Dangerous Cults -
What To Look For

This article on dangerous cults is part 2 of the whole article. Part 1 Part 3

More differences

The language or jargon used in dangerous cults will differ from other groups as well. After all, they need something to differentiate themselves from outsiders! The language allows them to feel superior, confirming that they know stuff the outsiders do not.

However, closer inspection often reveals that groups have the same ideas but just put different words around them. 'Heavenly deception' and 'transcendental trickery' allow 2 different groups to lie and cheat to outsiders to recruit them, or as the members believe, 'to influence them for their own good'.

One group says it operates at the level of ontology (the study of being) while another offers the chance to find the 'authentic self', another offering the 'ideal you'. It's the same ephemeral doctrine with different words to describe it.

The special language in the group has certain effects. New people want to learn what the words and phrases mean. They want to understand. When they start using the new phrases, they are actually becoming indoctrinated into the ideas of the group. Their thinking becomes limited in the way the cult leader planned it. For the more senior members, it is easy to talk to other cult members but more awkward to talk to outsiders precisely because they don't get the jargon. This means it becomes easier for members to hang out with each other rather than outsiders. The group doctrine is reinforced over and over by using the group jargon with other cult members.

 

Evolution

Cultic groups have evolved in recent years such that the standard idea of dangerous cults with people dressing the same, living in a commune, being vegetarian, no longer applies. There are a huge variety of different types of cults nowadays - commercial cults, religious cults, therapeutic cults, martial arts cults, weight lifting cults, horse cults, hair dressing cults, and so on.

And nowadays cults themselves will evolve. If it is in the interest of a group leader to change (because it will attract more members or make more money, or because someone has exposed him for the psychopath that he is!) he will change in whatever manner suits him.

For example, a leader says his teachings are not spiritual, but later it becomes obvious that many people in his neighborhood are talking of spirituality, then all of a sudden his teachings are spiritual! Or it becomes advantageous for a leader to move his group elsewhere, or to change from a psychotherapy to a coaching group, or to move from working in the personal development field to expand into the business world.

Any and all of these changes are reinterpreted for the followers by the leader as beneficial for them, so they are quickly accepted.

 

Robert Lifton

Robert Lifton, who studied the effects of the Chinese brainwashing programs in the 1950s, says he is happy to use the term cult when there are three conditions present:

• there is a totalistic or thought reform set of practices
  
• there is a shift from worship of broad spiritual practices to worship of the leader
  
• a genuine spiritual quest from below (the members are genuinely seeking something) exploited from above ( i.e., by the leadership).

In other words,the group uses mind control to influence the members without their consent and without their knowledge.

People in cults were attracted by something. That something is the façade that the cult portrays to the outside world. They may claim that they are offering sales training, a political view, a religious belief, gymnastics lessons, health products, body work or a whole host of other things. People initially come along to the group to get what the group says it is offering. The inner workings of the group is hidden to new people.

These inner workings are such that what the person initially came for is twisted and distorted so the person ends up wanting what the group says he or she should want. The ideals of the individual are subsumed under the ideals of the group. The ideas of the group include worship of the leader in various forms, trusting, obeying, helping, paying, not questioning, for example.

So while dangerous cults may have very different belief systems, and may appear different, they all have a central theme. And the theme is that the belief system is being used and abused by the leader to satisfy his own desires, needs and hidden agendas. The belief system, of course, is that of the leader. He may be teaching martial arts, doing coaching, offering alternative health options and so on. But he has taken the ideas from some place, put his own spin on them and then offered them as something unique, something that you cannot get anywhere else. This make him and his ideas special.

The belief system may seem to be sufficiently worthwhile or noble to keep the members united, at the same time the leader is using it as a tool for his own benefit, at the cost of the individual members. However, the ideas in a cult are tainted by the manipulation techniques and are basically only useful for pushing the cult members deeper into the doctrine of the cult.

Read Part 3 - what else happens in destructive cults and how they affect society... (Part 1)

 

Dangerous cults - more reading

Read more about cult psychology, warning signs of yoga cults, abusive relationships, what makes someone a psychopath and what is brainwashing.

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