[bleezy]

This is just a guy with a cult. It's similar to a startup/technology company in only the most superficial ways. The guy who runs this cult plays ping pong and wears sunglasses indoors? Oh what a scathing indictment of Silicon Valley culture.

[Apocryphon]

The NYT seems to be finding several of these new New Age cults:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/technology/silicon-valley... (the Esalen Institute)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10906754 (the rationality cult related to Eliezer Yudkowsky and LessWrong)

[groby_b]

The NYT hardly "found" Esalen. The thing is around since the early 60s. And has been home to people like Timothy Leary, Buckminster Fuller, B.F.Skinner, Virginia Satir, Allen Ginsberg, Joan Baez...

It's a rather well-known home of counter culture. Silly Valley simply hopes something rubs off on them. Because the realization is starting to set in that you, after all, really cannot take your toys with you.

But really, "finding" is a pretty strong word for writing about one of the major touch stones of 60s culture.

[659087]

> The NYT hardly "found" Esalen. The thing is around since the early 60s. And has been home to people like Timothy Leary, Buckminster Fuller, B.F.Skinner, Virginia Satir, Allen Ginsberg, Joan Baez...

> It's a rather well-known home of counter culture.

..which makes it both sad and amusing that it has become a place for a bunch of Silicon Valley executives to go try to "find themselves" and look for affirmation that their advertising and surveillance companies aren't detrimental to society.