Episode
Great Houses Ep. 4: Cults & Company Towns
- Podcast
- EXIT Podcast
- Published
- Jul 14, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 1467
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://blog.exitgroup.us/p/great-houses-ep-4-cults-and-company
Actions
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Summary
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit blog.exitgroup.us [ Part 1 ] [ Part 2 ] [ Part 3 ] This presentation and Q&A is the fourth in a four-part series. Because of the strong reception to the series, we have made this a weekly call, which is recorded for EXIT members. Modern societies are allergic to cults and company towns. Partly out of legitimate concern for unaccountable and abusive power — but also because they compete with and make trouble for larger, even-less-accountable institutions. Cults and company towns are defeated because they arouse the jealousy of the Powers that Be — but that’s always easier to do when they also arouse the resentment and moral outrage of the public. All parallel institutions have the same problem: they exist to generate interference with the cultural and material enforcement mechanisms of dominant institutions. If you aren’t trying to scare the hoes at least a little bit, you don’t need a parallel institution. So, if you want to build a robust parallel institution that serves this purpose, there are at least four things to learn from the history of cults and company towns: * How to achieve meaningful cohesion and group sovereignty (the hardest part) * How to avoid their real, structural problems * How to avoid their public-relations problems * How to gain maximum independence while attracting minimum institutional hostility In this episode, Greg discusses a model for setting up a network of interrelated “pillar institutions” which create a degree of genuine multipolarity without giving away the cohesion and unity of a strong community. We discuss various economic and cultural institutions that could serve as the kernel for such a community, and what it will take to get started. exitgroup.us EXIT News: * Week…