# School of Philosophy. Front Page ad on I.Times. Alleged Cult



## gearoid (9 Jan 2005)

Hi,
Just wondering if anyone has attended any classes given by the School of Philosophy (and Economic Science)? They advertised on the front page of today's Irish Times.

A colleague attended a course there lead me to believe that in part of the course they solicit people to give them a week's salary to attend a Transcandental Meditation course that they advertise as part of the main course in their ad, but which allegedly is not, but is touted as a voluntary additional course on stumping up a week of your salary.

Asking for a weeks salary seemed a highly suspicious and pretty disgraceful practice to me. So intrigued I wondered whether some considered them to be a CULT. It certainly was very reminiscent of L RON and the Dianetics folk.

I typed in the following terms in Google "School of Philosophy" and "cult". Lo and behold there were very large numbers of references to them being considered a cult including the Dialogue Ireland cult watch website. They certainly seem on reading to be rich and secretive.


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## Tommy (9 Jan 2005)

*Re: School of Philosophy. Front Page ad on I.Times. Alleged*

I did a School of Philosophy course almost 10 years ago and found it enjoyable and useful. Other members of my family have done likewise over the years, including one person who attended a course last summer. I have no other connection with them.

The course that I attended certainly did not include any sort of "hard sell" (or even "soft sell" if you get my drift) although I do understand that if you do a certain number of courses with them, you progress to a level where you are/were asked to contribute a fee that is a percentage of your salary. Although this certainly sounds strange, my understanding is that is totally voluntary and anyone who wants to opt out at any stage can do so without any compulsion to make financial contributions.


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## Brendan Burgess (9 Jan 2005)

*Re: School of Philosophy. Front Page ad on I.Times. Alleged*

I am not sure of the meaning of the word "cult". Most religions could be considered cults if you so describe the World. Dialogue Ireland is set up by the main Christian churches in Ireland. Why should their religions or cults be in any way superior to other religions or cults? This is what they say about the School of Philosophy:



> SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY AND ECONOMIC SCIENCE: The public face of this movement are its courses in Practical Philosophy advertised in national newspapers. The ads do not state that the philosophy in question is Vedanta, and that what one is being invited to embrace is in reality not academic learning but initiation into a tightly-knit spiritual group and a form of meditation which uses the name of the Hindu god Ram as its mantra.



The only objectionable thing here is that they are not up front about what they are trying to do. But many of my friends have been invited to dinner by old school friends to find themselves attending a recruitment seminar for Opus Dei. Many religions are not upfront in their recruitment methods.

Brendan


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## trajan (1 Oct 2019)

I just encountered this "School of Practical Philosophy" outfit lately. They'd been offering 14 classes for just €10 so I gave it a whirl. From the outset it was clear that it was not going to be a philosophy course. At class 1 - after tea and chocolate biscuits - our "tutor" told us we'd be following a path to self-enlightenment which was described as advaita - a kind of non-dualist thing that some Indian guru came up with. There was a lot of talk about finding our innate peace from self-contemplation and so on. We had been told to contribute to the discussion freely. I looked round and saw some passive faces then thought it was high time to put in a hard tackle on this subjectivity nonsense. (Having sat in on some philosophy lectures at TCD, I knew that philosophy was not actually a vague airy-fairy subject. If anything it was one of the most rigorous courses and lecturers really challenged students' ideas hard on both how they hung within their own definitions and how they squared up with the real human world.) I expressed the view that subjective approaches could never lead one towards a meaningful truth that was shareable with others - indeed the very idea of a follow-my-leader class was the contradiction of what philosophy study really was. The "tutor" only offered that this was the way things were done in this "School" and most people find it gets easier too accept as they follow along. He then invited us on a "purely voluntary" mantra with eyes closed and focussing on how relaxed the body was on the chair, the air soft on the face, etc. The class broke up with his advice to us to ask ourselves what a wise man would do in any challenging situation we found ourselves in.
Instead that night I began to check up on the School Of Philosophy & Economic Science. They'd begun in the 1930s as a UK offshoot of the ideas of Henry George, the man whose writings engendered the Progressive Movement in America, and were founded the the son of a Labour MP, Leon McLaren. Initially more concerned with socialised economics, SOPES became more involved with philosophy after WW2 and contact with the ideas of Ouspensky, Gurdjieff and Indian mystics. The Ireland branch of SOPES dates from the 1980s when they bought Townley Hall (a manor house on a small demesne near Drogheda) off a Trinity College professor who owned it since it ceased to operate as TCD's School of Agriculture in 1967.
The evolution of SOPES in Ireland is something I'm not clear on. But I have gleaned some details on the organization's leaders in Ireland and how it operates. Today it is a registered officially as a charity with 3 trustees, one of whom is an anesthetist at a major Dublin hospital and another who has been involved on the peripheries of social work and psychotherapy for around 30 years. It has a very small number of employees - likely less than 5 - and has a turnover on recent times of circa €800,000. Apart from the Townley Hall property that is used as a retreat centre, SOPES leases classrooms (often in office buildings) in various towns in Ireland where it runs its day and evening courses. The organization derives a lot of its operational viability from the large number of volunteer workers drawn from its students who are ranked into various levels based on their time and "standing" in SOPES. I suspect that the "tutors" are, at least in part, on the SOPES payroll. Looking through the past careers of some of them I see a common  association with the major drugs companies operating in Ireland, in middle management sales or technical roles. The "tutor" of the class I attended could easily be imagined mannerizing and playing his way by ear into the trust of some  exhausted practitioner.

There is no doubt in my mind that this organization *is* a cult, albeit a smoothly mannered and very middle-class one. In essence, they trade on ordinary people's ignorance of what the study of philosophy really is about: many people think that it is something that will give them some answers to help them find their way in life, relieve their anxieties, help them recover from recent heartbreak, bereavement, disappointment and so on. Of course, it is nothing of the sort. Many members of this forum may know men and women who are now very successful in careers like law, accounting and business but whose primary degree was in philosophy. For my own part, I have met ex-philosophy students whose logical aptitude was useful in debugging software. From what I can see, philosophy is mainly about disciplined and coherent thinking - and the various 'mystics' and fads we see going about would offer little more than weak demolition targets for a true philosopher.
SOPES is a cult because it intentionally seeks out these temporarily vulnerable people, coaxes them into suspending their critical faculties, uses gentle manners and a variety of passivity practices (mantra, relaxation, yoga) to get them to accepting assertions and ideas they likely would not otherwise - all in aid of acquiring their submission to the will of the organization's leaders. What else would you call an organization which advocates adherence to the principle of some innate wisdom independent of both our own and others' experience ? In its worst moments the catholic church accepted the need to earn one's bread, feeds one's dependents, having some bit of leisure and getting along with people of other persuasions. But SOPES will have none of that.
Brendan mentioned the comparable antics of Opus Dei - to my mind, another cult. I recall their old student hall of residence at Nullamore off Dartry Road and the day I was "interviewed" for a room there. "Mass is purely voluntary", etc ! But the Opus Dei lads were well known about - which professor in UCD was a member, their connections to Franco's ministers, their dismissive attitude to women's talents and so on - and people knew what their game was: entice aspiring members of the professional elite, then call in their favour later on in their professional life - a job for such and such or an administrative/political decision in such a way.
By contrast SOPES shows its true nature in how it tries to brainwash the weak and emotionally vulnerable. Anyone doubting their cult nature should scan the web for the reports of SOPES in the UK in the 1980s.


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## Purple (14 Oct 2019)

My son recently asked me what the difference was between a religion and a cult.
My answer was simple; "time".


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## trajan (14 Oct 2019)

Meaning  . . . ?

Many of us have no wish to associate with either.
Those who do have some religious affiliation could surely point out major differences in relation to proclaimed faith and funding.


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## Purple (14 Oct 2019)

trajan said:


> Meaning  . . . ?
> 
> Many of us have no wish to associate with either.
> Those who do have some religious affiliation could surely point out major differences in relation to proclaimed faith and funding.


Really? What's the difference then?
In the broader context what's the blue water between religions and cults other than the amount of time they have been around?


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## trajan (14 Oct 2019)

Look, I'm no religious person.
But from observation, cults are usually centred around some "charismatic" leader rather than the ideas they bring.
Religions may have had a "charismatic" leader initially but they endure because in some measure their ideas may provide a broader set of answers to the down-to-earth everyday questions that each individual wonder about: questions about coping with living here rather than a life hereafter.

Kinda like the difference between two kinds of women.
One with her busty form and her brazen approach will distract every man - and make a gom out of many.
Another will fool no man but will earn the respect of some who see and feel in her an earnest commitment to honest living. Doesn't matter what you'd think of her beliefs: she's walking the walk - not asking you to do it for her in exchange for black puddins and bloomers.


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## Thirsty (15 Oct 2019)

Really? There's only two "kinds" of women?


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## Purple (15 Oct 2019)

trajan said:


> Look, I'm no religious person.
> But from observation, cults are usually centred around some "charismatic" leader rather than the ideas they bring.
> Religions may have had a "charismatic" leader initially but they endure because in some measure their ideas may provide a broader set of answers to the down-to-earth everyday questions that each individual wonder about: questions about coping with living here rather than a life hereafter.
> 
> ...


That's right, because there's no way an attractive women could be smart, right? 
It's not as if someone like Cindy Crawford won a scholarship to study chemical engineering before becoming a model and has an IQ of 154... oh wait, she did.
Natalie Portman's Harvard Psychology Professor said that he considers her acting career a loss to  psychology. But she's cute so she must be thick, right?


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## trajan (15 Oct 2019)

Aye indeed.
Doesn't Sly Stallone top 160, boy ?
And sure Geena Davis weighs in at 140 on the Mensa IQ scale, begor.
Then there's Mimi Rogers (stop thinking about her shoulders now, boy) who graduated from high school at 14 years of age only. But Mimi was cute enough to see she'd make more money faster and have a ball of a time by floggin her *i*$.
Just the kind of girl you like to bring home to Mam !

But I take your main point, Purple: you can't judge the woman by her appearance or her IQ - you have to be at her mercy to make a comprehensive call on her character.


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## cremeegg (17 Oct 2019)

trajan said:


> Religions may have had a "charismatic" leader initially but they endure because in some measure their ideas may provide a broader set of answers to the down-to-earth everyday questions that each individual wonder about: questions about coping with living here rather than a life hereafter.



It is only in recent years that Catholicism concerned itself much with "questions about living here", previously it was all about the "life hereafter"


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## trajan (17 Oct 2019)

Official catholic church in Ireland (the bloody bishops, in other words) were mostly political.
But many challenged parishes - urban and rural -  had priests who had a feel for communities and their shared concerns.
These clerics were no airy-fairies offering nonsense to people in their grief and misfortune.
And for most people in a tight spot, religion meant the local priest (and what he would do for you) and the local practices.

But we're gone way off the course here.
This post is about a single cult, the School of Philosophy & Economic Science - not cults in general - and what they are up to.


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## Purple (18 Oct 2019)

trajan said:


> Religions may have had a "charismatic" leader initially but they endure because in some measure their ideas may provide a broader set of answers to the down-to-earth everyday questions that each individual wonder about: questions about coping with living here rather than a life hereafter.


This post will be deleted if not edited immediately was quite the character, from what I've read and heard.
Most Cults, even the Scientologists, purport to answer those grand questions about the what's and why's of life.


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