It's not a "cult", it's a religion with some 4-5 million adherents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism

But please, continue dismissing millions of people's beliefs as "paranoia".

It's not paranoia, but given the number of small organisms that die inside and on your body every day, it doesn't really make much sense, either.

OTOH, large numbers of people can absolutely exhibit collective paranoia. How many subscribe to Alex Jones?

If you take, for the sake of argument, that the cycle of samsara is a real thing, then it makes plenty of sense: Suffering may be inescapable, but a virtuous person would still seek to avoid causing it to others as much as possible. The more you avoid causing, the more virtuous you are.

It frankly seems no more or less odd to me than any other form of religious asceticism. From a purely practical perspective, sweeping the ground in front of you is probably not any more of a nuisance than the vow of silence that some Christian monks and nuns take. I'd personally find it to be less of one.

I find this whole argument entirely specious. If one causes suffering to others merely by existing, clearly suicide or donation of ones body as food to the hungry predators is the quickest way to salvation..

Wait..So it's confirmed? I swear I had no idea, and had no clue on what I was supposed to Google to find it.

Interesting.

But I'm not budging on the paranoia statement. If your beliefs make you worry about killing random things you can't even see, say "bye" to any semblance of good mental health.

Too many people who aren't "paranoid" about killing little insects even sweep the murder of humans under the rug. We also have no real answer to the fact that in a century, there might be no more insects, with all the further extinction of other species that'll entail. e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19129378

Even when we're extremely selfish and petty, if we take too much effort to take care of ourselves, that's generally fine, as long as it's legal and not too annoying -- but when others worry "too much" about yet others, and change their own behaviour accordingly, they can't possibly have "any semblance of good mental health"? Come on..

The insects at least actually exist, what of caring about random people that don't even exist yet, wouldn't that be even crazier?

> Well, suppose that we believe what we are taught. It follows that if there are dollars to be made, you destroy the environment. The reason is elementary. The people who are going to be harmed by this are your grandchildren, and they don't have any votes in the market. Their interests are worth zero. Anybody that pays attention to their grandchildren's interests is being irrational, because what you're supposed to do is maximize your own interests, measured by wealth, right now. Nothing else matters. So destroying the environment and militarizing outer space are rational policies, but within a framework of institutional lunacy. If you accept the institutional lunacy, then the policies are rational.

-- Noam Chomsky

The Jains are discussed early in the Atlantic article under discussion.

Didn't see that, even though I read it.

In fact looks like my browser scrolled right past 3-4 paragraphs.

Now that I look, there was a stupid advert that pushed the content up and out of the way. Way to make a site, guys.