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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.
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Defining Cults - Definitions and Characteristics
I perefer to use the phrase "cultic relationships" to signify more precisely the processes and interactions that go on in a cult. A cultic relationship is one in which a person intentionally induces others to become totally or nearly totally dependent on him or her for almost all major life decisions, and inculcates in these followers a belief that he or she has some special talent, gift, or knowledge.
For our purposes, the label 'cult' refers to three factors:
1. The origin of the group and role of the leader.
2. The power structure, or relationship between the leader (or leaders) and the followers.
3. The use of a coordinated program of persuasion (which is called thought reform, or, more commonly, brainwashing)
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Introduction
Readers should know that a number of cults are highly litigious and use their wealth and power to harass and curb critics. Citizens, academics, journalists, former cult members and their parents, and publications ranging from Time magazine to the Journal of the American Medical Association have been the targets of leagal suits brought by various wealthy cults in efforts to intimidate and silence critics. Defending himself of herself against the false accusations made by some of these cults can break the ordinary person. It appears that winning is not the most important goal for the cults. Their motivation appears rather to be to harass, financially destroy, and silence criticism.
Last year alone, one large cult was involved in approximately two hundred suits with government entities, critics, and ex-members who spoke out about their time in the group.
A Brief History of Cults
Pied pipers attract only modest followings in eras when a society is functioning in a way that conveys structure and a sense of social solidarity. Citizens understand their expected paths in these eras, and most members of society know the acceptable behaviours—whether they like them or not. However, when segments of society cannot see where they fit in, what the rules are, or what the socially agreed-upon answers to life's big questions are, then, like a dormant disease, the ever-present potential cult leaders take hold and lure followers to their causes.
These determined self-designated gurus seem always to be lurking on the sidelines ready to step in and offer answers to life's problems. They claim they have the only and sure way of life. They induce people to follow them by touting a special mission and special knowledge. The special mission is to preach the contents of a supposedly "secret" learning, which the leaders assert can only be revealed to those who join them.
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Who Joins Cults? - Blaming the Victim
If a man in the jungle walks near a river and a crocodile bites his leg, the unlucky victim will be blamed for getting close enought to the water that a crocodile could harm him. Few will take the time to learn that the crocodile was lying in wait, hidden, and the man had no idea danger was so close. So, too, when an old lady is bilked out of her money by a swindler, her friends are prone to say it was her fault for being gullible. So it is also when a person becomes involved with a cult. The person is blamed for being a seeker, gullible, or mentally aberrant. The actions of the cult are overlooked in the appraisal.
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Who Joins Cults? - Myth of the Seeker
Former cult members commonly reveal that they were looking for companionship or the chance to do something to benefit themselves and mankind. They say they were not looking for the particular cult they joined and were not intending to belong for a lifetime. Rather, they were actively and/or deceptively pressured to join, soon found themselves enmeshed in the group, were slowly cut off from their pasts and their families, and became totally dependent on the group.
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Who Joins Cults? - Myth of the Seeker
As we have seen, a cult can be defined in many ways, but for our purposes and to explain most modern-day cults, it is necessary to think of a process, not an event, and to view life in the cult as a process. Processes evolve and unfold, something goes on between people. There is an interaction, a transaction, a relationship established.
The act of joining a cult results from a process put in motion by a cult recruiter. Cult practices make it clear that recruits are propagandized and socialized to accept the life conditions of the group. These conditions are revealed slowly, and the recruits do not know where they are going when they start. How can they be seekers for a particular result when they are unaware of the final patterns and contents of the group that they join?
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Defining Cults - Coordinated Program of Persuasion
Cults tend to be totalistic, or all-encompassing, in controlling their members' behaviour and also ideologically totalistic, exhibiting zealtory and extremesim in their worldview.
Eventually, and usually sooner rather than later, most cults expect members to devote increasing time, energy, and money or other resources to the professed goals of the group, stating or implying that a total commitment is required to reach some state such as "englightenment." The form of that commitment will vary from group to group; more courses, more meditation, more quotas, more cult-related activities, more donations. Cults are known to dictate what members wear and eat and when and where they work, sleep and bathe as well as what they should believe, think and say. On most matters, cults promote what we usually call black-and-white thinking, an all-or-nothing point of view.
Cults tend to require members to undergo a major disruption or change in life-style.
Many cults put great pressure on new members to leave their families, friends and jobs to become immersed in the group's major purpose. This isolation tactic is one of the cults' most common mechanisms of control and enforced dependency.
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Defining Cults - Why Do They Join?
I interviewed two Russian students who had been brought to the United States by a cultic group under false pretenses. They had been promised full scholarship to a U.S. university. Instead, once they got here, they were put out in tourist areas to recruit new members.
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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.
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