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GTD 'cult'
duus | Sep 5 2006
so a friend of mine sent me this message. I am a big fan of GTD and find it very useful. I'm just puttin' this out there. [INDENT] Uh-oh. "J-R" seemed like it might stand for John-Roger -- the controversial cult leader and spiritual guru. And it does. http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/msia.html David Allen, his wife, and many of his employees are ministers in the MSIA (Movement of Spritual Inner Awareness), John-Roger's church: http://www.ndh.org/template.php3?ID=65 http://www.davidco.com/coaches_corner/Ana_Maria_Gonz%E1lez/article14.html (employee quoting John-Roger) Anti-cult websites accuse GTD of being part of a program to recruit people into MSIA. Their view seems paranoid to me, but you can read it for yourself: http://forum.rickross.com/viewtopic.php?t=2193 http://forum.rickross.com/viewtopic.php?p=15025&sid=e3195755a2185f9b4710580921d3f527 Now, I'm not saying that Getting Things Done isn't a good book about priorities and organization. David Allen may have very good advice about that stuff. But I am saying don't go to a David Allen seminar, get mixed up with the David Allen Company, or get too involved with the hard-core GTD crowd -- at least not without taking some anti-brainwashing measures. Seriously. This John-Roger character and his followers are not a joke. I learned about John-Roger a long time ago, as it happens, because in high school I read a self-help book called "Life 101" that he "co-wrote" with Peter McWilliams, the poet and anti-drug-war activist. In 1994, not long after I read "Life 101," McWilliams wrote an expose called "Life 102: What to Do When Your Guru Sues You." McWilliams left MSIA in 1994 after 15 years of being brainwashed. It turned out that John-Roger manipulated him into giving him co-authorship in return for keeping McWilliams alive. You see, John-Roger had the power to keep McWilliams alive because -- and this will surprise you -- John-Roger claims to be the incarnation of God on earth. John-Roger has also made headlines in connection with Arianna Huffington -- who admits to being a close friend and who has been accused (though she's never admitted it) of being an MSIA minister as well. [/INDENT] 72 Comments
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 In the deleted thread on...Submitted by moises on September 21, 2006 - 8:03am.
In the deleted thread on the David Allen site someone wrote something about this brouhaha that resonated with me. From my perspective, Judaism and all its flavors is a cult. Christianity and all its flavors is a cult. Islam, Animism, Hinduism . . . the list goes on. Why should I single out David Allen's boneheaded decision to follow J-R and the MSIA? Is the concept of the Mystical Traveller any more irrational than the stuff in the Old Testament that I was taught as a child? (Noah lived 950 years.) People all around attribute magical powers to special objects, believe that the silent incantation of special words can have far-reaching effects on the external world, and are certain that selfless behavior will assure that their minds enjoy an eternal bodyless bliss. Despite the fact that these people ascribe to some beliefs that I would characterize as poorly-supported by the evidence, I still buy groceries from them, get medical care from them, and read books by them. The guy who was called ProjectThis on the David Allen forum and went by the name Anticult on the cult forum tried to make the argument that David Allen's cultish proclivities pollute the GTD methodology. I do not rule that claim out. I want to see the evidence. The only evidence that I can find in Anticult's writing is that both MSIA and GTD are "totalist" systems. I view that as an inadequate reason to reject GTD. The scientific laws of gravity are universal and totalist and I like them. More specifically, GTD tells us that it is important to get everything out of our heads and into our system. Anticult suggests that this requirement might be psychologically damaging. The claim that it might be psychologically damaging to some people might be true and needs to be examined. But I still do not see a necessary connection between the fact that getting everything out of our heads might be stress-inducing and damaging to us and the fact that David Allen follows J-R. I think that low-fat diets might be damaging to some people. But I do not conclude that advocates of low-fat diets advocate those diets as a way to convert people to MSIA, Islam or any other mystical belief system. I think we do best by judging David's advice to get things out of our heads independently of our judgement of J-R and the MSIA. ProjectThis-Anticult makes some valid points about the difficulty of getting everything out of your head. I actually think that it is impossible to do that. I think that it is very difficult to define what a thought is, what its boundaries are, and whether it is conscious or not. I could imagine that for some people the belief that they are not keeping their system current and complete might lead to feelings of failure, sadness, or depression. My personal experience has been that it is impossible to keep every commitment in my system. My personal experience has also been that it's impossible to live in this world and avoid telling lies. Nonetheless, I think that telling the truth is a good general practice. I try to tell the truth as much as I can. And I think that striving to keep my system as complete as I can has helped me become a happier and more effective person. [Edit: Nothing in my post should be interpreted as an attack on Duus, who has served us well as a messenger. Thank you for providing us with this information.] » POSTED IN:
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