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Questions 81 to 90 by A. Orange
(To go back and forth between the questions and the answers for Alcoholics Anonymous, click on the numbers of the questions and answers.)
Cult members, including the leader, project their own sins and crimes onto people outside of the cult:
A cult is an assemblage of people who don't want to know the truth. They often claim that they do; they may talk about "Seeking the Truth", or "Seeking to Understand the Word of the Lord", or even "having the Truth", but they actually do not want to hear the truth. They just want their own beliefs and superstitions confirmed. Cults:
NIDA, the National Institute on Drug Abuse,
declares in an article on treating drug addiction: The funny thing is, so does membership in a cult, even a "recovery" cult.
Cult leaders often practice what psychologists call projection -- just accuse 'the enemy' of committing whatever crimes and sins the cult leader is actually committing. That's another aspect of reversal of reality. Cults are quick to deny the truth whenever they are the subject of valid criticism. Deborah (Linda Berg) Davis, the daughter of cult leader David Berg and authoress of "The Children of God: The Inside Story", gave us a good example of such denial and reversal of reality. She talked about the time that Bob Rogers, a news producer for the NBC television network, wanted to expose the extremely loose sexual practices of The Children of God (COG) cult, which included "Flirty Fishing" prostitution to get the cult more money and members:
When asked if there was immorality going on within the COG, Hosea [David Berg's son and Deborah's brother] flatly denied it. Rogers countered Hosea's statements with interviews he had filmed in America of female ex-members who gave eyewitness accounts. The stark contrast between Hosea's denial and the witnesses' testimony was incredible. But why would Hosea lie? To him it was not lying. All cult members are taught instinctively to lie; the COG is not unlike other cults in that matter. One is taught that it is okay to "cover" the truth because "other people wouldn't understand our beliefs." Therefore, when Mr. Rogers asked Hosea about immorality, Hosea flatly denied it. Hosea did not believe it was "immorality." Hosea's thoughts: "To the public it may appear as immorality, but to us it is the freedom of God's spirit, which they know nothing of." Synanon gave us a good example of the reversal of reality: the cult-owned businesses had the Synanon members working 12 to 16 hours per day, seven days a week, for wages that ranged from $2 to $25 per week, while the cult leader Chuck Dederich, who lived in idle luxury at their expense, complained that he had to support all of their lazy asses.1 The ideals publicly espoused by the cult are often the exact opposite of the real practices of the cult in private. For example, Daniel Shaw wrote of his experiences in SYDA -- "Siddha Yoga", the cult of Swami Muktananda:
Social workers are taught early ... the clients' right to self-determination, respect and dignity for all, the innate worth of a human being, respect for uniqueness, and the facilitation of the realization of potential.
Like someone who sees the world through rose-colored glasses, cult members see everything through the filter of the cult's viewpoint. Jesus freaks judge people on the basis of whether they are seekers, trying to get closer to the Lord. Communists see everything in terms of economics and class struggle. Recovery cults judge people on the basis of their drug and alcohol consumption or abstention. Most all cults judge people on how well they parrot the cult's favorite dogma and slogans. After Patty Hearst, the daughter of the Hearst Publishing heir, William Randolph Hearst III, was kidnapped, tortured, and brain-washed by the terrorist Symbionese Liberation Army, she saw her own father as just another rich Capitalist creep who had never cared about the poor people. She saw everything in terms of a revolutionary class struggle, and then she acted on those beliefs, and went out and robbed banks to get the SLA more guns and money. Similarly, the Moonies see everything in terms of Rev. Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church fighting against Satan, to reclaim the world for God. Scientologists see everything in terms of mental malfunctions -- they consider anyone who isn't performing up to their standards to be brain-damaged and insane (and in need of expensive Scientology therapy to restore their full potentiality). And if you dare to criticize Scientology, they see that as proof that you are mentally defective, and an "unethical" Suppressive Person, too.
This is the other side of the coin, "We are special". Cult members love other cult members, just because they are fellow cult members, and hate critics of the cult. A council of the Church of England wrote:
Freud has noticed another very important principle in the nature of the love energies in the crowd. In a very significant saying he suggests that in any crowd hate tends to heap up round the circumference. The love energies are focussed inward within the group itself; the forces of hatred are focussed outward toward those who do not belong to the group. We do not necessarily mean by this hatred in the ordinary literal sense; we can however notice this trait in an attitude of exclusiveness in the close-knit group towards those beyond its ranks. Religious groups of many kinds adopt the attitude towards those outside their ranks: "Either you are all out with us, or you are the outcast, the sinner, the person needing conversion, the person with whom we can have no co-operation, unless and until you change and become one of us." The closer the emotional bond within the group, the more this attitude of exclusiveness and non-co-operation develop toward other rival groups.
Those who oppose the cult's program are labeled the enemies of The Good. Those who leave a cult usually immediately become enemies and scapegoats and ostracised pariahs, and contact with them is usually forbidden. Defectors from the cult are viewed as very dangerous enemies because they may encourage more members to leave (by saying true and sensible things about the cult). Name-calling is one common way to devalue the outsider. Theosophists call outsiders "O.P.'s" -- Ordinary Persons.2 Likewise, in an interview, ex-Scientologist Jesse Prince said,
... the world of Scientology itself is a world of hatred. Um, from my very beginning experience in Scientology, I -- we learned to refer to people that were not Scientologists as being "raw meat", "wogs", which is a term that means "Worthy Oriental Gentleman" who doesn't have a clue about himself, spirituality or anything like that. So from the very inception, through association with Scientology, you start to learn to put other people down. In Dr. Frank Buchman's cult, "The Oxford Group Movement", non-members were called "pagans" and they were considered to be "unguided" -- not controlled by God. Dr. Buchman even declared that those people who would not support his goal of having a world run by fascist theocracies were "public enemies":
The true patriot gives his life to bring his nation under God's control. Those who oppose that control are public enemies. ...
A corollary to Devaluing the Outsider is the demonization of critics and opponents
of the cult, and the rationalization of attacks on the cult's enemies.
Allegedly, "they" are such terrible people that it is okay to do bad things to them. Scientology says that it is okay to attack those who oppose Scientology. Scientology declares that enemies of Scientology are "fair game", and that it is "ethical" to commit "overts" against them and "violate their dynamics". In practice this has led to everything from malicious litigation intended to bankrupt the target, to framing Paulette Cooper for making bomb threats, to burglarizing U.S. Government offices and stealing thousands of government files on people who criticized Scientology or who might do so.
The cult wants your life.
Some cults want all of your money; some want all of your time;
most all of them want all of your heart, mind, and soul. One of the most obvious and visible problems here is "too many meetings". They want to occupy too much of your spare time -- like all of it. They have meetings, and then they have classes or "Bible study" or "training", and perhaps also lots of prayer sessions or chanting or meditation sessions, and then they have assemblies and conventions, and then some more meetings, in an endless cycle. And somewhere in the midst of all of that you are also supposed to go out recruiting and/or fund-raising. The cult also wants to control you. First, they want to control all of your time, and then they will try to control more and more parts of your life: your sex life, your diet, your choice of reading materials, your choice of jobs, your consumption of drugs and alcohol (both legal and illegal), and sometimes even what doctor-prescribed medications you may take.
The cult teaches that members should meditate or pray or hold séances in order to receive messages, information, and teachings from The Beyond, or from a higher plane, or from an Ascended Master, or even from Jesus Christ or God. A corollary to this is that the cult claims that only it and its practices can give you access that Higher Reality. Another corollary is that the Guru and his inner circle are allegedly far better at making contact with "The Beyond" than you are. They can more clearly communicate with "The Higher Planes", or "The Ascended Masters" (or whatever) than you can, because they have supposedly purified the Doors of Perception, and you haven't. So, whenever their received messages differ from yours, they are always right and you are always wrong.
Channelled information creates a closed system that is entirely
self-referential. You can't argue with an Angel, or an Ascended Master,
or a Saintly Spirit who isn't there. All criticism can be deflected
by saying that you aren't pure enough, and you haven't done the
exercises or practices long enough
to have the visions, or hear the voices, and learn the
"Cosmic Truths" for yourself.
See the web page on The Heresy of the 12 Steps for a longer discussion of channelling.
They make you dependent on the group, financially, emotionally, or socially
(or in all of those ways).
Cults often encourage their members to regress psychologically -- to return to childhood dependency on parents and unthinking obedience and childlike gullibility. Many cults call the leader "Father", and the leader calls his followers "my children". Cults also make people dependent on the group by taking away all external means of support. Cults routinely confiscate members' bank accounts, credit cards, and any other assets which members may have, thus making leaving the cult very difficult. Often, members are pressured into quitting outside jobs, and just working for the cult (for very low wages, or for no wages at all). The members become dependent on the cult for everything from food and clothing to medical care. Often, the cult then gives members an allowance that is so small that members simply cannot afford to leave -- they don't have enough money for a bus ticket or a motel room. Scientology teaches people that they are basically insane -- having been driven insane by memories of past injuries -- and that only by getting a lot of expensive Scientology-style psychotherapy can people be restored to sanity. The Moonies teach people that they have been defeated by Satan and his Evil Ways, and that only the Unification Church can save them from the Devil. Frank Buchman's Oxford Group cult taught people that they had all been "defeated by sin", and that their thinking was corrupted by sin, and that only Buchman's religion could "restore people to sanity".
This item is pretty obvious. It is in the nature of cults to demand conformity and obedience, and to suppress dissent or independent thinking. And they are pretty extreme about it. The early Mormon church, demanded "Perfect Obedience" -- meaning that the believers were expected to obey all orders from their Bishops and higher leaders without question, no matter how extreme the orders were. That even went as far as practicing polygamy on orders from above, and killing hundreds of innocent men, women, and children at Mountain Meadows, on orders. Many other cults make the same demands for total obedience. Most cults demand the usual list of things:
And of course cults have some means or other to enforce compliance:
See the item A System of Rewards and Punishments for more on the subject.
The cult claims that newcomers are flawed and in need of repair or rebuilding by the cult.
Note that the claim that newcomers need fixing automatically places the old-timers in a position superior to the newcomers -- the old-timers have been fixed, but the newcomers haven't. So the old-timers are inherently in a position where it is easy to control and command the newcomers, ostensibly because the old-timers have been healed, repaired, purified, or enlightened, and know "The Great Truth", while the newcomers do not. 
Footnotes:1) See: William F. Olin, Escape From Utopia, for a very good, revealing story about the Synanon "recovery" cult. 2) Richard Mathison, God Is A Millionaire, page 146.
Last updated 16 January 2008. |
