I hope to find time to come back to this one. As some of you know, my fascination with cults began with Jim Jones, when I was a Freshman in college. One of my professors had a discussion about it and asked questions that I’ve continued to research the rest of my life.
Steven Hassan pointed something out that made me realize why people are still susceptible to this type of manipulation. All of the talk, all of the documentaries about cults, don’t discuss the techniques in any kind detail. Our education system barely touches on them. He went to Russia right after the USSR broke up, at the invitation of psychologists, and they realized the techniques he was describing were embedded in the USSR education system.
Steve’s story of being indoctrinated into the Moonies is interesting, but you could skip ahead 50min or so to where they start applying the models he’s developed to the current political environment. Trevor asks, where is the line between cult and not cult? He describes an authoritarian family where you can be disowned if you are LGBT. Hassan constrasts that with good parenting that encourages children to question and grow. That difference is also applied to our culture, where we have authoritarians who fight against infrastructure that educates and provides a healthy environment and then blame others for problems in the world and claim they are there to make everyone’s life better.
BTW, they cover that this functions across the political spectrum. Republicans get fixated on identity politics, and Democrats get hyper-focused on being anti-Trump. The solution, to get someone to listen to you and keep them engaged once they start to question their cult; is to listen with compassion, ask gently about how they want the world to be, ask about what they thought before they joined the cult.
In French, a distinction is made between " cultes" and " sectes". I think that you use the word cult when we use the word sect.
A cult involves two elements: the first, subjective, is a belief or faith in a deity; the second, objective, is the existence of a community that gathers to practice this belief through ceremonies.
Freedom of worship and following a cult is guaranteed by our constitution. when we talk about the catholic cult, it has not a pejorative meaning.
A sect is characterized by psychological manipulation that undermines a person’s moral, health, financial, and family well-being. The sect seeks to isolate, socialize, indoctrinate, and disempower a person, leading to a loss of autonomy or financial hardship.
Financial and sexual abuse, harassment, particularly of minors and vulnerable individuals, are significant components of many cult-like practices.
When we talk about the Moonies and Scientologists sects, it is pejorative.
We do talk about it a lot. At least I do. Academia does not provide a singular definitive definition. That’s the kind of thing that makes it perfect for an open forum. But, lucky us, we have that one guy who does know exactly what a cult is.
That’s the point. Generally, we think of them as having authoritarian leaders, they isolate their people, coerce them, have an indoctrination plan that usually involves lies, they might promise some better world but they don’t deliver.
But those are things that advertisers use, that churches do, or sometimes Home Ownership Associations. So, it’s fuzzy.
On their site, they have handy tools.
You have to give them your email if want the BITE model. It shows the tactics common to indoctrination. Or you zoom in on this pic of the influence continuum. With authoritarians in power all over it’s easy to map these.
