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• An idea I find interesting is that of a "scientifically-engineered religion", where you would take the techniques used by cults and religions and apply them in more thoughtful ways to bring about a better state of the world than would otherwise exist. I'm not sure if it's possible, because it could be the case that these behavior-modification-techniques have side-effects which outweigh any positive effect you could get from them, but I find it interesting to think about.

Books

• Cults: In Too Deep From Jonestown to Scientology
  • I saw this at the Mountain View bookstore. I thought it looked like it had some useful information, enough to be worth checking out.

Articles / Videos

• 2016.05.10 - Jezebel - Inside Superstar Machine, Which Ex-Members Say Is a Cult Preying on New York’s Creative Women
  • The article does a great job of describing the various techniques used by the group.
  • I should go through it and write out the various techniques mentioned.
  • The techniques mentioned (incomplete):
    • How to get new members:
      • How to get new leads (people who are willing to attend a meeting):
        • Look for people who are especially unhappy.
          • "A few years ago, as Ashley Cantley will tell you plainly, she was in a pretty bad place. She was unemployed, her relationship with her boyfriend was strained, and she had no one to turn to for advice. (...) A lot of the women who joined—and eventually left—the group known as Superstar Machine will tell you they did so during a particularly rocky patch, either personally or professionally, and often both."
          • Look for people who don't have many friends.
          • Look for people who have recently moved to a new area.
            • "Katie Arnold had been living in New York a year and a half when she joined. She found living here “lonely and challenging,” she says. “I needed friends.”"
          • Look for people who are unemployed.
          • Look for people who have recently moved to a new area.
          • Look for people trying to break into an industry with low barriers to entry.
            • Look for aspiring actors / actresses.
            • Look for aspiring yoga instructors.
            • Look for people working as bartenders.
          • Look for people who have recently broken up or 
        • Have existing members reach out to prospects.
          • "each of them were invited by a new female friend"
        • Identify the major real personal issues that the prospect needs help with and promise to help with those issues.
          • “She was like, ‘Come to this meeting with me,” Rose remembers. “She said, ‘It’s all about empowering women, and you need to be around women right now.” She wasn’t wrong, Rose says. “Honestly, I did."
        • Make exaggerated promises to these prospective members.
          • "supercharge their careers and dust their romantic lives in magic"
          • "an exciting, secretive group, one that would promise to fix their relationships with men, draw rivers of money their way, and reveal the Divine’s plan for their lives."
        • Have your members project a confident, well-groomed, happy persona.
          • "they seem on on top of their shit, and I’m not on top of mine right now"
          • "Cantley was left with the impression that the swearing was intentional, a way of making the group seem cooler and edgier."
            
        • Don't spend time on prospects you know you won't be able to change.

          • "men were never allowed into The Process (...) “He said men asked too many questions,” Poppy says. “And interrupted what he was trying to do.”"

          • Part of the broader emphasis, they say, was on “serving the masculine.” For that reason, there weren’t a whole lot of gay members in SSM, Poppy says

      • How to convert new leads to active members:
        • ...

Judaism

• In an amazing coincidence: 1) I was thinking about how Scientology kind of copied Judaism in Hollywood by creating a group that helped its members get ahead, and how it might be possible to come up with a "Judaism for everyone" that has all the good parts of Judaism (lots of group activities, help finding a mate, feeling like you're part of a club, etc.) while maybe improving on some of the outdated parts. And 2) that very same night, I came across the article below about how South Koreans were interested in Judaism for the very same reason.
• 2015.06.23 - The New Yorker - How the Talmud Became a Best-Seller in South Korea

Quote:

Park Hyunjun founded the school in 2013, and now runs it with his son, the dean. The two were trained at the Shema Education Institute, which was started by a Korean reverend and brings Christians from South Korea to Los Angeles, so that they can witness firsthand how Jews study, pray, and live. The reverend’s thesis is that the Jews have thrived for so many years because of certain educational and cultural practices, and that such benefits can be unlocked for Christians if those practices are taught to their children.
[...]
In 2011, the South Korean Ambassador to Israel at the time, Young-sam Ma, was interviewed on the Israeli public-television show “Culture Today.” “I wanted to show you this,” he told the host, straying briefly from the topic at hand, a Korean film showing in Tel Aviv. It was a white paperback book with “Talmud” written in Korean and English on the cover, along with a cartoon sketch of a Biblical character with a robe and staff. “Each Korean family has at least one copy of the Talmud. Korean mothers want to know how so many Jewish people became geniuses.” Looking up at the surprised host, he added, “Twenty-three per cent of Nobel Prize winners are Jewish people. Korean women want to know the secret. They found the secret in this book.”
[...]
When I asked Tokayer for an English translation of his book, he told me that none existed, so I bought a Korean Talmud and had it translated into English. There were many versions to choose from, but I selected a 2006 edition that was “very popular,” according to a clerk at a bookstore in Seoul. The title was simply “Talmud,” and the listed author was Marvin Tokayer. Reading it, I felt like the last player in a game of telephone.
[...]
Sung estimated that “over eighty per cent of the country” had read most of Tokayer’s Talmud in some form or another. While that statistic is difficult to verify, the book is indeed ubiquitous in Seoul. Every bookstore I visited in and around the city, including a small kiosk at the airport, sold at least one version of the Talmud. Rabbi Litzman, the Chabad rabbi in Seoul, told me that copies of the book are available in convenience stores and in some train-station kiosks.
[...]
Lee Kyou-Hyuk, a famous speed skater who carried the South Korean flag at the 2014 Olympics, recommended the Talmud to his fans. “I read the Talmud every time I am going through a hard time,” he told reporters. “It helps to calm my mind.” [Nathan: Ha, this sounds like the east's equivalent of westerners getting into eastern religions (eg Buddhism).]Kyobo, the largest bookstore in South Korea, keeps a list of the top two thousand “steady-sellers,” books that have sustained strong sales for multiple years. Six different Talmuds are currently on the list.
[...]
I asked why she doesn’t teach other books of wisdom—Confucian books, for example—and Jeon jumped in to answer. “There are so many Jewish Nobel Prize winners,” he said, “so the Korean people admire them as a model, and we try to follow their educational system.” He added that because “there aren’t many Jews around Korea,” there’s a “fantasy” of who they are and what they have accomplished.

In a 2014 global survey published by the Anti-Defamation League, more than half of South Korean respondents agreed with statements such as “Jews have too much power in the business world,” “Jews have too much control over the global media,” and “Jews have too much control over global affairs.” The A.D.L. labelled these responses as anti-Semitic. But Dave Hazzan, who lives in South Korea, argued in a piece for Tablet that those sentiments reflect the opposite: Korean philo-Semitism. Having control of business and global affairs is something Koreans aspire to, he wrote, adding that there is a desire among many Koreans “to emulate Jews” in order to overachieve “in the world arena.”

“Koreans are obsessed with education, and we have this stereotypical view of Jews as the model of academic excellence,” Dr. Hahm Chaibong, the president of the Asan Institute, a policy think tank based in Seoul, told me.
[...]
Kim taught at a traditional Korean school for thirty years, and she described the educational system there as broken, full of rote memorization and devoid of analytical thinking. By using the Talmud to encourage students to think for themselves and to speak confidently, with “chutzpah,” she believes she can develop smarter, Ivy League-bound students. Maybe even a Nobel Prize winner.