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Found this great video on how people get involved with high control groups and how hard it is to get out. They only way for it not to happen to you is to know that it can. It's 35 minutes long but it covers a
lot of ground. Enjoy any of you cult enthusiasts.
They only way for it not to happen to you is to know that it can.
Sounds snappy, but it is a broad generalization. I cannot think of any point in my adult life where there was even one second where I would have given any consideration to joining a cult and I am very satisfied that there never will be such a moment. That I am convinced that it will never happen does not place me in any danger of having it happen to me.
I think many people can't be retained for any length of time by groups that are extreme.
My late wife and her first husband attended, for awhile, a church that was into the "shepherding movement", where there's this "accountability" thing where you are assigned to a more senior member and are supposed to spill your guts about everything you do, your temptations, thoughts, struggles, etc. And then this person is supposed to "hold you accountable" for corrections. There are also home study meetings where attendees are supposed to open up to everyone else about such things. Basically it destroys any zone of personal privacy, subsuming it to the hive mind.
That lasted about long enough for some idiot (a man, no less) to ask her about her sex life and whether she was making her husband sufficiently happy ... about eighteen red flags went up at once and she stalked out, never to return. I suspect that most people hit an "aha moment" like that where the absurdity / unsustainability / bizarreness just stands out and you realize what you're dealing with. A significant minority do not, of course, but between that and the groups where you have to dress oddly or otherwise make yourself weird in general society, I think they loose a lot of people along the way.
I also wonder sometimes if there isn't, somewhere in the secret "how to manual" for running a cult, some sort of "test of loyalty" kind of thing. Maybe like the question my wife was asked, but maybe not so soon, but much later after she was really roped in. Where you know if you can get them to debase themselves or undermine their autonomy in some really big and unambiguous way that people normally don't, then you know the hook is set. In her case it just came way too soon.
Sounds snappy, but it is a broad generalization. I cannot think of any point in my adult life where there was even one second where I would have given any consideration to joining a cult and I am very satisfied that there never will be such a moment. That I am convinced that it will never happen does not place me in any danger of having it happen to me.
That could be. Everything I have ever read said that but I'm not an expert. I tend to fall on the side of people being tricked rather than defective somehow. I was a kid so i never "joined" a high control group either. I used to think that made me vaccinated against it. It didn't. I think now I am more likely to get BSed because I was taught emotional reasoning. I keep a watch on it.
What personality trait do you posses that help you ward off falling for BS?
What personality trait do you posses that help you ward off falling for BS?
The trait of being able to recognize it as BS. That isn't very helpful, so I will leave you with methodology. When encountering claims, ask yourself two questions:
1. In order for this to be true, what else would first need to be true?
2. If this is true, what else would be true as a consequence?
I think many people can't be retained for any length of time by groups that are extreme.
My late wife and her first husband attended, for awhile, a church that was into the "shepherding movement", where there's this "accountability" thing where you are assigned to a more senior member and are supposed to spill your guts about everything you do, your temptations, thoughts, struggles, etc. And then this person is supposed to "hold you accountable" for corrections. There are also home study meetings where attendees are supposed to open up to everyone else about such things. Basically it destroys any zone of personal privacy, subsuming it to the hive mind.
That lasted about long enough for some idiot (a man, no less) to ask her about her sex life and whether she was making her husband sufficiently happy ... about eighteen red flags went up at once and she stalked out, never to return. I suspect that most people hit an "aha moment" like that where the absurdity / unsustainability / bizarreness just stands out and you realize what you're dealing with. A significant minority do not, of course, but between that and the groups where you have to dress oddly or otherwise make yourself weird in general society, I think they loose a lot of people along the way.
I also wonder sometimes if there isn't, somewhere in the secret "how to manual" for running a cult, some sort of "test of loyalty" kind of thing. Maybe like the question my wife was asked, but maybe not so soon, but much later after she was really roped in. Where you know if you can get them to debase themselves or undermine their autonomy in some really big and unambiguous way that people normally don't, then you know the hook is set. In her case it just came way too soon.
From this distance, I think I was wrong to use the phrase "most people" that I did later in that post; and early in the post "many people" would be better expressed as "some people".
I was thinking about it too much with my late wife in mind, or possibly myself; it is clear that there's not that much turnover in cultish groups, and I doubt that the majority, once settled in, seriously question the dogma unless it causes them great pain. To the extent there's turnover, it is probably overcome by new recruits.
In the story I related, they moved too fast on my wife and as I said, the "hook" wasn't really "set".
I think there are two ways out of a cult ... bail early before you're very invested, as my wife did, or endure a metric ton or three of bad outcomes until you start to question and, hopefully, dredge up the courage to bail late. The trouble with cults is that by then they have generally relieved you of your money, your independence, and your self confidence, and you may have to leave at the cost of losing your entire social support system (such as it is).
From this distance, I think I was wrong to use the phrase "most people" that I did later in that post; and early in the post "many people" would be better expressed as "some people".
I was thinking about it too much with my late wife in mind, or possibly myself; it is clear that there's not that much turnover in cultish groups, and I doubt that the majority, once settled in, seriously question the dogma unless it causes them great pain. To the extent there's turnover, it is probably overcome by new recruits.
In the story I related, they moved too fast on my wife and as I said, the "hook" wasn't really "set".
I think there are two ways out of a cult ... bail early before you're very invested, as my wife did, or endure a metric ton or three of bad outcomes until you start to question and, hopefully, dredge up the courage to bail late. The trouble with cults is that by then they have generally relieved you of your money, your independence, and your self confidence, and you may have to leave at the cost of losing your entire social support system (such as it is).
Or you never bought into it to begin with.
I've said before that I grew up in Southern and Freewill Baptist churches, but from maybe age 10 on, I didn't believe in it. At best, I considered it a bunch of hokey stories for people who didn't know better. At worst, the fundamentalists' aims were a lot more sinister.
I'd consider those types of churches a form of a cult. I didn't have a problem leaving because, even though I was immersed in that as a kid from my own family and my peers, I never thought any of it was worth a damn.
I will say that my parents were never very strict about any of it. We did attend church, but they were never hardcore about it. I also had relatively early access to the internet as a preteen in the late 1990s, which a lot of kids my age didn't have. I had a cable modem in 1999 in a small city, a rarity at the time. That really opened a world to me - chat rooms, friends from other countries, heavy metal music, that just wasn't available to a small town kid like myself.
From this distance, I think I was wrong to use the phrase "most people" that I did later in that post; and early in the post "many people" would be better expressed as "some people".
I was thinking about it too much with my late wife in mind, or possibly myself; it is clear that there's not that much turnover in cultish groups, and I doubt that the majority, once settled in, seriously question the dogma unless it causes them great pain. To the extent there's turnover, it is probably overcome by new recruits.
In the story I related, they moved too fast on my wife and as I said, the "hook" wasn't really "set".
I think there are two ways out of a cult ... bail early before you're very invested, as my wife did, or endure a metric ton or three of bad outcomes until you start to question and, hopefully, dredge up the courage to bail late. The trouble with cults is that by then they have generally relieved you of your money, your independence, and your self confidence, and you may have to leave at the cost of losing your entire social support system (such as it is).
I was specifically referring to the first sentence in light of what we have seen since this thread was started.
Sounds snappy, but it is a broad generalization. I cannot think of any point in my adult life where there was even one second where I would have given any consideration to joining a cult and I am very satisfied that there never will be such a moment. That I am convinced that it will never happen does not place me in any danger of having it happen to me.
That's not really it.It is general in that there are universally human reasons why we buy in to that type of thinking. I even do it myself as I would much rather log onto an atheist video than a theist one. My theist apologetics I hear mainly from hearing the debunks. It's something that can't be avoided and it can lead to tribalism, and cult, depending how far the tribe has gone.
Denial of this plays into its' hands; what is safer is to admit the failings, and restrict them
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