Why People Join Cults Analysis

Cults can be evil and mind controlling. They can also be extremely dangerous. According to Rick Ross, an expert consultant and intervention specialist, “there are several signs of a potentially unsafe group or leader.” These signs include: “absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability; there is no legitimate reason to leave, former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil; followers can never be good enough; and the group or leader is the exclusive means of knowing the truth or receiving validation, no other process or discovery is really acceptable or credible.” Cult leaders use mind control to control their group. This could be dangerous or life threatening. Leaders are

Cults influence society in many ways. They shape people’s behaviors and emotions to get them to align with the cult’s beliefs and thoughts. The people that join cults are usually very insecure about themselves and want to be accepted by then group. Cults offer people acceptance, friendship, community, and family. These qualities often appeal to someone who feels the need to be accepted by others. Cults are groups that use tactics such as the foot in the door phenomenon, entrapment, and obedience to achieve the leader's ultimate desires as seen through the cults of Jonestown and Family International.

Next, the two groups celebrate customs that are often blindly followed. Finally, the dominant world religions and smaller cults pursue a lifestyle that is accepted by their group. By analyzing the recognized beliefs, the different customs, and the controlled lifestyle of the widespread religion and cult followers, it will become evident that the two are ultimately similar.

Cultic activity has taken place since the practice of religion was established thousands of years ago. Since then, literally thousands of denominations have been inoculated throughout the world, especially in the United States. A cult, according to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary is a system of religious beliefs and rituals. By definition, this includes organizations such as Baptists, Catholics as well as Satanists and Witches. While this maybe true, cults have been popularly perceived as Separatists who are consumed by the belief of apocalyptic events, and the leader is someone who believes he or she is chosen by God or some other deity to lead those who are to follow him or her. One group that fits this description is the

From Jamestown, to Scientology, and even at one point Christianity, cults have helped to shape our way of viewing religion so much so that it is hard to imagine a life without them. Cults have a negative connotation in our modern world typically due to the violence that their members undertake in attempting to save their way of life or convert others. The question must be asked then; what would happen if a cult became a place of community rather than a place of religious intolerance? No longer would cults be seen in negative lights such as Jamestown and similar suicide cults, but instead be an intense bonding experience between like minded members of society. With interpersonal relationships so fragmented in our modern day, people could find immense benefit from face to face experiences with others, hence the need for a new type of cult to be created. While there are many reasons that Lynden Voth should form a cult, some of the most important include the creation of a nonviolent form of religion that would only play a small part in daily lives, the leadership potential from its founder, and the reformation and community atmosphere the cult would attempt to inspire.

Cults are just simply new religions or as Donald Stone reports in the text, “emergent religions”. They offer friendship and a social connection of like –minded people and offer people a place to make this connection. As older religions grow and change, new sects may break off in either disagreement or as a way to return the religions to its roots. Members of these new religious groups come from very different walks of life, countries or just different regions but they have a new purpose, restoring the traditions or returning back to the fundamentals of the religion. Many of these new religions are centered on college campuses and about 10 % of the population join the cult and remain in it for about two years. (Diem p16) An interesting note is that many of the new members

At its peak, Order of the Solar Temple had more than 400 members, including several affluent and prominent public figures that were either a part of the cult or donating to it, meaning that there was a large amount of people that were absorbing the beliefs of the cult every day and validating its connotations through each other alongside the reassurance of the presence of public figures. This may have had the effect of further solidifying followers’ beliefs that the teachings of the cult were correct and

Kalle Lasn, in the his essay shows the stereotype of the bigger population being in a cult without even knowing. In, The Cult You’re In, Kalle says that all people want the same dreams, and that they are not unique by wanting this dream. The dream he entails that everyone wants is, “ wealth, power, fame, plenty of sex, and exciting recreational opportunities.” Another piece of evidence Lasn uses to show that the general public is in a cult is, “so you scaled down your hopes of embarrassing riches to reasonable expectations of adequate comfort— the modest condo downtown, the Visa card, the Braun shaver, the one good Armani suit.” The author’s use of you in this case and throughout the entire easy shows that to the typical person this does happen.

Cults have existed throughout history since the beginning of time. A cult is defined in Webster’s dictionary as a “system of religious worship with a devoted attachment to a person, principle, etc.” Over the past thirty years numerous religious cults have caused “ tens of thousands to abandon their families, friends, education’s, and careers to follow the teaching of a leader they will never meet”(Beck 78).

It’s not unknown that The Church of Scientology has been a contentious subject of conversation for decades. The controversial religion was originally discovered by a gentleman named L. Ron Hubbard in 1954 through the establishment of ideas in which he believed would act as an antidote to mental health concerns called Dianetics. After an unsuccessful attempt resulting in bankruptcy, Hubbard branched his ideas into the basis of a new found religion called Scientology ("The Beliefs and Teachings of Scientology”). To Hubbard’s advantage, Scientology expeditiously accelerated in growth, becoming one of the fastest expanding religions in the 20th century. Scientology pledged a “light at the end of the tunnel” to those wandering through dark times, and created a pathway to a faultless understanding of one’s true spiritual fulfillment through a system of self-knowledge in relation to one’s own life, community, and mankind. Due to the Scientology’s controversial beliefs, abnormal practices, and aberrant church-member relationships, the religion poses as a superlative model of church rebelling against society’s social norms.

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines cult as: "a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious; also: its body of adherents." Indeed, any religion involving unconditional worship and unquestioning obedience to God could be labeled as a cult (using the derogatory suggestion of the word), since such a religion would have that high level of dependency, obedience, and unwavering compliance ascribed to cults by definition. Many mainstream religions still require their members to believe in God unquestioningly, to have faith that he is good and that what he does is good, to consider one's own wants and needs as unimportant while accepting the will of God as paramount. All of these are certainly characteristics commonly attributed to cults, but while it would not be unreasonable to apply this definition of a cult to any dogmatic religion that requires strict compliance with God's word and will as a condition of membership, the notion of applying the word "cult" to Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or any other major world religion today is considered absurd. There are those who make this very claim: that those who worship God fit the classic depiction of cult members in their dogmatism, unswerving

Cults use self-serving bias, conformity, and informational social influence to indoctrinate their members and manipulate them into achieving the goals of the leader.

In the search to fulfill our need for a social identity, we form groups with other like-minded individuals and build a sense of community. However, like any relationship, the bonds that we create within our community can be either healthy or unhealthy. Though what we now define as a cult has become much more common in recent years, “cults” have existed as far back as the pre-Christian Jewish sects, one of which actually went on to become Christianity (Clark, 1993). Cults then appeared steadily throughout the Middle Ages in the form or “heretical” groups that diverged from patriarchal teachings and the founding members of the American Mormon Church were persecuted in the 19th century (Clark, 1993). The 1960’s brought the arrival of a hippie

traditions, values, and norms, recruits members deceptively without informed consent, and retains them by continually reinforced direct and indirect manipulative techniques which cause personality and behavior change, deny freedom of choice, and interrupt and obstruct optimal personality development" (MacHovec, 1989, p.10).

Manson was referred to both as "God" and "Satan" by his followers. As the family's guru, he claimed to be a reincarnation of Jesus Christ. The police and DA argue that Manson found sections within the Beatles' song Helter Skelter and within the last book in the Christian Bible, Revelation which he felt referred to a devastating future race war between blacks and whites. Although Manson is not believed to have killed anyone directly, he ordered his followers to commit the famous Tate, LaBianca and other murders.