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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 - Who Joins Cults?
When we hear of cults, scams, and individuals' being controlled and influenced by others, we instinctively try to separate ourselves from those persons. It seems a point of valor and self-esteem to insist that "no one could get me to do such things" when hearing about situations of intense influence. Just as most soldiers believe bullets will hit only others, most people tend to believe that their own minds and thought processes are invulnerable. "Other people can be manipulated, but not me," they declare.
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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?"
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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.
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Who Joins Cults? - Yes, You
Despite the myth that normal people don't get sucked into cults, it has become clear over the years that everyone is susceptible to the lure of these master manipulators. In fact, the majority of adolescents and adults in cults come from middle-class backgrounds, are fairly well educated, and are not seriously disturbed prior to joining.
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Who Joins Cults? - Yes, You
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. Although most contemporary cults primarily recruit young adults, preferably single, some—especially the neo-Christian cults—seek entire families, and even the elderly are targets for some groups.
What do the cults offer to lonely, depressed or uncertain persons? In one form of 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. That supposedly beneficial state can be reached only by following the narrowly prescribed pathways of a particular group master, guru, or trainer. To grasp that approach to life, the new recruit—the babe, the preemie, the trial member, the spiritual god-child, the lower consiousness one, as certain groups label the beginner—must surrender his or her critical mind, must yield to the flow of force, must have childlike trust and faith.
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