Jonah Dempcy The Human Design Cult

When I first found Human Design, I thought I'd found the holy grail of mystic systems. Integrating astrology, chakras, Kabbalah and the I'Ching, Human Design blew me away with its complexity and insight into everything from deeply intimate aspects of my personality all the way to answering big cosmic questions. I began studying it profusely, going on to develop a Human Design practice according to my Type, Strategy, and Authority, for over 10 years. In that time, I went on to give thousands of readings, taught hundreds of hours of classes, and put on the High Desert Human Design Conference, the largest Human Design conference in the world. Yet, something didn't sit right with me. I continued to witness high levels of demand and control being placed on adherents to this system. I saw fanatical beliefs and cult-like devotion to the word of Ra Uru Hu, the founder of the system, despite claims that Human Design is not a belief system. I even had adherents of Human Design tell me they didn't follow any system, and that Human Design was not a system, despite Ra himself calling it The Human Design System. The cognitive dissonance grew and grew until one year, as I was organizing the High Desert Human Design Conference, I'd finally had enough. One of the speakers of the system was telling me how the vast majority of people who get into Human Design aren't able to really understand it deeply, and even fewer are able to live it. There is a term in Human Design for people who cannot "live their Design," as it is called: they are referred to as Not-Self. This would-be speaker was telling me how the attendees of the event are all Not-Self. At that point, I decided to take a stand. I drafted a "Keep Human Design Cult Free" letter. But it wasn't enough. My friends advised me to exclude "culty" Human Design speakers from the event, but then I would be hypocritical, if my complaints are that they control others. Instead, I decided to leave Human Design for good. This book is a work of nonfiction describing the author's 19 years studying The Human Design System and his decision to leave the system for good. He describes Human Design through the lens of cult frameworks such as the Lifton Model and the BITE Model for Authoritarian Control. He also looks at mechanisms for how systems like Human Design and astrology work, through the lens of cognitive science (cognitive biases) as well as through the lens of Jungian synchronicity and Mishlove's Archetypal Synchronistic Resonance.