, we were all fully clothed during the “naked bonfire.” Alumni call it that to non-alums and insist it involves actual nudity, but everyone is pretty sure they’re making it up.
I wouldn’t call it a “ritualistic breaking of my peers’ psyches for the sake of a retreat whose singular goal is to convert them to Catholicism.” We were encouraged to spill all our secrets and past traumas and family troubles and be consoled by our new best friends forever, but since nobody knows beforehand if you have any past traumas, it’s pretty easy to get away with not spilling anything. Some people did break down and cry on everyone’s shoulders, but I didn’t.
It was less about converting us to Catholicism than to general theism. One or two people out of the 11 I heard talk about it did claim to have found faith in God there, so it works at least a little). The main thing they were trying to convert us to is love and hugs and rainbows and flowers and bunny rabbits, which gets deeply annoying but not particularly horrible.
I mostly used Kairos to get to know the other people, trying to co-opt it for my own social skill-building purposes. The main thing I learned from it was how to pretend to love people I actually couldn’t care much less about. The first thing I did when I got back was tell one of my (graduated without going) friends everything. I’m not telling anyone who might still attend, much for the same reason I wouldn’t spoil a book. I notice as I finish writing this that my hands are shaking a little, but I don’t know why.
My objection isn’t with what effect the retreat had on me; but rather that I allowed the social benefits and the positive feelings it gave me cloud the fact that it is an institution of indoctrination. I didn’t mind it at the time, but the techniques employed were very obviously ways to put people in emotionally vulnerable, and secondarily irrational, positions.
Know that the primary goal of this “book” you refuse to spoil was always, from its inception, to make peoples’ relationships with Jesus stronger. To me, keeping Kairos’ secrets is tacitly condoning its practices. Of course it will make the retreat less impactful; that’s what we need. A golden, and easy, opportunity to lessen the hold that irrationality has on our peer-group exists here; all that needs to happen is a simple leak.
You did not fail. It took you only one week, and a simple question from your friend, to break out of a mindset that some people never break out of. What’s more, you learnt a lesson from it. I would count that as a win.
The secrets include a night where they publicly read letters from every person’s family (4 hour ceremony late at night) and you receive dozens from peers who’ve attended, a “naked bonfire” where you sit in a circle and hold a candle and cross and pray orally for a timed 10 minutes, and this one thing where they give you a poem at night about taking a rose from heaven and waking up with it and the next morning theres a rose outside your door, among other things.
this one thing where they give you a poem at night about taking a rose from heaven and waking up with it and the next morning theres a rose outside your door, among other things.
They seem to have borrowed the idea from Coleridge:
If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awake — Aye, what then?
A Catholic friend of mine has been on these Kairos retreats and touts them as an exceptional experience of social bonding, etc. He hasn’t told me any of the details either.
I don’t deny the social advantages it’s had for myself and others, but participating in its culture of secrecy only bolsters the institution as a whole which in turn drives more of my peers toward nonsense.
The social gains for me, at least in my value set, are far less important than my mental integrity.
For what it’s worth, I’m going to guess that Kairoi differ significantly across the country; the Kairos I went on as a junior in high school was an incredibly positive experience. Nobody tried to convince me of any bad metaphysics, even if the language of bad metaphysics was used (and it was easily translatable to good metaphysics), and I actually learned to view my classmates as real people, not a collection of incomprehensible enemies.
I recently had a frightening first-hand brush with socially induced irrationality. My parents are devout Catholics who are not too pleased with my “aversion” to their religion. They send me to a Jesuit School and naturally it works to my advantage with them to appear as if I’m engaged in deep “reflection” on the question of if a loving, Christian, god of the Bible exists (obviously I am not.) One of the implicit social expectations at my school is to attend a retreat called “Kairos” as a senior. It’s a 4 day deal with plenty of prayer and new-age garbage; typically something that’d be no match for my powers of rationality. I signed up to ease my situation at home, expecting no harm to come from the retreat.
At first I thought Kairos would entail your typical retreaty nonsense. It turned the “search for god” into a social activity, not-so-subtly building links from normal friendship to Jesus Christ Lord And Savior Of His Anointed Flock. This wouldn’t be a problem for me under normal circumstances; but Kairos was not your typical retreat.
We were deprived of sleep, didn’t have a single (waking) moment alone, weren’t allowed to know what time it was, and were forced to pray and “reflect” in a circle for hours at a time multiple times per day. This wasn’t just indoctrination. This was brainwashing. I wasn’t gullible enough to accept one iota of the spiritual garbage, but to understand my failing of mental hygiene it’s important to know that Kairos is a very secretive retreat. Its rituals, itinerary, and operations are supposed to be unknown to all but retreat alumni to ensure that future attendees get to experience all the great “surprises” and such.
One of my friends (who didn’t attend) has been involved with Lesswrong far longer than I have; and upon my return he asked me what specifically happened on the retreat. He asked with the intent to publish the information, exposing this blatant brainwashing for what it is. Then I did the (to me) unthinkable; I refused to disclose, solely to preserve Kairos’ secrets. I was so caught up in the social bonds I formed and the general emotional hokum that I was convinced to actually defend such a terrible institution.
Now, just a week later, I am ashamed. I utterly failed my art. Perhaps if not for the intervention of my friend I’d still be protecting the secrets of Kairos. I was so easily put in a position where I would knowingly allow minds to fall victim to brainwashing, and I gave my tacit sanction to the ritualistic breaking of my peers’ psyches for the sake of a retreat whose singular goal is to convert them to Catholicism. All of this because I got lost in the sociality of the retreat. I’ve since resolved that I must never permit my mental integrity to be compromised. Not for the sake of a group, not for the sake of a better social life, and not for the sake of my emotions. I think it’s definitely warranted to be incredibly selective in who you associate with and how; the effects they have on your mind could be devastating under the right conditions.
I just got back from the same Kairos myself. I went out of curiosity about the aformentioned secrets, plus the chance to get to know new people. I am generally annoyed by wrong ideas, but I didn’t mind Kairos as much as Ciphermind. Also I think he’s exaggerating a little.
We did get some sleep, probably less than seven hours a night but more than four. I’m guessing that based on my mental state, because we really didn’t have any clocks. We did have occasional breaks during which we could be alone and sleep if we chose (I think around 4 hours of this on the 4-day retreat, of which I used 1.5 for sleeping). The secrecy is for real, though. Nearly everything in his reply to ZankerH is true, but we didn’t have to hold a cross (we could just hold the candle), and I didn’t pray and got away with it. Just for clarification, we were all fully clothed during the “naked bonfire.” Alumni call it that to non-alums and insist it involves actual nudity, but everyone is pretty sure they’re making it up.
I wouldn’t call it a “ritualistic breaking of my peers’ psyches for the sake of a retreat whose singular goal is to convert them to Catholicism.” We were encouraged to spill all our secrets and past traumas and family troubles and be consoled by our new best friends forever, but since nobody knows beforehand if you have any past traumas, it’s pretty easy to get away with not spilling anything. Some people did break down and cry on everyone’s shoulders, but I didn’t.
It was less about converting us to Catholicism than to general theism. One or two people out of the 11 I heard talk about it did claim to have found faith in God there, so it works at least a little). The main thing they were trying to convert us to is love and hugs and rainbows and flowers and bunny rabbits, which gets deeply annoying but not particularly horrible.
I mostly used Kairos to get to know the other people, trying to co-opt it for my own social skill-building purposes. The main thing I learned from it was how to pretend to love people I actually couldn’t care much less about. The first thing I did when I got back was tell one of my (graduated without going) friends everything. I’m not telling anyone who might still attend, much for the same reason I wouldn’t spoil a book. I notice as I finish writing this that my hands are shaking a little, but I don’t know why.
My objection isn’t with what effect the retreat had on me; but rather that I allowed the social benefits and the positive feelings it gave me cloud the fact that it is an institution of indoctrination. I didn’t mind it at the time, but the techniques employed were very obviously ways to put people in emotionally vulnerable, and secondarily irrational, positions.
Know that the primary goal of this “book” you refuse to spoil was always, from its inception, to make peoples’ relationships with Jesus stronger. To me, keeping Kairos’ secrets is tacitly condoning its practices. Of course it will make the retreat less impactful; that’s what we need. A golden, and easy, opportunity to lessen the hold that irrationality has on our peer-group exists here; all that needs to happen is a simple leak.
I have noticed symptoms like that in myself when I (looking back on it) was trying to understate the emotional impact something had on me.
A 10-20% recruitment rate is pretty good as these things go, actually.
Yes but these effects can be very short-lived.
So, do we get to hear the secrets? They seem to be better protected than those of the Church of Scientology.
You did not fail. It took you only one week, and a simple question from your friend, to break out of a mindset that some people never break out of. What’s more, you learnt a lesson from it. I would count that as a win.
Well? Don’t leave us hanging here, did this actually happen / where is it published?
The secrets include a night where they publicly read letters from every person’s family (4 hour ceremony late at night) and you receive dozens from peers who’ve attended, a “naked bonfire” where you sit in a circle and hold a candle and cross and pray orally for a timed 10 minutes, and this one thing where they give you a poem at night about taking a rose from heaven and waking up with it and the next morning theres a rose outside your door, among other things.
They seem to have borrowed the idea from Coleridge:
A Catholic friend of mine has been on these Kairos retreats and touts them as an exceptional experience of social bonding, etc. He hasn’t told me any of the details either.
I don’t deny the social advantages it’s had for myself and others, but participating in its culture of secrecy only bolsters the institution as a whole which in turn drives more of my peers toward nonsense.
The social gains for me, at least in my value set, are far less important than my mental integrity.
For what it’s worth, I’m going to guess that Kairoi differ significantly across the country; the Kairos I went on as a junior in high school was an incredibly positive experience. Nobody tried to convince me of any bad metaphysics, even if the language of bad metaphysics was used (and it was easily translatable to good metaphysics), and I actually learned to view my classmates as real people, not a collection of incomprehensible enemies.