Estholes and Evangelists

[ecosophia]

I've been thinking quite a bit of late about the odd state of mind people get into when they evangelize. That's largely been driven by the behavior of some people over the last week on my blog, but of course this isn't the first time, or the thousand and first, that I've encountered it. 

I'm thinking among other things about a guy I knew, normally thoughtful and courteous, who got talked by his wife into taking the current version of EST with her. (I think it's called Landmark Forum now, but it's the same schtick.) When he finished the training, he immediately spammed all his friends, including me, with this four-screen-long email that sounded like an advertising flyer. I emailed him back to warn him that somebody had hacked his email and was using it for spam.

He responded saying, no, it was him, and he just wanted to share with everybody how wonderful the training had been. I expressed a lack of enthusiasm, and he responded with baffled hurt -- why, everybody he knew was treating him as though he'd just started preaching to them about Jesus. I explained to him that this was basically what he'd done...and he literally couldn't hear it. No, the slick four-screen sales pitch he'd dumped on all his friends was just him expressing his enthusiasm, and why were we all being so mean? (In case you're wondering, no, our friendship didn't survive this.)

There was a term for such a person back in the day: "esthole." There were a lot of them, and they had exactly the same odd blinkered attitude toward their actions: fifteen-minute-long sales pitches for EST on every conceivable occasion, to every conceivable person, was just ordinary enthusiasm for something really wonderful, and why did everyone react so badly to it? 

I got a corresponding situation over the last week on my blog, after posting something on the fallacy of insisting that a single diet or dietary theory was right for everyone. I was pleasantly surprised, I should note, by the way the vegans in my readership reacted to this; there were some raised hackles, to be sure, but I'd used veganism as an example in uncomplimentary ways, so by and large I didn't consider their reactions out of line. Nor did I field many long screeds about the evilly evil evilness of eating animal products. It seems possible, in fact, that the vegan movement may be getting over its awkward phase and achieving maturity, in which case it may be around for the long term. 

No, the estholes this time were the fans of Weston A. Price, a Cleveland dentist from the early 20th century who came up with an elaborate dietary theory based on his research into traditional diets. It was the same behavior pattern as with my esthole (former) friend: the long comments all circling back to encomia of Weston A. Price and his theories, the insistence that anybody who didn't join them in singing hallelujas to WAP was being unreasonably hostile, and so on, ending in a habit I particularly detest -- the WAPpers on the list having lengthy conversations solely with each other, in which they loudly praised each other for glorifying WAP and took pot shots at those of us who weren't on the WAPper bandwagon. So I declared the subject closed and started deleting attempted posts, and immediately fielded thank you notes from a flurry of other readers who were as bored with the WAP evangelism as I was. 

It's useful, mind you, to have advance warning of what the next big evangelical diet cult is likely to be, so I can systematically delete all attempts to proselytize for it on my blog, and take such other steps as one takes to deal with tiresome evangelists of every stripe. Still, it has me wondering: what is the state of mind that makes estholes and other evangelists so imperceptive? I suppose it's funny that somebody with Aspergers syndrome like me would be blinking in surprise at someone else's blindness to basic social courtesies, but there it is...

Comments

He-Whose-Name-Will-Not-Be-Mentioned

[(Anonymous)]

I was only vaguely aware of the EST ‘movement’ and had to go to Wikipedia (yeah, I know, I know…) to get a sense of what it was actually about. The description of it aiming “to transform one's ability to experience living so that the situations one had been trying to change or had been putting up with, clear up just in the process of life itself” left me scratching my head as I was under the impression stuff did that anyway whether you took a pricy course or not. I’m just a victim of disorganized thinking, I guess.

The comments about diet and He-Whose-Name-I-Promise-Not-To-Mention certainly showed what a hot-button issue this was (even for you, our honored host). I have the book, liked it and it has a place on my groaning bookshelves but that’s all. ‘A’ place, not ‘THE’ place. It has its limitations like every other book that has even been written. Maybe you better steer clear of food for a while. There are plenty of other hot-button issues to be covered. It will be interesting to see the next topic that gets people foaming at the mouth.

JLfromNH

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry to hear about the “WAP attack” on last week’s posting, JMG. Yikes! The phenomenon of the “new convert” gushing the “good news” to all and sundry certainly is common. At a certain age I was temporarily prone to such behaviour only to be saved by my own extremely shy and reserved nature.

Your question is certainly worth pondering. What comes to my mind is accounts from tales of faery wherein the humans are struck by glamour (or in USA, “glamor”, or in 1720s Scotland, “glamer” – “a sort of spell that would affect the eyesight of those afflicted, so that objects appear different than they actually are”). Of course, I am not saying that WAP was a faery or that he cast a spell on anyone, but if a diet (or a religion or cult) in some way has a life and power of its own, perhaps it is able to enchant those who fall within its orbit.

Ron M

[(Anonymous)]

JMG, another note of thanks for shutting down the WAPpers. Why they can't understand that the appropriate response to "thanks but no thanks" is to say "OK" and drop the subject, instead of doubling down and continuing to evangelize, I have no idea.

It also baffles me that they claim that WAP's theories aren't a diet. WAPF and PPF label certain categories of foods ("whole" foods, raw nuts and seeds, raw milk, etc) as good and others (polished grains, roasted nuts and seeds, pasteurized milk, etc) as bad; that's a DIET, y'all. It's a fairly broad one, but it's still a diet. The fact that the individual is allowed to pick and choose from among the approved foods doesn't make it not a diet --- Weight Watchers does that, and so do diets like veganism, Paleo, Whole30, and the officially recommended diets for diabetes, celiac disease, and heart disease.

Re: He-Whose-Name-Will-Not-Be-Mentioned

[ecosophia]

And if WAP had been brought up in that kind of spirit -- "Hey, here's one book I've read, it's not the only game in town but you might find some things in it interesting" -- I wouldn't have responded the same way. As for EST, I think you had to be there -- it made a sufficiently big splash in pop culture that hit movies made fun of it (there was a great scene in Semi-Tough, for example).

[ecosophia]

Hmm! That strikes me as potentially a very useful way to think about it.

[ecosophia]

The thing is, that kind of claim is absolutely bog-standard among the evangelically minded. I think of it as a variant of "It's different this time!" -- just as the believers in every speculative bubble have to insist that it's different from every other speculative bubble, the believers in every diet fad have to insist that, no, it's not a diet fad, it's a completely unique way of relating to food that nobody's ever thought of before, or at least nobody since the mythical golden age when everybody ate like this, blah blah blah.

Blah.

[(Anonymous)]

I have one Weston Price book. It's called Nourishing Traditions and it's by one of his followers. As cook books go it's reasonably good, though I always have to double or treble the seasonings. As Bibles go, it's a masterwork, providing a account of Paradise and its Fall, the nature of evil and a detailed plan for Salvation.

I have never been a dietary evangelist. I am prone to evangelism, though. When I was 17 I read Daniel Quinn's Ishmael books. For the next 5+ years I was an insufferable evangelist for Quinn's work and an obnoxious know it all. Give me a political, social, religious or personal issue, in any scale, and I'd some it for you in 2 words: Read Ishmael. I'd like to say that I then returned to normal, but that wouldn't be true. No, I just broadened my religious fervor to include the works of Derrick Jensen and others in the Neoprimitivist movement and eventually Kropotkin, Proudhon and finally Marx.

I think I am less evangelical now. Magical practice definitely helped, which leads me to wonder--

Regarding the cluelessnes of the evangelical... Do you suppose it's the same sort of thing that happens when a person possessed by a spirit can't remember what they said when the possession ends?

Estholes et al

[(Anonymous)]

I’ve observed similar behavior in Randroids and Jehovah’s Witnesses and the devotees of other cultic belief systems. There seems to be a peculiarly pestilent charm to the notion that there is or can be some unitary explanation to Life, the Universe and Everything which, once accepted uncritically, delivers us from any need to do the hard work of resolving those admittedly difficult problems for ourselves. The need for constant agreement and reinforcement betrays a certain brittleness to that psychological configuration.

As an impressionable teenager in the 70s I almost got sucked into the EST experience. Fortunately my friends dissuaded me from it.

Kevin

a completely unique way of relating to food

[(Anonymous)]

"a completely unique way of relating to food"

How many different ways are there to pet your future food? (*snicker, snicker*)

dfr

Re: a completely unique way of relating to food

[ecosophia]

As a matter of principle, I don't recommend petting artichokes. ;-)

[ecosophia]

Hmm! I suppose a case could be made for that -- a lesser form, say, showing itself as a diminished degree of self-knowledge. Still, it would be interesting to do an experimental test -- to teach a bunch of devout believers in some ideology how to do a banishing ritual, and see if regular practice of it does anything to make them aware of how they come across to others.

Re: Estholes et al

[ecosophia]

It seems to be pretty much standard practice among the followers of every one of the various One True Paths out there. I've certainly seen it in everything from Randroids to hardcore social justice warriors to diet faddists to true believers in peak oil!

[eldriwolf]

When I first moved to Berkeley I met many kinds of evangelicals-- ,Christian, Marxist,food, you name it..)
Some of them were otherwise intelligent beings.

At first I blamed whatever cult they were affiliated with-
-then, as I saw the pattern, I decided that;
"Fanaticism Causes brain Damage" Later, I saw a graffiti: "Zealousy=Submission"

I agree, they have surrendered their ability to think about at Least 'that' subject.

I think the mechanism Might be related to the one that 'falling in love' (with a new person) uses-
-It enables us to rapidly accept novel things

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not going to argue with the Greer's Law of Evangelism - it certainly has it's place and I knew a few people who fit into it perfectly.

I just wanted to add that in some cases the evangelism is not so much a product of suppressed dissatisfaction but of a simple ignorance. I've heard it called more than once "The Neophyte Syndrome" and I have experienced it first person when I got snapped out of my secular-materialist shell for the first time and discovered that the world is somewhat more interesting than I supposed. I didn't quite evangelise my new discovery but I certainly did annoy a few people back then more than once. It took me a while to figure it out that there is more than one way to explore the unseen and that the world is not just more interesting than I suppose, it's more interesting than anyone can possibly suppose. Before that I, well, went through a evangelical-neophyte phase that makes me shrug sometimes when I remember it. :}

And then there are people who just live to preach. Back in my Russian uni we had a philosophy teacher who used to be a Party leader back in USSR days. She was teaching Scientific Communism - the only subject that everyone had to study in every single soviet university. The only way to teach THAT for years was to have a evangelical conviction that it is true (or to be an alcoholic). When USSR collapsed, she swang all the way "out there" into theosophy, got her mind through a few books by Blavatsky and Roerich, and started teaching what she learned there repeating it nearly word to word on every single "philosophy" class she was running. She did it with the same conviction and the same (very typical) empty shine in her eyes that she had back in her Party leadership days. And it repelled all of us from anything esoteric for years after that.

So maybe (just maybe) that EST ex-friend of yours simply suffered from the Neophyte Syndrome? But I must confess, I don't know what EST and judging by the way it is mentioned I don't even want to know what it is. :-}

Cheers,
Ganesh Ubuntu

[jpc2]

In a word - the 'Radiance':-)

The ONE WAY - to nothingness.

I think Price did some useful empirical research on diet at probably the last point in time when it could be done. That he turned it into a diet is not surprising - that was what he set out to do. He was looking for something to help with the degeneration (dental carries and facialy deformities) he saw as a dentist that he believed was due to the massive change to processed food (white bread and sugar). At least that was what I got from his book.

When I got the cancer diagnosis the one thing I avoided was obsessing on searching for 'cancer' on the Intertubes. Sure I did a bit of searching main stream information and a few alternate sources. Took every thing with a cow lick sized grain of salt. Mostly it left me feeling my doctors had better track records than anything else I saw. They didn't claim to have all the answers. They didn't put down all of the alternatives but couldn't recommend any as better than a useful supplemental treatments. And a lot of the 'cure' treatments do make good supplemental support treatments for SOME people. Sure the Mayo Clinic might have saved more of my tongue but at what odds and what cost. As it was my retirement was eaten even with fairly good insurance. For me it's worked out fairly well after 9 years. Most even agree that medicine is at least as much magic as science.

John

Re: He-Whose-Name-Will-Not-Be-Mentioned

[(Anonymous)]

De gustibus disputandum est.

Bad Latin aside, on to answer your question. I took the est training and am glad I did. As a person whose only previous experience of magical/spiritual principles was the falsity of patriarchal mind control masquerading as Christian love, the training had lid-lifting powers allowing many of us to peer into the workings of our own minds and hearts, like popping the hood on a car engine and seeing all the little whirligigs spinning ‘round.

What is the mindset of people who indulge in such delights as turning a firehose on their friends? Energy! Abundance! Freedom! Doing the training releases boo-koos of spiritual energy that has been locked away for years running dreary little scenarios, disempowering mental routines, and constricting habitual conditioning. Borrowing from another tradition, allow me to say, “Forgive them: they know not what they do.”

I never heard the word egregor until I read your blog, but in the training, I experienced the phenomenon and saw it in action as it facilitated people to recognize, confront and overcome their conditioning blocks. Afterwards, I enjoyed years worth of fellowship with others like me. We met voluntarily to discuss mundane life issues using the common experience, safe-space trust, and useful vocabulary that the training had instilled in us. These meetings were like spiritual support groups, helping one another dispassionately analyze and work through deeper layers of conditioning as they arose in later life. It was like being part of a Lodge or an Okinawan moai.

Though I personally derived a good deal of benefit from the training, I do not advocate for it. Evangelizing is like smallpox: religious innoculation or natural resistance makes one less likely to succumb. I admit to a gleeful and thoroughly ignoble wish that you should take it, chiefly because I like to imagine a practicing mage going mano-a-mano with the trainers. Spin ‘em on their ears like a 78 vinyl disc? It gives me the evil giggles.

The training was designed by a master marketer and it survives by using marketing techniques. High-pressure salesmanship is a time-honored means of boosting sports, war, fashion, Ponzi schemes like the stock market and many such fads. People fall for it. Time and again. Did not Jesus throw the money-changers out of the Temple? They, too, were sheltering under a great edifice not of their building.

But, you know, business is business. As long as people are culturally barred from experiencing spiritual growth by greedy patriarchal religious institutions and Cartesian distortions of reality, selling any kind of effective self-help magic will make money for someone. Like cheap fast-food and mallwarts, people need what they are selling. It may be distasteful to those who hunger for richer spiritual nourishment; but it is better than starving, I think. Sorry about your friend, though.

[(Anonymous)]

After you sent me down the Eric Berne rabbit hole last week I feel uniquely qualified to take an irresponsibility uneducated guess. They have these things called strokes that's basically people recognizing each other's existence. Without strokes people wither away and die, which is why solitary confinement is regarded as torture. It sounds like the cults figure out a way to get people hooked on a certain kind of strokes in exchange for all the spare brain capacity that they can afford, then send them out into the world looking to replicate the process in a sort of viral trendy psychological pyramid scheme. Okay that's all I got. Still have two more books to get through but at least for now that "please don't kick me" sign is retired. Owe you a beer for that one.

[(Anonymous)]

Not surprising, given that many of the original main-stream religions have been hollowed out by urbanization and industrialization. The hunger for something to fill the spirit seems to have gotten confused with physical hunger. Hence the power of all these fad dietary regimes. Rand, Peak Oil, EST all offer the ‘one true’ explanation for why things are out of kilter so people glom onto these to steady themselves in uncertain times. Naturally they want to pass the good word onto us. (*sigh*)

JLfromNH

[kayr]

Having been caught up in evangelical fever before, it felt to me like community. I was more powerful, enhanced, what ever because I was in a community of believers. It was intoxicating.

However, once you get over the fever, you start seeing the flaws in the system and the failings of the one true way shows up and you realize that you were a large jerk with little if any redeeming social qualities.

I think it is like a drug.

Can't shut up vs. Can't hear

[(Anonymous)]

Not exactly the flip side; more the complement perhaps, of this type of evangelicalism is the person who cannot hear a new idea but just converts it mentally to some variation of an idea they already believe or understand. I was once discussing the question of various low carbohydrate diets with a friend. (Yes, diet again). I could not convince her that the Atkins Diet, which naturally came up because it is one of the better known lo-carb diets, allowed, nay, encouraged vegetables. Despite my reading her an official list of recommended vegetables and fruits from the book, she remained convinced that Atkins expected his readers to subsist on steaks cooked in butter, wrapped in bacon, or something along those lines. It never seemed to occur to her that the articles she had read years earlier might have distorted the facts. I would bet that some of the participants in the discussion on the main blog have convinced themselves that John Michael subsists on nothing but bacon cheeseburgers and beer, despite his statements to the contrary.

Master narratives are very attractive to a certain type of mind. Accept the basic premise and everything falls neatly into place--until reality throws up something that doesn't.

Rita Rippetoe

Re: a completely unique way of relating to food

[oakmouse]

Or nopales (cactus pads).

[auntlili]

I'm trying to think of the last time I got evangelical about something and noticed shrinking in response. I remember that a friend raised the subject of Jack the Ripper. She was sure, based on someone she had seen interviewed on TV, that it was HH Holmes. I'm afraid I scoffed. As it happens, I had read Bruce Robinson's They All Love Jack. It's an enormous tome -- 750 pages -- and embodies 15 years of research. It's a riveting and quite persuasive read. And I was enormously excited about it because several hundred pages in I was (and remain) convinced that he found the culprit. The trouble is, I can't get anyone to read it because it's so long. But having dismissed HH Holmes out of hand because he spent most of his life in the United States and murdered in an entirely different fashion from the Ripper, I offered my friend the loan of this excellent book. She initially agreed and then declined. Our friendship was never in danger because what's a serial killer between friends? But to your question, my motivation was that I was just so beside myself with excitement and glee at having a great big mystery solved that I wanted someone to share it with. I mean who expects the Ripper to be identified and even better, explained 130 years after the fact? It's like finding Richard the Third buried in a parking lot under the letter R. Too exciting not to share.

[dufu]

I've noticed an interesting trend in Internet conversations: people who are deeply committed to Enlightenment values of rationalism, scientific thought, and individualism nonetheless invoke someone's Ph.D. with reverence and awe.

I seem to recall this happening a decade ago when Ron Paul became "Dr. Paul" (sometimes even "Dr. Ron Paul, M.D.").

Last year I started seeing "Dr. Peterson" for Jordan Peterson. His archrival Sam Harris, who has a Ph.D. in neuroscience, is not called "Dr. Harris" as far as I know...

And now, in your comments thread, we have "Dr. Price" for the discoverer of the One True Traditional Diet.

It seems like behavior more suitable for a deeply religious person than for a scientific rationalist, but what do I know. I also enjoyed the sectarian warfare between the Price Foundation and Prince-Pottenger, Inc.

[(Anonymous)]

You know, it's funny. There's another area where you get a phenomenon that feels really similar to religious evangelism, at least to my tone reading: fandom. (I've seen at least one ex-Evangelical in fandom make similar observations, albeit more centered on comparing fandom debates to theology debates.)

That brings to mind two hypotheses (or possibly two ways of framing the same hypothesis). The first is that the people involved are just working in the Christian and/or Faustian frame and acting in accordance with that even if they've consciously rejected Christianity. The second is that stories are alive, want to be told, and that the evangelism is part of their replication process.

(voiceoftaredas - though I should probably get a new handle, I think my pompous streak got out of hand when making this one.)

[(Anonymous)]

Esthole seems a very appropriate term. May I also suggest the term 'mbahole' for all those formerly nice people who having completed their MBA then see absolutely everything in terms of markets and marketable commodities, up to and including your children, your cat, that beautiful big old tree in the park and the air you breathe - not to mention all the acronyms and jargon which gets thrown at you and which, if you question, results in exasperated looks of despair that they have to talk to such an ignoramus as you? /rant