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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 victims 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 next to me on a plance, people I talk with in the street, graduate students, gardeners, sales clerks. Neither education, age, nor social class protects a person from this false sense of invulnerability.
Several 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
Defining Cults - Cults Are Not All Alike
Cults are not uniform nor are they static. Cults exist on a continuum of degrees of influence, from more to less extreme. There are live-in and live-out cults. Groups vary in levels of membership and degrees of involvement: for example, members on the preiphery of a group usually are not privy to the costs, contents, and obligations of the later stages of membership and ahve little knowledge of the real purposes of the group or the amount of power wielded by the leader. Even within the same cult, rules, restrictions and requirements may change from year to year, or from location to location, depending on outside pressures, local leadership, and the fancies of the leader.
The manner in which controls are put into place, the extent of control over details of members' behaviour, and the blatancy of these controls also vary from cult to cult. In most live-in cults, every detail of life comes under group scrutiny. For example, there are dress codes, food restrictions, and enforced marriages or relationships. In such cults, the members generally live together at the headquarters or at specified locations around the country or overseas and work for cult-owned enerprises. However, there are also cults whose devotees appear to remain active in quite a few major aspects of the outside world, earning a living outside the cult. But for all practical purposes these individuals also live under rules governing such crucial features of their personal life as the people with whom they associate, what happens to their moeny, whether they raise their own children, and where they live.
Sayfa 10
Defining Cults - Origin of the Group and Role of the Leader
In most cases, there is one person, typically the founder, at the top of the cult's structure, and decision making centers in him.
These leaders typically have the following characteristics.
Cult leaders are self-appointed, persuasive persons who claim to have a special mission in life or to have special knowledge. For example, leaders of flying-saucer cults often claim that beings from outer space have commissioned them to lead people to special places to await a spaceship. Other leaders claim to have rediscovered ancient ways to produce enlightenment or cure disease, while yet others claim to have developed inventive scientific, humanistic, or social plans that will lead followers to "new levels" of awareness, success, or personal and political power.
Cult leaders tend to be determined and domineering and are often described as charismatic. These leaders need to have enough personal drive, charm, or other pulling power to attract, control, and manage their flocks. They persuade devotees to drop their families, jobs, careers, and friends to follow them. Overtly or covertly, in most cases they eventually take over control of their followers' possessions, money, and lives.
Cult leaders center veneration on themselves. Priests, rabbis, ministers, democratic leaders, and leaders of genuinely altruistic movements keep the veneration of adherents focused on God, abstract principles, or the group's purpose. Cult leaders, in contrast, keep the focus of love, devotion, and allegiance on themselves. In many cults, for example, spouses are forced to separate or parents forced to give up their children as a test of their devotion to their leader.
Sayfa 8
Who Joins Cults? - The "Not Me" Myth
People like to think their opinions, values, and ideas are inviolate and totally self-regulated. They may grudgingly admit that they're influenced slightly by advertising. Beyond that, they want to preserve the myth that other people are weak-minded and easily influenced while they are strong-minded. Even though we all know human minds are open to influence —whether or not that is a comfortable thought—most of us defensively and haughtily proclaim, "Only crazy, stupid, needy people join cults. No one could ever get me to commit suicide or beat my kids or give my wife over to a cult leader. No one could ever talk me into anything like that."
As I hear people say that, I silently ask, " You want to bet?"
Sayfa 15
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
Defining Cults - Cult Types
In the United States, there are at least ten major types of cults, each with its own beliefs, practices, and social mores. The list below is not exhaustive, but most cults can be classified under one of the following headings:
1. Neo-Christian religous
2. Hindu and Eastern religious
3. Occult, witchcraft, and satanist
4. Spiritualist
5. Zen and other Sino-Japanese philosophical-mystical orientation
6. Racial
7. Flying saucer and other outer-space phenomena
8. Psychology or psychotherapeutic
9. Policital
10. Self-help, self-improvement, and life-style systems.
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This kind of listing could go on and on, exposing the sheer numbers and scope of the cults around us. Yet, on one level, all cults are a variation on a single theme. And ultimately, that theme has nothing to do with belief. In cultic groups, the belief system -whether religious, psychotherapeutic, political, New Age, or commercial- ends up being a tool to serve the leader's desires, whims, and hidden agendas. The ideology is a double-edged sword: it is the glue that binds the member to the group and it is a tool exploited by the leader to achieve his goals.
Sayfa 13
Defining Cults - Cults Are Not All Alike
Cults basically have only two purposes: recruiting new members and fund-raising. Established religions and altruistic movements may also recruit and raise funds. Their sole puprose, however, is not simply to grow larger and wealthier; such groups have as goals bettering the lives of their members or humankind in general, either in this world or in a world to come. A cult may claim to make social contributions, but in actuality these remain mere claims or gestures. In the end, all work and all funds, even token gestures of alturism, serve the cult.
Sayfa 11