Cult-Proofing 101: Julie Bogart on Critical Thinking

[00:00:00] This winter, take your icon pass north. North to abundant access, to powder-skiing legacy, to independent spirit. North where easy to get to, meets worlds away. Go north to snow basin. Now on the icon pass.

[00:00:27] This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal, medical or mental health advice. The views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast

[00:00:37] and are not intended to malign any religion group, club, organization, business, individual, anyone or anything. I'm Sarah Edmondson And I'm Anthony, air quotes Nippy Ames And this is A Little Bit Culty A podcast about what happens when things that seem like a great thing at first go bad.

[00:01:02] Every week we chat with survivors, experts and whistleblowers for real cult stories told directly by the people who live through them. Because we want you to learn a few things we've had to learn the hard way.

[00:01:13] Like if you think you're too smart to get sucked into something cult-y, you're already prime recruitment material. You might even already be in a cult. Oops, you better keep listening to find out. Welcome to season six of A Little Bit Culty Welcome back everybody to this week's episode.

[00:01:45] I got a new mic everybody. It's called a Shure mic. S-H-U-R-E, not S-U-R-E. Because we're never sure on A Little Bit Culty are we? No. But I can literally hear my lips smack when I'm like It's not the microphone baby you got a new set of headphones.

[00:01:59] That's what I meant headphones. Should we start that over or just let people know how dumb I am? Yeah, you know, I literally leave it there. I think they know. It's my headphones.

[00:02:08] I mean that was a total made head comment but you are so smart in other ways. It's one of the things I love about you. I love our, it's one of the reasons I'm attracted to you. You're very intelligent.

[00:02:19] We have great conversations and we had so many conversations after our interview with this week's guest. I cannot tell you how helpful and timely it was to meet Julie Bogart, the author of Raising Critical Thinkers because guess what guys?

[00:02:34] We're in a hot mess right now in the world. In case you didn't notice, in case you are living under a rock of whatever. I mean I know I know I was trying to think of another metaphor.

[00:02:45] I personally have had to like, you know, find ways to not lose my fucking mind because Can I make a suggestion? Yes. Don't look at social media right before you go to bed. I'm not doing a good job.

[00:02:56] But it's terrifying actually and the amount of division and hatred and righteousness on all the sides is causing quite a lot of stress and anxiety for a lot of people, myself included. So meeting Julie and hearing about how to think critically,

[00:03:14] think critically, analyze what's coming at you in your media sources on your feeds and understand, you know, what your biases are, where your perspectives come from and specifically how we disregard anything that doesn't feel aligned or the same.

[00:03:31] That was a real nugget for me and you will get into that with Julie. Yeah she does a great almost like a paint by numbers breakdown of how to think critically.

[00:03:40] I follow like these CIA things just because I think a lot of what's going on right now is by design and that's my own personal bias perspective, whatever, but they have a segment where this guy was talking about

[00:03:51] how they ascertain who good CIA agents might be and they make the distinction between perception and perspective and a good CIA agent is the person that's able to maintain their own perception but hold space for multiple perspectives even when their own perception is challenged

[00:04:07] right and just recognizing that their perception is one aspect of what's going on in an event and even when they're triggered, they don't necessarily get into the content with the person they're just able to kind of hold their emotional world together and make room for multiple perspectives. Yeah.

[00:04:24] I mean it sounds simple. Yeah and actually just funny you say that because I literally just got a message on Instagram today's the day that Yasmin Muhammad's episode dropped and we have yet to see how that will go over

[00:04:35] and one person wrote me already saying that they were triggered just knowing what the topic was so like how does it... How do you have a conversation if you're always triggered?

[00:04:47] Yeah and I know it's obviously lives are at stake and this is a very heated and emotional and personal and complicated and nuanced issue. Did I say all the things? What it is? I mean you're being diplomatic about something that you don't feel diplomatic about

[00:05:04] so that's kind of why you have a podcast is you want to have a diplomatic civil discourse about things even if you don't feel that way internally and not necessarily let that inform the content of your podcast.

[00:05:15] Which I think that we did but we're open to hearing how we didn't. I think you've done well. I mean personally, like I get horrified at what I've seen but I don't have an emotional trauma-based relationship

[00:05:27] to any of this in the way that I think you do so I think you've handled it very well and you've come to me and been like okay this is what I think and blah blah blah blah and you've been good at hearing more perspectives. And listening. Yeah.

[00:05:41] And we'll do more. Today's guest is Julie Bogart known for her common sense parenting and education advice. She wrote The Brave Learner and Raising Critical Thinkers and sold over 100,000 copies. Julie homeschooled her five children for 17 years while also shepherding a Cincinnati homeschool co-op of 300 students

[00:05:58] but it wasn't just a few homeschool families she ran into that were a little bit culty. With a background in missionary evangelical Christianity and Catholicism, Campus Crusade for Christ, a mom devoted to the New Thought Movement, a Scientologist Stepdad

[00:06:11] and four years of her own as an Est devotee. Julie Bogart's got some culty notches in her belt. For 23 years, Julie Bogart has promoted high quality thinking which can cult-proof parents and their kids including family environments prone to coercive control.

[00:06:25] She's founder and creator of the award-winning BraveWriter.com an online community that teaches writing and critical thinking for both homeschoolers and kids in traditional schools and their teachers. We originally invited Julie to come on our show to teach us what it means to raise kids without coercive control

[00:06:39] and teach families to think well. And we did that a little bit. We also tangented and talked about a lot of other things. I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. And we hope you did too. Julie Bogart, welcome to a little bit culty.

[00:06:52] Well, Julie Bogart, welcome to a little bit culty finally. Gosh, it's great to be with you guys. I loved watching your HBO vow and I listened to the show. So thanks for having me. Of course.

[00:07:18] Well, I think this episode is going to be much needed, especially right now. For us especially with kids. For us especially with kids and also for the world which is as we all know so fraught and divided and up in arms with our respective beliefs, biases, prejudices.

[00:07:34] I would argue by design maybe. Maybe. I'll discuss before we get into all that. I know you have a little bit culty background. What's important for our listeners to know about what you went through? Yeah, I think I have a typical Southern California story from the 1970s.

[00:07:50] I grew up in a family that got interested in health and wellness. We were curing our asthma with avoiding red dye number two. And we had this whole environment of curiosity about spiritual things. I was a part of a Catholic church that protected draft dodgers and we danced.

[00:08:10] You know, like there was just this freedom very 70s feel. And by the mid 70s my parents got a divorce and we found ourselves in Est air hard seminars training. I bet you guys know what that is. Oh yes. Season of the sets we call it.

[00:08:29] When I watched the vow, I'm like Keith Ranieri is just borrowing all of Warner air hard stuff. And of course he was just borrowing everything from Scientology. So I spent about four years in that group and I dedicated my life. I was very similar to you.

[00:08:44] I gave, you know, hours and hours of time for free volunteering and recruiting people. I trained in something called the guest seminar leaders program when I was 18.

[00:08:55] But it all fell apart for me when it turned out that I wasn't going to get certified as a guest seminar leader, a recruiter, because I was still a virgin. I was told that I wasn't mature enough and this would have been a sign of my maturity.

[00:09:11] And I was set up on dates with men. The man who was in charge of our program was married and semi propositioned me. He was like, I would have loved to have been that person who could take you over that threshold. It was very suggestive, right?

[00:09:26] And I was only 18. And at the end they did not certify me even though I was one of the top performers and had been volunteering 20 to 30 hours a week recruiting people, you know, getting them to join the S training.

[00:09:40] I also went on their six day program for teenagers and at that program in Kirkwood, California. They did all kinds of things that would never be legal today. For instance, they showed us a movie, full length movie for teenagers that was to help us get flat about sex.

[00:09:59] Basically it was just porn of every version that you could imagine. And the goal was to help us have seen everything so we would no longer have any issues with sex. Well, I got a fever and threw up all night. Like I was just unprepared.

[00:10:16] Yeah, I resonated so much with your story because I felt like I lived a version of it as a young person. And yet similar to you, not all of it was terrible.

[00:10:29] There were things that helped me recover from my parents divorce that gave me a frame of reference for how to process pain and emotion. And so I felt very confused by those four years. Right. Yeah. You got lots of good out of it.

[00:10:42] But then when the bad thing happened, you were able to pivot and extract yourself. Did you leave after that? I did. But sort of frying pan to the fire, I ended up joining Perichurch ministry at UCLA as a college student because it felt safe.

[00:10:57] We all had the same rules around sex. Everybody was interested in being a good person. And it was a historic fate. So it felt different. But honestly, within a week of joining, they were already trading me on how to convert people. So I have that conversion energy apparently.

[00:11:17] Right. I'm good at that apparently. At least now you're converting people into how to think critically. Let's hope. Let's hope. But okay, so you did a little cult hopping. Yes. Right?

[00:11:28] Is there anything else that you want to share with us about those years before we get into what you're doing now? I think the main thing I want to say is I loved your TED talk where you talked about safe seeking.

[00:11:38] I think one of the pet peeves I have is when people hear anyone who's been in a cult, they automatically assume, I would never fall for that. And yet every person I know has the propensity to join group think.

[00:11:53] And a cult is just an excessive version of that. It's where you've aligned with a leader. And I see it all the time. It happens in Al-Anon, it happens in church Bible study groups, it happens in schools. The time when your dissent is not valued is that indicator.

[00:12:12] It's the lead indicator. It happens in business. So anyway, that's just my little plug that everyone needs to be cult-proofed because it's really common in our culture. That's become more evident to us as we've been on the journey.

[00:12:26] When we started the podcast, I was kind of like, well, who's going to listen? And it turned out a lot of people and it turns out a lot of people need this wisdom. It turns out that there's a lot of cults out there.

[00:12:36] And it turns out that most people do feel like they're not susceptible to it while they're actually in one. And while they're actually demonstrated what we call a little bit culty behaviors. So it's interesting to see that phenomena.

[00:12:47] It's also almost validating to kind of find out, you know, people aren't that mysterious. And they're not as mysterious as they like to think and they all want to feel safe, which is normally the origin of all this, right? Which is good. I totally agree with that.

[00:13:01] Which is positive. People want to see safe. Be safe. And also, one thing I hadn't thought of before until I read your book was they want to be the same. That's right. That really resonated with me.

[00:13:10] I was like, oh yeah, that's why I'm so fraught with anxiety right now because people that I thought were close to me are not the same in terms of our beliefs about what was happening in the world. And that's just really scary. It's really true.

[00:13:22] I think the hardest part for all of us is that we're seeking confirmation through agreement. And the thing that makes us the most uncomfortable is descent of any kind. For me, critical thinking is about self-awareness.

[00:13:35] It's not being able to just look at the other guy and deconstruct their beliefs and tell them why they are wrong. It's actually the ability to turn the lens on yourself and identify all of the fears that keep you stuck in your own belief structure.

[00:13:51] What can you look at that makes you uncomfortable? Where are the limits to your own thinking? That's the challenge of critical thinking. It's actually being able to examine your own ways of thinking, not just how other people think.

[00:14:04] Give us a little bit of your trajectory from like leaving asked and getting into the church group and college. How did you get to where you are now as this expert? I'm going to hold up your book here.

[00:14:14] Raising Critical Thinker is a parent's guide to growing wise kids in the digital age. Can I ask you, give me an honest answer? Did you start reading the book looking to confirm how you're a critical thinker already? No, that was you, babe.

[00:14:26] Yes, I know it was me. That's why I'm asking. I was like, let's see, I was like measuring my own critical thinking with your book. And I was like, oh, I'm doing it. It's so embarrassing. You know what? It's really funny.

[00:14:40] I've done, you know, I can't even tell you how many podcasts since the book came out. And it doesn't matter what side of the political aisle, what religious background, every person I interview thinks they're good at it. It's sort of like being a driver.

[00:14:53] Everyone thinks they're good at driving because you're behind the wheel of your own thinking. You have all the access you need to every input that made you make the decisions about your thinking that you've made. So it feels like you've been critical, right?

[00:15:09] Because you've taken in all this data. You've processed it. You've correlated it with your experience and you've come up with this outcome. But that's true for literally everyone. You're not better or worse necessarily at that than the person you're sitting next to.

[00:15:24] So for me, the big pivot really came as I was immersed, let's say, in my religious worldview. I spent time in North Africa to convert Muslims to Christianity. I was a missionary and I remember one day I was walking downtown.

[00:15:40] I was pregnant actually, and I was looking around me and it suddenly dawned on me that every person I was looking at by my way of thinking was going to help. And that really upset me because I was trying to believe in this construct of health.

[00:15:54] So I started crying and I started thinking, how are we going to reach these people?

[00:15:58] And then it occurred to me, well, even if I reached them, I would still have to tell them that their parents and grandparents were in health because they died before this message got to them, which became very upsetting.

[00:16:09] And then I started thinking, well, what would it take to reach them? And I thought, gosh, I wish I were fluent in Arabic because I was still learning it. I wish I had grown up here. And then pretty soon I was like, I wish I'd been born here.

[00:16:20] And then in that moment I thought, oh my gosh, if I had been born here, I'd be Muslim. And it was this moment of earthquake where I realized how controlled my worldview was by my background. And here I was trying to talk people out of their backgrounds.

[00:16:34] The background they would love me to adopt, right? Like dueling banjos here in terms of religion. And that was a massive moment for me. Years later, I wound up back in the States really distressed by this persistent question, right, as the internet opened its doors.

[00:16:51] And I was a homeschooling parent at the time. And I always say homeschoolers were the first people to barge through the doors of the internet because we were also isolated and alone. And we found each other on this discussion board, and that's where I met Tia Levings actually.

[00:17:04] And on this board we had basically heterosexual married evangelical white women who homeschooled a pretty homogenous group, right? On this discussion board, we couldn't agree on anything, not a single thing.

[00:17:19] We argued about everything, whether or not to bottle feed our babies, whether or not children could be baptized with sprinkles or if they had to be immersed. These are women who I thought agreed on everything, and the theological battles became profound. And that sent me on this journey.

[00:17:37] I thought, well, if the Holy Spirit leads us into all truth, why don't we all agree on the truth? And that became problematic. Now I had all these interpreters in books, in church, in all these contexts.

[00:17:49] And here's when I knew that I was in a little bit of a culty mindset. There was a website that I wanted to visit. It was by people who were not from my group who were writing about Christianity using historical criticism to evaluate it.

[00:18:07] And one night I was sleeping with my husband and in the middle of the night I got up while he was out cold. I snuck down to this very office. I locked the door and I started shaking head to toe.

[00:18:18] I was trembling and sweating trying to type in this website. And I felt totally guilty like lightning was going to strike and kill me for even being interested in this website. And I finally opened it up and started reading and suddenly realized I had agency.

[00:18:35] I could read this. It wasn't going to kill me. No one was coming to get me. But when I finished reading, I then deleted my entire browser history in case I died before in the morning

[00:18:45] because I didn't want my husband to think that was the last site I visited. And that's when I realized maybe I'm in a little bit of a culty environment. And did you have that word like culty or you just thought it was like not good?

[00:18:56] I think because of my experience in S, I did know. Because I was moving into the world of dissent. And when dissent is not permitted, you're in a cult. That's like the number one rule. That's number one. If you can't dissent, you're in a cult. Yep.

[00:19:11] And by dissent we mean ask a question. Or disagree. Yeah. I made a list actually being uncertain, risking being wrong, having curiosity, breaking a rule, asserting a contradictory experience, tweaking the language or ideas to suit your experience.

[00:19:28] You know like what if you want to pray to God and you want to use female language? Is that welcome in your Bible study? Reluctance to adopt a practice or belief. And then there are the bigger ones. You start noticing well who's excluded, who's included?

[00:19:43] What would it look like? I got kicked out of so many homeschool organizations just because I was studying theology at a Catholic university. Because I was reevaluating my doctrines. And you know that journey had actual impact on my family, on their friendships, on our reputation.

[00:20:02] These are culty practices happening all around us all the time. This podcast wouldn't happen without our amazing supportive generous patrons. Are you with us?

[00:20:14] Come find us over on Patreon at patreon.com slash a little bit culty for bonus episodes, exclusive content and the occasional zoom with our fan favorites from our past episodes. It's a lot of fun over there people.

[00:20:39] I'm not a person who can't sleep all day or never miss yoga. Maybe it's getting eight hours of sleep. That's my personal and everyone's dream isn't it?

[00:20:47] Well, I definitely have some non-negotiables like I'm in Vancouver right now and I'm spending literally as much time as I can outside of nature. Hashtag cold pools hashtag crushing it.

[00:20:57] Nature is a non-negotiable not enough time the fresh air and the trees around me and I start to feel not great. Not myself not grounded therapy day is a bit like my nature walks. I feel so much better all around if I make it a priority.

[00:21:09] I get so much out of it. It helps me put my worries and anxieties in their rightful place and helps me clear my mind so I can focus on what I really need.

[00:21:16] And sometimes what I don't need like I don't need to be overbooking myself just because I hate to say no to people you know what I mean? Thanks therapy. Thanks for helping me see that. And if you're thinking of starting therapy, give better help or try.

[00:21:26] It's entirely online designed to be convenient flexible and suited to your schedule. Feel it a brief questionnaire and get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. Look, even when we know what makes us happy, it's hard to make time for it.

[00:21:40] But when you feel like you have no time for yourself, non-negotiables like therapy are more important than ever. Never skip therapy day with better help. Visit betterhelp.com slash culty today to get 10% off your first month. That's better help H-E-L-P dot com slash culty. Meals bring people together.

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[00:22:32] If you've been listening to the podcast, you'll have heard my journey from the beginning where I didn't even realize there were so many different offshoots and sex and shirts. Sex, not sex. Sex. Probably that. Yeah, and sex too.

[00:22:44] But I'm just the different, somebody told me actually at the, I got out story jam last week that there's like 33,000 different types of Christianity or something like that. There was a number. It's more than that. Over 60,000 denominations. Wow. 60,000 and they are hair splitting.

[00:23:01] You know, it'll be like, I remember I was first moved to Ohio from California and one of the first signs I saw said the old regular Baptist church of Westchester and I thought every one of those words has meaning. The old, the regular, the Baptist.

[00:23:17] Like they all have meaning. And what they mean is we have differentiated ourselves in a way that makes us think we have the truth a little more than the other guy. It's really nutty when you get right down to it. They all franchise Jesus in a different way.

[00:23:32] Yeah, that's it. Love that. That's a great quote. That's mine. You made that up? Yeah, just now. I love it. No, I think it's great. Thank you. Thank you. That's good. Well, it's certainly been an education for me and the same goes, I guess,

[00:23:49] I don't know what the numbers are but for Judaism and Islam and all the Abrahamic offshoots, which I also didn't even understand. Thank you. Sorry. Clearly not a... You're doing great. You're doing great. This is a little bit culty, the theology, casual class. This is where we go.

[00:24:06] We're not experts. Not experts, not shamans, not therapists. Okay, anyway, so back to your journey. By the way, earlier when Nippy was admitting that he was trying to prove that he was a good critical thinker.

[00:24:17] To be totally honest, I feel like I'm totally floundering because I'm sure you caught this if you watched the vow but we thought we were learning critical thinking. That was a big part of the curriculum and in aspects of it kind of were pulled from these things.

[00:24:36] Like when I'm reading your book, you talked about separating facts from bias and prejudice and opinion. And I want to get into that and I just want to tell you that we had a class. Was it called projection? It was called projection. Face of the universe.

[00:24:48] Face of the universe and how we interface with the universe in the world. And it was, I think it was four types of data, different types of data like how they could be one being class one data is verifiable. Like you could reproduce it. It's on film.

[00:25:01] A bunch of people can verify it all the way to class four which is more like intuitive, right? Like everything in between? No, it didn't have scientific backing. There was no scientific backing. Intuition and it wasn't quantifiable or measurable.

[00:25:16] So there's like class two data would be like I didn't see it but somebody else can say it's class one. You know what I mean? Like it's like a rumor is like class three data. Which is interesting with the non-quantifiable.

[00:25:29] There is a way to quantify it's a feeling and one of the things that these groups do is they dismantle your feelings and the feelings are the origin of a lot of your memories. So I don't know if that's... Yes, exactly. Yes.

[00:25:40] So when I think about that kind of system there's always value in perspective taking and being able to imagine and to take a difference. You know, I noticed when I was teaching at Xavier University students would conflate like a religious perspective with scientific data.

[00:25:58] Those are different sources, different kinds of evidence. And what we want to do when we're thinking about thinking is first start from the perspective of what are our attachments? Because we can manipulate the data to match our attachments. And this is what happens in these cult experiences.

[00:26:15] You start to learn what style of information you're supposed to support uncritically and you learn which style of information is seen as suspect, right? So those are the two kinds of things. So I remember when I was in Est, you know if you had a dissenting voice

[00:26:33] they would say you need to get off it, which meant you're attached to that idea. Let it go. But what they were really telling me wasn't take our perspective or evaluate yours. They're saying here's the right perspective and here's the mechanism we use

[00:26:48] to get you to let go of yours. That is not critical thinking that's indoctrination, right? So when I was working on this book and over these years of having online battles and discussion and deconstructing my own beliefs,

[00:27:02] what I started to recognize is that I was susceptible to jumping from one culty experience to the next because I was constantly in search of one trusted authority. I think that's the danger we all have.

[00:27:18] So if you're watching the same news channel all the time, you're in that category. You're like I want a trusted authority. This is my reliable voice. I know they're telling me which people I can trust and which people I can't.

[00:27:31] And what I started doing deliberately is reading what made me uncomfortable. And I started expanding the number of sources that gave me information because that's the beginning of uncultifying yourself. It's being willing to sit with the discomfort of opinions and perspectives

[00:27:51] that aren't the ones you've been told are okay. That's where you have to begin. It's hard, but it's where we begin. I think understanding why it's hard is a good place to start. In terms of being righteous and being attached to the beliefs.

[00:28:03] I think because we gravitate to certainty. Certainty gives us a feeling of confidence in a contingent universe. We don't know what's happening tomorrow, but if I have good solid ideas, that makes me feel like I have a little bit of control.

[00:28:18] But what I argue for, it's not certainty or uncertainty. It's not truth or not truth. To me, what we want to cultivate is intimacy with a subject. It means knowing it in all of its contours.

[00:28:30] So when we're looking at a deeply contested issue like the Middle East is right now, you want to read as many perspectives of people on the ground, historical perspectives, people who are involved personally. You can't just rely on secondhand information.

[00:28:47] And then intimacy means also recognizing the limits of what you can know. One of the points I make in raising critical thinkers is that we're also reliant on reading, and we think reading means we know. But reading is a very safe way to get information.

[00:29:04] It's just information we choose for ourselves. We can skip over the paragraphs we don't like. We can ignore statistics. We can abandon the article. We can be critical the whole time we're reading because we're safe.

[00:29:18] But reading does not give you experiences or encounters that will challenge your perspective. And so for me, one of the examples I use is you could read about a violin and know everything about a violin.

[00:29:31] But if you've never heard one played or never attempted to play the violin, would you actually know the violin? You would not. You would just know a lot of information about it. And most online fights are by people who are reading. They're not experienced.

[00:29:46] And they're outsourcing their thinking. What about the cello? Yeah, you want to dive into that one? This is an Easter egg for any nexium person listening that we did in the very first module, Communication and at Cause, there was a story read. I don't know.

[00:30:05] There was like, you know, one, two, three, four. Chicken suit for the soul. It was chicken suit for the soul. And we played our audience loves the next team nerds loves these stories. Okay, so bear with me for a minute.

[00:30:12] So they said we divided one, two, three, four and basically played the telephone game. Right? So number one stayed in the room and Nancy would read whoever's teaching would read a story from chicken suit for the soul.

[00:30:23] And it was all about it was a story of what you just said. Except it wasn't the violin. It was the cello learning to play the cello by John Holt.

[00:30:30] I cannot believe I remember this and he based and the moral of the story is basically like you have to practice to play. We learn by doing. That's the moral of the story was what you just said by the time number four comes in.

[00:30:40] It's a story about Jello. It's a story about like practicing. It's a story. It's totally, you know, I played it. Shello and liked it. The guy played the cello. That's what the stories reduced to after four or five people. Yeah.

[00:30:52] So it had a number of purposes one to teach us the telephone game and how information gets distorted. And also how our whole curriculum was about experiential learning. So this is the thing. Well, that's what it flexed. We were flexing experiential learning.

[00:31:04] This isn't just somebody at the front of the stage telling you what to think. We're going to teach you how to think. That's why I'm saying like when I'm reading your book, I'm like, uh, like it's,

[00:31:12] I'm so frustrated with all these years of what we thought we were doing, what you're doing. So now we get to do it properly. It's especially tricky. Isn't it when group think is part of a critical thinking curriculum? Yeah.

[00:31:24] And I, one of the things you highlighted in one of the many podcasts I've listened to, there's a certain insider feeling that gets generated when you're all having the same epiphany of insight. Right.

[00:31:37] And that insider feeling creates language that you use, jokes that only you get a high that occurs in this context that no one on the outside will understand. And it is so much more powerful than any of the tools.

[00:31:53] The tools are almost like a smoke screen that create that experience. And I think the problem for all of us is that our loyalty to our communities trumps all of our good thinking.

[00:32:05] It is our number one way that we trick ourselves into our beliefs because we never want to lose our people. The way I describe it in the book is that we come into the world as individuals with perceptions.

[00:32:20] You know, we're a baby, we're hungry, we cry, we're tired, we try to sleep. We are controlled by our perceptions, but there is a community that is going to exert its influence on how to organize those perceptions. And that first community is your family.

[00:32:35] And they create logic stories to override your perceptions. Like I know you're hungry, but we eat meals at three times a day. We don't just snack all day. I know you're tired, but eventually you're just going to sleep at night. We're going to get rid of those naps.

[00:32:49] I know you don't want to wash your hands, but we say you have to wash your hands. We condition ourselves to give away our perceptions to the community's logic story. A cult is just a bigger logic story.

[00:33:03] And we all want to generate meaning and have lives that make sense of all the chaos. So we are attracted to various logic stories. I just came back from a business conference for women business owners. Business is a huge logic story of the United States.

[00:33:19] Capitalism is one of our main favorite stories we tell and we participate in. Being a dissenter in any context feels risky because the way we belong and get the jokes is to agree with the beliefs. I want to ask how something relates to that.

[00:33:36] You say, is it strictly community? And you can by proxy you could say community of safety, et cetera. I find a lot of times people identify themselves with the belief system. You call it identity politics or identity structure or whatever in this case.

[00:33:53] And if I identify so strongly with it the same way someone is a doctor as opposed to someone who practices medicine, how does that relate to separating yourself from and that's pride and ego as well? Being wrong, looking stupid, all those things as well.

[00:34:08] How would you relate that to the community and whereas on the Venn diagram do they overlap? Well, so identity is just a huge driver for all of this, right?

[00:34:15] And I actually spent a chapter talking about it because all of us come with this constellation of experiences, background, ego, belief about what we can or can't achieve in life, whether we're a victim or a power broker.

[00:34:29] All of those things shape how we receive information that comes to us. There's no pure information, right? There's no pure reception of the information. Even facts, I always like to say facts do not exist in a vacuum.

[00:34:44] It's what we say about the facts that creates all of the information. We can say water boils at a certain temperature, but if water is thrown at you that's boiling, you have a different reaction than when you're drinking it in tea.

[00:34:57] So the feeling of all of our understanding of the world is driven by identity. And so one of my favorite insights that I learned while I was doing research comes from Iris Marion Young. It's in part three of the book.

[00:35:14] She talks about something called asymmetrical reciprocity and this was mind-blowing for me. She said, you know, we've been urged to stand in the shoes of the other in order to build empathy. But she said what we typically do is we don't build empathy.

[00:35:28] We simply project what we think we would feel in their same circumstances. And the study that she shared that I thought was so powerful had to do with disability.

[00:35:38] In Oregon in the 1990s, they have health care from the state for their, you know, people who live in Oregon. And they interviewed or surveyed able-bodied people asking them if they were disabled, would they want some of these surgical benefits or medical benefits?

[00:35:56] And people wrote back saying things, if I was blind, I'd rather be dead. Or if my, you know, body was in a wheelchair, I wouldn't care about any of these minor surgeries. And so they voted to not provide those medical treatments to people with disabilities.

[00:36:13] Now the whole thing went down in flames because of the ADA, American Disabilities Act, which says they had the right to all of those. But here's what they found out that was interesting. People who are disabled have a lower suicide rate than able-bodied people.

[00:36:27] They suffer from less depression and they actually care a lot about living their lives. The problem with able-bodied people is they were projecting what they think they would feel under those conditions. They weren't actually interested and curious about what it's like to live in a disabled body.

[00:36:45] So when we think about somebody like, let's say my dad who has totally different political beliefs than me, I can't start from the assumption that I know why those make sense to him or, oh, he's just deluded. I have to start from the assumption asymmetrical reciprocity.

[00:37:03] I don't know what constellation of factors drive what looks illogical to me. I have to actually extend a stance of wonder, curiosity. And I actually did this with my dad. I don't know if you want me to tell this story. Sure, yeah. I guarantee it's similar to mine.

[00:37:19] Okay, good. So my father is a career lawyer. So this is a man from whom I've learned critical thinking similar to you with your cult experience. He believed in support for assertions.

[00:37:33] I sat at a dinner table with him my whole life hearing him talk about his personal injury cases and really loved him, admired him. But we have gone two different ways as adults.

[00:37:44] And I remember really thinking he was going to read my book and not like it, but he did like it. Weirdly, I was so touched. I thought, okay, I've achieved something. He read my book and it didn't make him think, oh, she's not like me.

[00:37:57] So we had this conversation and he started, I was at his house and he started to go down a path where he was critiquing some politician that I support. I said, dad, let's not do personality assassination. You liked my book.

[00:38:08] Let's pick a topic and let's try to apply some of these principles. Tell me the thing you think is making America go to hell in a handbasket. So he picked freedom of speech.

[00:38:19] And here's the key question I asked him and this is what you can ask anyone you disagree with. Tell me the story of why your belief around this topic will create a more beautiful world if we adopted your perspective. Say it one more time. Okay, okay. Yeah.

[00:38:36] Tell me the story of why your belief, if all of us adopted it, would create a more beautiful world. How'd you form the principle? Because what we want to know is their best rhetoric, not their defensive rhetoric. Yeah.

[00:38:52] And people hold their views because they believe even the Nazis believed that if we got rid of Jews, the world would be better. I'm not saying that you will have more empathy for their position.

[00:39:03] You might even have a deepened horror, but you will get their best version of their perspective and you will start to understand what are the key components that drive that perspective.

[00:39:15] Because you cannot have a conversation if all you're doing is trying to prove somebody's deepest held beliefs are wrong. And so we went down that path and I was able to just ask many follow-up questions like, well, how does it apply in this case?

[00:39:30] Well, what, you know, he had, he was upset about Twitter at the time. I happened to own a little social media platform for my own community. So I asked him, Dad, do you want me to have control over my social media community or no?

[00:39:44] Is it different for small companies or big companies? And actually what happened is he got stumped at one point. He had not thought through my experience. So I was just asking questions that helped expand the field of our conversation.

[00:39:58] At one point he got uncomfortable, he went back to personality and I said, okay, let me make you breakfast. And we moved on. So it doesn't mean you'll agree. It doesn't mean it'll get fixed.

[00:40:07] But I think critical thinking means we have to be more curious, a little more humble, and just let go of the need to prove things because you just don't get anywhere. You don't get any points for winning an argument at a cocktail party.

[00:40:19] That's what my dad said to me. He's like, quit trying to win arguments at cocktail parties. I'm like, he's so fucking right. To your point that story is a point for me because it's kind of my journey with the abortion issue.

[00:40:31] For me, it was like, I'm not going to tell a woman what to do with her body. It's none of my business, pro-choice. I still am, but in 15, 20 years, I've known people without abortions. They've shared their experience with me. I understand the pro-life more.

[00:40:46] I'm less reactive to it. I'm less dismissive of their perspective because of experience and because I was like, why are they think this? And I heard it. I'm not as dogmatic about them being wrong now, I guess is my point.

[00:40:59] I still have my belief, but I make allowance for theirs and it's kind of, I think, to your point. Honestly, abortion was one of those subjects. Here's another little culty part of my story. I was in operation rescue. I blockaded abortion clinics.

[00:41:15] My husband was arrested for doing that. Like, I was very pro-life and I wrote about it on my blog in the year 2000 and somebody wrote in the comments, I had assumed that the pro-choice side knew they were immoral. That's what I assumed. That's how bad my rhetoric was.

[00:41:34] And somebody said, why do you assume that the pro-life position is the higher moral ground? And that question absolutely flummoxed me and I spent the next two years doing what you did for pro-life. I did for pro-choice and it completely altered everything about me going forward.

[00:41:50] And it was the first one of my early, you know, I was just turning 40. So as young, I was just starting to realize that these issues were so much more complicated than the way I had been taught and that people's lived experiences.

[00:42:04] I actually included Justice Blackburn's comment at the end of my book when he ruled on a black man, excuse me, on Roe vs. Wade, I think this is worth reading. How we understand any controversial topic hinges on one's philosophy, one's experiences,

[00:42:23] one's exposure to the raw edges of human existence, one's religious training, one's attitude toward life and family and their values, and the moral standards one establishes and seeks to observe. If we really took that to heart in every conversation, we would be so much kinder to each other.

[00:42:42] Who said that again? That's Justice Blackburn. That's what he wrote in The Decision for Roe vs. Wade in 1973. Yeah. Wow. Exposure to life's raw edges. Oh, that makes me emotional. It is so complicated. And now a brief message from our a little bit culty sponsors.

[00:43:25] Hashtag cold pools, hashtag crushing it. Nature is a non-negotiable. Not enough time in the fresh air and the trees around me and I start to feel not great, not myself, not grounded. Therapy Day is a bit like my nature walks.

[00:43:36] I try to not miss it and I know I'm just going to feel so much better all around if I make it a priority. I get so much out of it. It helps me put my worries and anxieties in their rightful place

[00:43:45] and helps me clear my mind so I can focus on what I really need and sometimes what I don't need. Like I don't need to be overbooking myself just because I hate to say no to people. You know what I mean? Thanks, therapy.

[00:43:54] Thanks for helping me see that. And if you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online designed to be convenient, flexible and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire and get matched with a licensed therapist

[00:44:05] and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. Look, even when we know what makes us happy, it's hard to make time for it. But when you feel like you have no time for yourself, non-negotiables like therapy are more important than ever. Never skip Therapy Day with BetterHelp.

[00:44:20] Visit BetterHelp.com slash culty today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp H-E-L-P dot com slash culty. Meals bring people together, but for many families providing their next meal can be a challenge. You can help by participating in Macy's annual Feeding the Hungry Food Drive.

[00:44:39] All proceeds go toward local food banks and families. Now through January 31st, you can purchase an icon in store or online or watch out for the blue Feeding the Hungry Shelf Tags where a portion of your purchase will be donated to local pantries.

[00:44:54] Together we can combat hunger in our local communities at Macy's. Break times over people. Let's get back to this episode of A Little Bit Culty. It's a good one. Something that I realized that like for somebody who hasn't read your book yet

[00:45:08] and obviously we encourage everyone to do so. Just because the word itself or the term critical thinking is so kind of, it's been sullied for me a little bit because of nexium. I believe that, yes. And how do you define it?

[00:45:22] And if you were to kind of teach sort of the core tenets of it to somebody who's just getting caught up, can you give me your mini TED Talk on critical thinking? I can.

[00:45:31] I actually pulled up my own definition from my book so that you would have it. Right. For me, it's the ability to evaluate evidence, to notice your own bias as it's kicking into gear, to consider a variety of perspectives, especially if they make you uncomfortable.

[00:45:48] And then to simply render a possible verdict, what you believe to be true for now, that's the heart of the critical thinking task. It's the willingness to recognize that you don't have a once-for-all position. You just have how it is for you now given everything that you know.

[00:46:07] Humility is the foundation of all critical thinking. And honestly, the original title of my book was going to be Raising Self-Aware Thinkers. And it was my publisher who changed the title because critical thinking is the thing everybody thinks that they want.

[00:46:23] But for me, it's the self-awareness that creates the power of critical thinking. It really is. And what is the mechanism for creating that self-awareness? Like what are the tools that you offer people to become more self-aware? So I have a thousand and one questions in this book.

[00:46:40] It's a big joke with me. I just ask more questions than are possible, and it's become a habit. Honestly, that's actually the best part. If you ask a lot of questions, you will start to find that as a habit.

[00:46:52] So in the first chapter, I talk about who's telling the story? I give this example of the Three Little Pigs story, how we all know it from the omniscient narrator's perspective. The pigs are right, the wolf is bad, end of story.

[00:47:06] And then along came John Cheska with his book, The Story of the Three Little Pigs told by a wolf, you know. And it's the wolf's sort of unreliable narrator version of that tale. But it's the first chance children have to realize, hey, maybe another perspective also exists.

[00:47:24] Every time you read an article, the first question to ask is not who wrote it, it says who. On what grounds are they telling this story? Constellation of factors gives them the right to have an opinion.

[00:47:39] So often we're looking for our superstars that we cheerlead and fangirl over to take opinion positions when they're not even qualified. They're no more qualified than you are or I am. So let's at least begin with that question.

[00:47:55] And honestly, for me, the way I notice bias kicking into gear, my number one tell is smugness. If I'm reading Facebook and somebody posts something I disagree with and I feel my smugness kicking, I'm like, oh, I'm not thinking critically right now.

[00:48:10] I just want to like bash that argument and feel superior. That's a primal thing. You don't know anybody who does that do you? No. How do you spell smug? And I PBY. I love you. I love you too.

[00:48:27] I'm also like so ironic that we were in next year and so smug about like that we had. I mean, we didn't know this. We joke about it now that we were evangelical personal development hawkers. I didn't know.

[00:48:39] All during inside when you feel that smug or you feel that primal thing, I think that needs to be normalized more as opposed to like there's not a current climate or ecosystem where like when people have that, they know to go towards that.

[00:48:52] You're incentivized and nurtured to fortify it. Yeah, because we want to be 100%. That's right. And I will say this, the risk of actually going into critical thinking is you will lose your people and you'll lose them over and over. That's what it is. You lose your people.

[00:49:07] Because people want belonging. That's what's going on. And that's why we won't do it. It's very painful. And so for me, I think you have to do it in doses. You can't do it everywhere. Like I'm a Bengals fan and I'm going to be a diehard Bengals fan

[00:49:20] and that's a great place to not care about critical thinking and to hate the refs. So find places you can really indulge, group enjoyment. If you're a fan of a band, if you're a Swifty, whatever.

[00:49:36] Like I follow Taylor Swift because it's just fun to actually be in a place where everybody's into group think it really nourishes a part of our deep biological need to be safe in a group that agrees. But when we're talking about really important issues like religious beliefs,

[00:49:53] social values, politics, nuanced thinking is hard work. And it's okay to also not investigate everything, to not have an opinion on everything, to be able to say, jury's out for me. I'm still reading. I'm still thinking. I used to think this way.

[00:50:10] I sort of think this way, but it might be different tomorrow. Those have all been really challenging for me when I used to be so didactic and so convinced, right? It's actually why I haven't... I'm glad you said that because I haven't posted about what's going on

[00:50:24] and I'm usually a post a lot. And also because of that, I haven't really posted anything because nothing feels right to post right now. Well, that's why I proposed the question, why post? Yeah. Well, I guess I feel the impulse to post because I do have a platform

[00:50:37] and I am Jewish and I've lived in Israel and I have this whole complicated background and basically nothing feels right to post, not for me. This is a great case study for this experience. Yeah. So I posted two different series on Instagram where I talked about...

[00:50:55] I'm going to read you a little bit of one of them because I think it's helpful. So I posted on Instagram a series called How I Processed Wildly Shocking and Traumatic News. And so here is some of what I shared. I begin by reading.

[00:51:09] I do my best to start with not knowing. I know my feelings, but I don't know the full story. I give myself permission to not know how to interpret the news even while I read it and watch it. I notice my knee-jerk reaction to the barrage of opinions

[00:51:22] we hurl at one another, the pressure to say the right thing, to avoid the wrong thing. I discover how I lean and I get curious about why. I wonder about how someone I respect sees the same information so differently from another person I respect.

[00:51:36] And then I read all the perspectives I can that make me the most uncomfortable. I try to imagine more perspectives than the one I automatically adopt. I add the grief of as many parties as I can hold. I list in my mind the questions I can't answer easily.

[00:51:51] I feel my feelings, revolts, hopeless, angry, shocked, defeated, frightened. I don't assume I'm getting the full story from anyone's source. I know that reading and media cannot tell me what I haven't lived. My perspective will always be one of learn or not expert. I lean on my values.

[00:52:09] I reject brutality in all its forms as a means of getting what one wants or justifies. I even have beliefs I've worked on for decades patiently with some care. I don't have solutions. I have an incomplete picture with a lot of questions.

[00:52:23] I always want to know more and I grieve with the suffering. Victims in a conflict they would not choose for themselves. Can I just copy that on my Instagram please? It's really helpful here and I just haven't even had the words to express it because of the grief.

[00:52:44] For everybody that wouldn't choose it. That's right. And it's old and historic and we're not made to tolerate or metabolize it. You know, and we're so far. I have friends from both religious faith backgrounds and you do too and it's really hard. It is.

[00:53:07] And yeah, I just have also been just scared to post. Well, I will tell you this. I'm actually recovering from COVID right now. And on Saturday, I did make a post that was my heartfelt feeling about what I was watching. It was worded incorrectly.

[00:53:23] I used a word that I should not have used because it indicated a political alliance and I was immediately aware, pulled it down. It created huge disruption in my life and I spent 24 hours in abject shame because this is what happens when we risk going public,

[00:53:40] especially in my case it was little, not with it the way I normally am. And I just had to lean into my humanity again too. That we are in a circumstance that is so fraught with emotion, with identity, with care for people

[00:53:58] and we take the risk to show compassion and it feels like it alienates somebody else anyway. I just want you to know I'm with you. I had to go back through my own whole critical thinking journey. I'm like, how did I make that mistake?

[00:54:13] Because I try so hard but no one is going to get it right, especially in these moments. And I want to get it right and I can't. There isn't a right getting. No. It's so nuanced that it's... Like I've formulated something to say about 80,000 times since October 7th.

[00:54:33] Also think it's important to put into context too. We're talking about where we're not having human interactions and we're afraid about an ecosystem where most people go to validate their belief systems rather than challenge them and we're talking about a post.

[00:54:46] I think the important thing is take care of number one and you can worry about that other stuff later. I think it's important for you to get more in your principles and understand that when asked. But I don't think it's necessary to have a stance, per se, online.

[00:55:01] I don't think the gravity of having a stance online is really that as much as people give it. No, in fact, one of my friends just returned from a sort of a training for dealing with political, social justice issues or whatever

[00:55:17] and one of the pieces of insight she gave me when she returned was that social media is just really about creating more of these culty communities. It's about alignment and agreement and that's what I want to think. And that if we want to see the needle move

[00:55:37] we have to participate at the grassroots level and empower the people who are doing the work on the ground and we can do that invisibly. Our job is not to be poster children. In fact, that's what I felt so upset about

[00:55:51] when I thought I was showing compassion, I alienated and when you alienate, you no longer have influence in anyone's life. Exactly. That's why I haven't posted it. I'm not a racist. That's right. Polarization does not increase when people say, oh, you should be amplifying. You're not amplifying.

[00:56:09] You're actually alienating. You're not engaging people in thinking. Yeah, I want to say who I stand with, but I know even if I say and really what I want to say is what you just said, I stand with the people who didn't choose this. That's right.

[00:56:22] And the grief is real. Like feeling the grief is really important. And I think that leaning into the community who does understand is also something that that's what our communities are for. It's okay to rely on your community, right? To go to the people that share your grief.

[00:56:40] That's really important. And by the way, one of the dangers of this whole critical thinking journey, critical thinking does not mean accurate thinking, by the way. I had someone accuse me of that. They're like, you call yourself a critical thinker and you're on the wrong side of this.

[00:56:56] The only thing means the willingness to recognize when you blew it and to pivot. That's critical thinking. It's not a destination. Exactly. Yeah, you got it. One thing I feel good about in how I've handled this personally

[00:57:12] is that I have a number of friends who I know are, we think we're in different kind of political, not even political. Our echo chambers are different, let's just say that. And because of our friendship. Who's right though? Specifically a shout out to my girlfriend, Maya,

[00:57:29] because I know she listens to this podcast. But she and I send each other articles that I know we wouldn't see otherwise because of the algorithm. And I appreciate that very much because we love each other and we have a history and it just means a lot.

[00:57:44] It does mean a lot. If you can have a relationship with someone that sustains through opposite perspectives or different perspectives, you have a true treasure. And it's one of the ways to test, you know, I remember I'm divorced now,

[00:57:59] but I remember when I was back in the dating pool at age 4950, one of the pieces of advice that I loved was to immediately dissent on a date immediately. Just see how the dude reacts when you disagree. And I had this one classic interaction with a guy

[00:58:16] who before we met, it was pretty clear that we were different politically. And before we met, I just said, I don't know if this is going to work. And he's like, no, no, no, I'll be fine with it.

[00:58:26] So we get together and we're at, you know, Dewey's Pizza. And he just goes for the jugular. So how do you feel about gay marriage? He asked me and I was like, well, I support it. And he's like, yeah, I don't. And I said, well, that's a problem.

[00:58:42] And he goes, is that a deal breaker? And I said, yeah, I think it might be for me. I mean, I just don't really want to have this conversation. I just slammed the table and he said, then what are we doing here?

[00:58:52] You know, and he got very angry. And I was like, wow, this whole, everything about this is crazy. Like he was trying to intimidate me into his position. Yeah. I think that's what happens, right? You got a dissent quickly and find out how you get treated.

[00:59:07] It's a real bonus. Counter story. I went on a date just before Nipi and I committed to each other. Remember this? And it was like Jewish speed dating, right? Because, you know, like, it was like, okay.

[00:59:18] So like, you know, I'm both new that we were single and end up kids. And it was like, okay, how do you want to raise kids and like do the secular reform? And it was like boom, boom, boom.

[00:59:26] And then he said something about like, listen, I'm pretty cool except I really don't like motorcycles. As long as you don't drive a motorcycle. It's like, that's a deal breaker for me. He's like, oh, I have a motorcycle on. I go, deal breaker.

[00:59:36] And he goes, well, I could get rid of it. And then I was like, I don't really like that either. Like if you're into motorcycles, like, you know, go drive your motorcycle. So like, both ways don't work.

[00:59:46] And I don't want somebody who's just going to throw out their whole thing. That's right. Right? That's right. Yeah, I know a bow hunter hit me up and I'm like three of my kids are vegan. I can't date a bow hunter. Right. That's not going to work.

[00:59:58] That's not going to be my life. No. This is a Nipi also despises motorcycles. That's why I know he's my... Yeah, motorcycles. My twin flame. Tattoos, cocaine and bungee jumping. I was like, not going to do any of those. The thing about reading is that it's safe.

[01:00:12] Experience is the opportunity to put yourself in a more like physical experience of the thing. So one of the ways we talk about it, we can read about bears in a book, but we don't really know what bears are like.

[01:00:26] Then we go to the zoo and we see the bear, we smell the bear, we hear the bear. But meeting a bear in the wild is a whole other level. That's an encounter. That's where the power differential is suddenly not in your favor.

[01:00:40] So to me, when we're talking about these three ways of knowing, reading is the most meaningfully under your control. Experience is where you introduce the full physicality of who you are to the subject. So you don't just hear about Israel, you would fly there.

[01:00:56] You don't just hear about an orchestra, you go listen to one. But encounter is where you do not have meaningful control. So when I lived in North Africa, I had to learn the language. I had to learn how to cook. I had to find a place to live.

[01:01:10] I had to make friends with neighbors. That's very different than being a tourist in Morocco. I would consider tourism more of an experience. When we are asking ourselves how well we know a topic, in my view, the people who are at the encounter level have more authority.

[01:01:27] They're the ones, you know, so if you're going to talk about astrophysics, I want to hear from an astrophysicist, not a senator. Right? I want to hear from people who have the substance. And the truth is, most of us do not have encounter level relationships with most subjects.

[01:01:47] So we're just popping off from, like you said, Nipi, some authority that we're pushing on another person. And there's a reason for this. Our school system trains us to believe that there is a single right answer for all the students in the class.

[01:02:00] And we figure if we can find the authority and tell everybody on our Facebook page, here's what this authority said everyone will fall into line because that's how we've been trained in school. There's one right answer. Everybody falls in line.

[01:02:14] But unfortunately, the number of authorities, the number of sources is so massive that we don't all agree on who to trust. In school, we trust the teacher. But once you're out of the classroom, that number multiplies.

[01:02:29] And we have not been trained to accept that people have different sources of authority, that they have different experiences that shape their answers, that we have different level of encounter with each of these topics. And so that's why it's complicated.

[01:02:42] And I was hoping by sort of giving these illustrations of these three ways of knowing that people would start to scale their opinions accordingly. So they would be able to say, here's what I think.

[01:02:54] But you know, I don't have this level of experience or I haven't encountered people or this experience at a level that destabilizes me. I'm still very in control of what I know. So I can't really weigh in to the degree that I want to.

[01:03:08] That would be nice if people could come with some humility. I think the benefit of recovering from a cult is that you're suspicious of group think. It's like a knee jerk thing. I noticed that I get very claustrophobic. Oh, I have it bad too.

[01:03:24] And so when you are being told what we do is we join this group and then the group decides which authorities you're about to read. Right. That's why I had the whole mental breakdown when I was just Googling, you know, the night in my house.

[01:03:37] Like there is that feeling that they've already told you which ones you can trust. And these are the disqualified ones. And so now what I do is I run directly to the disqualified ones, you know, and I read them because how can you shape a worldview?

[01:03:51] If you only are in that echo chamber. Right. So, you know, I applaud you for being open to something that people would automatically dismiss. Now, does that mean that there aren't people who are charlatans? Yes. Go find that out though for yourself.

[01:04:06] Don't just assume it because your group told you that. You just brought up a really interesting point and I think that that's something that a lot of us who are ex-cult survivors or abuse survivors or group think survivors. We are suspicious of group think.

[01:04:19] And I know like when we left in 2016, no 2017 and you know, a lot of things have happened in the world since then, especially 2020. And when we were suspicious, it was posed to us is that that's because we had been an occult. And I said, you know what?

[01:04:35] It could be because we're an occult or and that makes me susceptible and I'm now projecting authority, you know, maybe not having our best interests in a way that's not true. Or I can smell it a mile away and now I'm an expert. And I don't know.

[01:04:48] I actually don't know which it is. It could be one or the other. Do you know what I mean? I totally know what you mean. And I noticed that I still want to be in communities. Yes.

[01:04:59] And so I joined them and then I'm over here like trying to figure out if I'm getting sucked in. These are all old, you know, trauma triggers. And I think just being self-aware is the key in each of those moments. And also the willingness to make mistakes.

[01:05:15] Do you guys have this? I have this. I hold myself to a very high level of perfectionism.

[01:05:21] And I think it's because I feel like I have failed people in my didactic past where I thought I knew, you know, Nippy and Sarah, when you were both saying that you felt like you had the inside, inside into the meaning of the universe.

[01:05:37] I remember laying in bed one night and my husband literally said to me, isn't it great that we're in the center of all truth? What a great feeling about life. How safe. Oh, how safe. And so here you are now realizing I wasn't.

[01:05:52] So now it's like, I don't know. I'm just on high alert. I don't ever want to assume that I know now. It's a very squishy thing. I'm getting to be out of the clutches of that thinking.

[01:06:03] So you have a tremendous experience of upside, of not having the shackles anymore. And then it makes me go, well, what other shackles am I wearing? There you go. Right. You're curious to ask the questions. Is there anything else you want to say about that?

[01:06:16] How community loyalty plays into sustaining dangerous beliefs? Yeah, I could definitely say more about that. I think for me, the community piece matters because I run into it so frequently. So I speak at conventions. I go to conferences and I've noticed that whether they're religious or secular,

[01:06:35] there is a fearfulness that is at the core of community. And that is if we allow intrusive beliefs into our space, people will be triggered or harmed. So we've got to curate the vocabulary, establish the core beliefs, have everybody sign on, and then protect everyone from any dissent.

[01:06:54] And then people think that creates safety and a feeling of belonging. But what I've noticed is it makes it unsafe for everyone because if we think about each individual person and their constellation of experiences and perspectives and the notion that our beliefs are fluid, then we can't stay.

[01:07:13] We're risking losing our community if our minds even wander a little bit. And the only way you sustain those communities is through group meetings where you reinforce the dogma and you rehearse it together so that everybody stays on the same page.

[01:07:31] And that just is not a great way to live. Ultimately, you end up divorced or you end up out of the group or you leave your religion because the self cannot only conform. It has to have room to grow and be known for who it is.

[01:07:48] And those are your best relationships, right? I remember when I got divorced, I lost a slew of friends. Divorce was seen as some kind of contagion. I've had a couple come back and apologize but they checked out for five years.

[01:08:01] There's this feeling that if the belief is marriage matters, we have to protect the institution more than the person. And that's the danger of community. You're protecting a non-person. Right, protecting a belief. I was going to ask, you said it's not a good life.

[01:08:16] It seems like, and this has been kind of our experience when we spoke into experts, it seems like they're all doomed to fail in some shape or form, right? And even if you look at it, even if you look at how some of that thinking has gotten root

[01:08:28] in governments with too much control in the thinking, they always implode. So everyone's got a future implosion or if they don't have that implosion, I think it manifests probably in their body somehow with a sickness or whatever. 100%, I mean, I watch this in bad marriages, right?

[01:08:45] Where a person just keeps submerging their own perspective in favor of saving the institution. But what kind of life is that? It does take courage to break out of it because you will lose your people. That's what I'm saying.

[01:08:59] Risky thinking means you will lose people who are diehards on a certain set of beliefs. But the truth is you're not safe in that environment anyway because they will look for ways to kick you out. The beliefs always win.

[01:09:13] I had a really interesting experience when I was getting my divorce. At the time, I was actually attending a black church and I really loved it. It was just so different than anything I had experienced.

[01:09:25] And when it became clear to this group of women that I was getting a divorce, they all started telling me they were praying for me that I'd be okay, that I'd get to the other side. When I showed up at my homeschool co-op, which was largely white,

[01:09:39] they all told me they were praying for my marriage. And I thought that contrast was so profound. One was seeing me as an individual who needed support. The other was like, let's support the institution. Let's hope Julie can rescue the institution.

[01:09:54] For me, that is the real key difference between group think, culty thinking, and actual space to be in a community as yourself. So that particular church you felt was a healthy space, a healthy community? It was for me at the time.

[01:10:11] Yes, it created a space for me to go through a really hard transition. And you outgrow all communities at some point. And I think we need to be okay with that and to not feel guilty about it. That's a great point.

[01:10:25] I want to go back to just quickly about how much of a resource I think this book is for parents. But this is something that's come up as a question a lot from our audience, and I think it's really relevant.

[01:10:35] What should we do if a teen is in a harmful community or is adopted potentially a dangerous belief system? Oh my gosh, fabulous question. So the first thing is to show curiosity instead of fear. Right.

[01:10:48] So I remember I had a son who got really interested in this series of YouTube videos that were all conspiracy theories and I knew it. But I didn't dismiss it because I could see that what was happening is

[01:11:00] he was realizing that the way things appear are not always reliable. That's the journey he's on. So this was his first taste. Yes, it didn't mean he was going to land there. I mean how many of us are still thinking the same thoughts we thought at 15?

[01:11:13] Pretty much no one. So what we did instead is I just watched with him and we had conversations. And our goal isn't to tell our kids what to think or even explain why they should think a certain way.

[01:11:26] It's to ask them questions that turn them back to their own self-awareness. Why is this interesting to you? How does this impact the way that you make decisions going forward? What is the angle that attracted you to these ideas?

[01:11:40] Now, if they're truly dangerous or harmful like you might have a kid who's interested in the bulimic community on Tumblr or something like that where you know that this is harmful.

[01:11:52] You are the parent and you can step in, but you want to step in from a position of support, not critique. So you are looking to understand what drove the behavior, not how to just stop the behavior.

[01:12:07] We tend to go into this sort of codependent like I'm going to control my child out of the problem. But there are roots, there are understandings. And so when you see it, definitely step in, but support. Be curious, go alongside.

[01:12:21] I always tell parents, get therapy for yourself before you get it for your kids. Learn how to be a parent to this child before you expect your child to get fixed by a therapist.

[01:12:31] And that goes a long way in terms of creating space for that child to get therapy as well. I had one last thing. A lot of times people think critical thinking is about politics, social issues, values, religious beliefs. But critical thinking is everything.

[01:12:46] And when you're raising small children in particular, the danger is that you think you're teaching critical thinking by telling them the reasons for your beliefs. But that is not critical thinking. That is a version of authoritarian parenting.

[01:13:00] So I want to give you a little example of how you can apply these principles in your own family. So imagine you have like an eight-year-old and it's time for dinner and you say, time to wash your hands, honey.

[01:13:10] And this eight-year-old who's washed their hands every day for a year suddenly says, I don't want to. The typical authoritarian response from my generation would be, you have to obey your mother. Okay. Today's parent doubles down. I call this manipulative obedience.

[01:13:26] What they say is, oh, honey, you need to wash your hands because science says that there are germs on your hands. And if you eat those germs, you'll get sick. So these sort of especially millennial parents, but the feeling is I've given them a reason.

[01:13:42] I'm not just controlling them. But what you've really done is you've asked them to trust your authority to vet the source of something they don't understand and then to apply that to their understanding. So it's a double down. Right. So here's what I recommend as the alternative.

[01:13:57] Find out why they don't want to wash their hands. Start with curiosity. Oh, what's going on there little buddy? You don't want to wash your hands? Yeah, I don't want to. Do you know why? Yeah, I just think it's yucky. Oh, okay. Is it the water?

[01:14:11] Do you not like the feel of the water in your hands? Yeah. Is it the temperature? I don't know. Well, let's get a thermometer and let's like measure the temperature and see when you hate it and when you like it. You try that. That doesn't work.

[01:14:23] They're like, I just hate the yuckiness. Okay. Well, could we do hand sanitizer? Oh no, it's sticky. Okay. Well, here's the thing. You have this idea that there are germs on your hands that could make you sick. So I'm nervous about that.

[01:14:35] I know that's not something you're concerned about. Let's Google, see how else to cure germs. Maybe you find out heat kills them so you try blow-drying their hands for a while. But here's the thing. Here's what might be behind this whole back and forth.

[01:14:49] Your child saw you at Target yesterday. Literally pick up the baby's pacifier off the floor, suck all the germs off of it, and put it in that baby's mouth. Because you don't believe in germs. They know that that is not really true.

[01:15:04] They've seen you eat food without washing your hands. There is an underlying sort of challenge to the belief structure that they can't articulate and they're not conscious of. So in that moment, it's an opportunity to just ask yourself, is this consistent in my life?

[01:15:20] Do I actually believe this? And maybe in this opportunity, you'd just roll the dice and say, you know what? You don't have to wash your hands. Let's see if you get sick. And just lean into not knowing with your child. Be curious, do research, have an experiment.

[01:15:35] Can you do this every day of your life with kids? No, you'll die of lost energy and sleep. But go down that rabbit trail once a month. Just once a month. Go down the rabbit hole with your child and allow them to experience

[01:15:49] experimentation and validating their own beliefs, not just adopting yours. We can do it with each other too. Great. Thanks, Julie. No, it does so good. I'm definitely guilty of the second manipulative not controlling control through my own authoritarian, whatever you call that. I'm totally guilty of that.

[01:16:12] With not just my children. All of us. Curious. Why do you... Why do you snore? We all think we're great critical thinkers. That's the thing. It's okay. That is the funny thing. You know what? I feel like we have so much more we could talk about

[01:16:25] and maybe we could invite you back to do a live Q&A with our Patreon audience. That'd be fun. That'd be a lot of fun. That'd be really fun. Yes. Okay. So let's try to do that soon. And before we schedule that and wrap up,

[01:16:37] where can our audience find you? What's the best way to reach you? Read your book, all those things. I do have a book website, raisingcriticalthinkers.com, and there is a free book club download. It's like a guide. So if you want to study this book with friends,

[01:16:51] it guides you through that, which I think is helpful. You'd be amazed at how helpful it is to talk about these ideas with people you know. My website is bravewriter.com. It is a homeschool language arts, writing and critical thinking space. You can find out more there.

[01:17:05] And I'm on Instagram at Julie Bravewriter. Amazing. Thank you so much for your time and your wisdom. That was awesome. Thank you. Everything. That was really fun. I am just honored to be here. I love your show and you guys are great. You're my people. You're my people.

[01:17:19] Thanks, Julie. Careful. Oh wait. No. You like what you hear? Please do give us a rating, a review and subscribe on iTunes or wherever you listen. Every little bit helps us get this cult awareness content out there. Smash that subscribe button. You know what to do.

[01:17:37] So we recorded this episode a couple weeks ago after we recorded Yasmin's. I loved this book. I was so excited after reading it and I think I even said, I've got to give this to all of my students teachers. I want to bring it to the school.

[01:17:50] And I went to Galloway where Troy goes to school and there was a book fair. And right in the middle of the book fair book pile was Raising Critical Thinkers by Julie Bogart. So highly recommend please go get this book.

[01:18:04] Please support her, find her on all the things. Try to use the tools especially as we... I'm sure for sure we're going to have her on again. Yeah, we'll have her on again. But especially as we're trying to tackle some of these heavier topics.

[01:18:15] Remember to think about what we've talked about today as we're navigating what's happening in the world right now. We really encourage conversation, humanity, humility and anytime you're feeling that righteousness there may be some extreme belief thinking going on. Try not to be a part of the division.

[01:18:32] Totally. That's our goal. Yeah. Thank you all for listening. We'll be talking about this episode more over on Patreon and have a great day. Bye. Thanks for listening everyone. We're heading over to patreon.com slash a little bit culting now to discuss this episode.

[01:19:08] In the meantime dear listener please remember this podcast is solely for general informational educational and entertainment purposes. It's not intended as a substitute for real medical legal or therapeutic advice for cult recovery resources and to learn more about seeking safely in this culty world.

[01:19:25] Check out a little bit culty dot com slash culty resources and don't miss Sarah's TED talk called How Cult Literate Are You? Great Stuff. A Little Bit Cultie is a Trace 120 production executive produced by Sarah Edmondson and Anthony Nippy Ames in collaboration with producer

[01:19:40] Will Rutherford at Citizens of Sound and our co-creator and show chaplain slash bodyguard Jess Temple-Tardy. Our show writer is Holly Zadra and our theme song Cultivated is by John Bryant.