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Defining Cults - Why Do They Join?
Some of the larger cults have training manuals for recruiters and carry out drills on where and how to approach prospects, much as sales trainers train new salespersons. For example, former cult members who had been involved in recruiting while in their various cults told me the following:
* One cult member was directed to get a job in the registrar's office at a nearby universtiy and to target anyone who came to drop out of courses. Such persons were depressed and needy and more likely to accept invitations to the cult's house near the campus than someone doing well at school.
* A female recruiter was instructed to stand outside the student counselling service and invite the lonely to the cult for a dinner-lecture and evening of fellowship.
* A number of recruiters were sent to toursit attractions in San Fransisco, such as Fisherman's Wharf, to the French Quarter in New Orleans, and to tour-bus stations in major cities to look for visitors with British flags on their backpacks who were alone. (The British flag identified English speakers; it is just too difficult for cult members who speak only English to persuade and manipulate someone who does not speak English.)
* Recruiters were sent to social events at various churches to approach people who were standing alone. The recruiter was to invite the person to come to have pie and ice cream or some similar treat or to offer the person a ride home - anything to ingratiate the recruiter with the person.
Sayfa 21
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Defining Cults - Why Do They Join?
I have found that two conditions make an individual especially vulnerable to cult recruiting: being depressed and being in between important affiliations. We can be especially vulnerable to persuasion and suggestion because of some loss or disappointment that has caused a depressed mood or even mild to moderate clinical depression. And we're especially prone to the cults' kind of influence when we're not engaged in a meaningful personal relationship, job, edcuational or training program, or some other life involvement.
Vulnerable individuals are lonely, in a transition between high school and college, between college and a job or graduate school, traveling away from home, arriving in a new location, recently jilted or divorced, fresh from losing a job, feeling overwhelmed about how things have been going, or not knowing what to do next in life. Unsettling personal occurences are commonplace: A gigh school senior is rejected by the college of her choice. A man's mother dies. A woman decides to sell her condo and travel after an unhappy ending to a long-term relationship. At such times, we are all more open to persuasion, more suggestible, more willing to take something offered us without there might be strings attached.
Sayfa 20
Defining Cults - Who Joins Cults? - Yes, You
What do the cults offer to lonely, depressed, or uncertain persons? In one form or another, each cult purports to offer an improved state of mind, an expanded state of being, and a moral, spiritual, or political state of righteous certainty.
Sayfa 20
Defining Cults - Who Joins Cults? - Yes, You
Many adults today are overwhelmed by the confusion and apparent coldness of our society: the senseless violence, the rampant homelessnes, the lack of meaning, the widespread loss of respect for authority figures, the vast numbers of unemployed and marginalized, the insecurity and instability of the job market, the loss of family communication, the lessening role of the established religions, the failing sense of community or even neighborhood. No less bewildered than the adolescents, many mature adults are finding less and less to hold onto in today's technoculture. What does this create but ripe recruits for the multitude of manipulators and swindlers?
Nevertheless, the fact remains that even apart from unsettling socioeconomic conditions and certain relevant family factors, any person who is in a vulnerable state, seeking companionship and a sense of meaning or in a period of transition or time of loss, is a good prospect for cult recruitment.
Sayfa 19
Defining Cults - Who Joins Cults? - The "Not Me" Myth
The average person looks down on those who get involved in cults, get taken in a scam by some operator who bilks people, or remain in an abusive group or relationship for long periods. That only happens to weak and silly people, the person boasts, generating for herself or himself a category called "not me" in which to place the victim of cults, scams, and intense influence. There is an almost universal aversion to accepting the idea that we ourselves are vulnerable to persuasion. I have heard this from journalists, college professors, neighbors, passengers seated enxt to me on a plane, poeple I tlak with in the street, graduate students, gardeners, salesclerks. Neither education, age, nor social class protects a person from this false sense of invulnerability.
Severaly years ago when I was lecturing in Switzerland, a Swiss psychiatrist opened the program by saying: "We have such an educated, close-knit, middle-class society, we have no cults here. Cults will never get an inroad in this country." I then provided literature containing the street addresses of various large, internationally known cults, as well as many small ones, operating in Zurich and other Swiss cities. Few, if any, countries in the world are without cults.
Sayfa 16