Like so many others who entered the Cultural Anthropology program I was a passionate and dedicated social activist who wished to combine theory with practice. The program seemed like a dream come true. With a deep interest in spirituality, the school at large was very appealing as well. And attending an institution where “San Francisco is your campus” as CIIS advertised was thrilling.
Tranny finds cult.
Reads like the incoherent diary of a teenage girl. Too much drama.
Reads like someone with human dysphoria … let alone gender dysphoria. So this is where our government student loan bubble is being inflated ? What a WASTE of $$$.
What a waste of skin.
What a *&^%$#g drip. Sorry I wasted time on the first several paragraphs.
What is it that makes our young people so vulnerable to this kind of abuse–to turn it into such a disturbing and life-destroying situation? Is our education system geared to producing such docile and gullible sheep? I’m guessing that the type of programs described in this long (very long) expose attract the sort of people who are susceptible to such mind-games. Who would stick it otherwise? So much about how those bad people made my life miserable and twisted my brain. And so little about how “I was a gullible immature twit”. I fear this person has learned little from this experience and will be ripe for the next cult that comes along.
Leaving aside the entirely dubious legitimacy of any organization bearing the moniker “California Institute of Integral Studies” (it even sounds like something Scientology would operate), this is another example of why students in a “post-Lindsay-Shepherd” academic universe need to buy a $250 digital recorder and tape EVERYTHING.
“Institute of Integral Studies”
I expected it to have something to do with calculus.
“What is it that makes our young people so vulnerable to this kind of abuse–to turn it into such a disturbing and life-destroying situation? Is our education system geared to producing such docile and gullible sheep?”
I expect that NME666 will take issue, but when a society throws a faith belief system, as imperfect as it may be, overboard it opens itself to garbage like this. Those that believe in nothing will fall for anything. It is human nature to believe in something and if the channel is not good it will be bad.
“When people stop believing in God they don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything”
– attributed (erroneously) to G.K. Chesterton but a good line all the same
Just in response to a few comments above:
When I lived in LA for a couple years in the mid-2000s I worked with a group of about 30 or so people. All very smart. All well educated. All well off. And, about 25 or so of them either had some weird yogi or master or belonged to some strange group or quasi-religious cult. One woman (an engineer with a masters from MIT) gave her entire salary (~$250k) to some nut job and lived in a mansion in the hills with this lunatic and about 15 other people who all did the same thing.
This stuff has a long and storied tradition in California. No surprise to me that university departments are affected as well.
“We will continue to provide an Anthropology program that is committed to social justice, social advocacy, and postcolonial Anthropology.”
The last of three priorities is anthropology. And then only a special variant of anthropology, which you can be sure is a lot more “postcolonial” than it is anthropology, (just like social justice isn’t really about justice.)
KK … JJM … so true … so sadly, and very true. We all have a God shaped vacuum in our souls that cannot be filled with self-love, politics, sex & money (see: Harrvey Weinstein), “transitioning”, or Personality Cults. And we sure as hell cannot find meaning in … “tearing it all dowwwn maaaaan” at some FRAUDulent … cult … called the Institute of Integral … HATE.
This f*ckwit got exactly what she deserved. By buying into “social justice” she had already acquiesced to lifelong indoctrination and prepared herself mentally for what transpired. Take your whiny First World Problems, flush them, and grow a brain and some gonads. What were you planning to do for a job after graduation anyway? Oh, I see: teach courses on social justice. Disappear up your a-hole preaching to the choir must like your tormentors.
Stupid bugger didn’t even learn from her experience, how sad can you get…
A. wtf is the problem? it’s right there in the title CULTural Anthropology.
B. it happened in californicate, thus where is the ‘news’ story in that?
C. smack down one cult-in-the-works and 30 more pop up (see item B)
D. usual etc etc
I think you and JJM are right, Ken. People cannot know what is real and true if they reject the God who made all things and has revealed this to us.
What makes the situation even more serious is that the millennial generation is abandoning faith in God and Jesus Christ in droves. What will things be like in 10, 20 or 30 years if this continues?
Wasn’t this for all practical purposes the same complaint that poor deluded teenybooper Jazz had? (remember that show?) S/He was complaining that boys wouldn’t ask Her out when they found out she was a he.
“Be S. specializes in the radical teachings of Dr. King and has taught a graduate course called “Dr. King and Empire: How MLK Jr. Resisted War, Capitalism and Christian Fundamentalism”
Be S. would never believe this but it has been determined that children with a Christian background are less susceptible to cults and more able to detect and avoid harmful BS in the first place.
“Be S. specializes in the radical teachings of Dr. King and has taught a graduate course called ‘Dr. King and Empire: How MLK Jr. Resisted War, Capitalism and Christian Fundamentalism'”
Learning that he “resisted Christian fundamentalism” would certainly have come as quite a surprise to Dr King, an ordained Baptist minister with a theology Ph.D in theology.
“Be S. specializes in the radical teachings of Dr. King and has taught a graduate course called ‘Dr. King and Empire: How MLK Jr. Resisted War, Capitalism and Christian Fundamentalism'”
Learning that he “resisted Christian fundamentalism” would have come as quite a surprise to Dr King, an ordained Baptist minister with a Ph.D in Protestant theology.