|
Relentlessly aggressive cult apologists Author: K. Paul Johnson author profile Email: pjohnson@vlinsvr.vsla.edu Date: 1998/09/18 Forums: talk.religion.misc ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- There's a particular toxic type of person who hangs out in religious/spiritual newsgroups and lists, and I think that the common features of this type are more important than the particularities. Most of my unpleasant encounters with them have involved Theosophists, with Baha'is and Eckists in second and third place. But for each of my own such interactions I've witnessed dozens more involving others, with a wide range of groups. The chief preoccupation of this type is to use the Net to defend a belief system against criticism. But that in itself doesn't make a person a RACA. Reasoned debate about the merits and demerits of a religion is a good thing, and many honorable people do it. It's the relentlessly aggressive nature of the cult apologia-- sometimes rather *passive* aggressive-- that marks the particular type I'm talking about. The aggressive part of the "defense" means that the topic of discussion is always immediately shifted from the belief system itself to the *person* who criticizes it. The relentless aspect of the type is that they place a very high priority on having the last word, consistently take a "win/lose" approach to discussion, and will go on and on indefinitely, exhausting their opponents who usually have far less invested in the subject and a lower threshold for giving up the debate as hopeless. What is most mysterious to me about such people is that they are relentlessly and personally aggressive to those they debate, yet are in complete denial of this behavior. Indeed, anyone who points out that they are being RACA will be told that this is imagination, there is nothing personal or aggressive about their style of argumentation, blah, blah. The funniest and most mind-blowing part of it all is that they use this very denial as part of a *further* strategy of RACA. That is, turning discussion of their own behavior into an attack on the mental health of their victims, saying that you must be crazy if you think they're behaving like hateful bastards. Do they really believe this? Are they fooling themselves but no one else? Or is there a conscious, cynical strategy here? Who knows? What I do know is that they behave *as if* they were thinking this: "My chief goal is to stifle all criticism of My True Religion by being so unpleasant to anyone who dares criticize it that they eventually give up and go away saying `I'll never mess with a ______ again.'" Several strange paradoxes characterize the dynamics of interaction with such people. One is that they manage to arrange things, in their own minds at least, so that they "win" no matter what. If you give up and say "I've had it trying to talk to you, forget it," their response is "I WIN!! My peerless logic and overwhelming evidence has so cowed you that you have no choice but to give up." But if you keep arguing with them, they win in another way-- tying up your energy and time in a fruitless endeavor to make some kind of breakthrough that can never ever happen with such people. Damned if you do walk away, damned if you don't. But another paradox is that their self-perceived victories are usually defeats for the belief system they espouse, in terms of the impression they make on outsiders. How many people read them and think "YUCK! If *that's* what [Baha'is, Eckists, Theosophists, etc.] are like, to hell with them!" I welcome comments from anyone who has engaged in fruitless discussion with RACAs, or better yet who has ever seen one evolve into a decent human being capable of open, give-and-take interchange. Is it possible? Homepage |