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How does a Cult get started?

Leland

Crusader
This is kinda an interesting News Story....

I guess Cults get started with one guy/girl....and some sort of controlling others impulse (domination), then...experimentation as to what "works..."?

Kinda an interesting topic...

I would like to know, what is the basic chink or susceptibility in one or one's mental makeup/armor that allows this to happen....

I guess if one were allowed to add, sleep deprivation, food deprivation...and other physical controlling mechanisms....then stronger control/manipulation is possible...

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/07/0...ntcmp=ob_article_footer_text&intcmp=obnetwork
 

Leland

Crusader
For those of you, that don't want to click on the link above...the link is about a school teacher that was caught attempting to Hypnotize numerous young school girls in his classroom.

He was also having them recite an "oath" to call him "master."

Crazy stuff that goes on!
 

Xenu Xenu Xenu

Patron Meritorious
There was a cult in my town. There were all these young people out on the streets selling leather work and/or flowers (carnations).
It was a weird time back then. Those people were competing with the Krishnas, Children of God, Nichiren, and the Scientologists. You couldn't walk down the street without running into these weirdos. I should know I was one of those weirdos, shilling for Scientology. If you didn't run into me, you were going to run into those other guys.

They were just a local cult. They all lived in a big house and gave all their earnings to the leader. After a few years they made the local news. It turns out that things weren't all that great in that big happy ''family''. People did nothing but work for the leader and give him money and the leader was nothing but a lecher having sex with all the women and girls in the group. That was the end of the cult. The leader ended up in jail and most likely never started a cult again. Sounds pretty typical when it comes to cults.

The interesting thing about it all was the fact that the leader was a former door to door vacuum cleaner salesman. What the really interesting part of it all is that his inspiration for all of this was L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology. It turns out that Hubbard inspired more than Eckankar, EST, and Idenics. He even inspired people to start local cults that never grew beyond the one city they were situated in. I guess some people think that it's better than working for the man.
 

Emma

Con te partirò
Administrator
I've often wondered this myself. How does one person recruit other people to his group? Then how does he achieve exalted status? Where does he start?

These days, if I wanted to start a cult would I start it on Facebook? Youtube? Get a "meetup" going? Without these social networks before say 2005, how was it done? Or it is just happenstance that a person has an idea, delusion, whatever and he finds others that share it? It seems to have a cult you have to have pretty far out ideas, but not ideas that are completely foreign.

For example I doubt I could start a cult that worships potatoes.

But maybe I could start one that worships one particular potato IF that potato was farmed in Israel and IF that potato looked very much like the face of Jesus, and IF the farmer who grew the potato was visited in a dream by the Virgin Mary.

The cult of Jesus Potato. It's possible.
 

strativarius

Inveterate gnashnab & snoutband
I've often wondered this myself. How does one person recruit other people to his group? Then how does he achieve exalted status? Where does he start?

These days, if I wanted to start a cult would I start it on Facebook? Youtube? Get a "meetup" going? Without these social networks before say 2005, how was it done? Or it is just happenstance that a person has an idea, delusion, whatever and he finds others that share it? It seems to have a cult you have to have pretty far out ideas, but not ideas that are completely foreign.

For example I doubt I could start a cult that worships potatoes.

But maybe I could start one that worships one particular potato IF that potato was farmed in Israel and IF that potato looked very much like the face of Jesus, and IF the farmer who grew the potato was visited in a dream by the Virgin Mary.

The cult of Jesus Potato. It's possible.
If you read up a bit on 'Cargo Cults' then you'll know that anything's possible. :biggrin:
 
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Emma

Con te partirò
Administrator
If you read up a bit on 'Cargo Cults' then you'll know that anything's possible. :biggrin:
Geez I just took a look.

A cargo cult is a belief system among members of a relatively undeveloped society

Cargo cults often develop during a combination of crises. Under conditions of social stress, such a movement may form under the leadership of a charismatic figure. This leader may have a "vision" (or "myth-dream") of the future, often linked to an ancestral efficacy ("mana") thought to be recoverable by a return to traditional morality.[1][3] This leader may characterize the present state as a dismantling of the old social order, meaning that social hierarchy and ego boundaries have been broken down.[4]
Doesn't sound like it can only happen in an "undeveloped society". I mean, look around.
 

strativarius

Inveterate gnashnab & snoutband
Geez I just took a look.

Doesn't sound like it can only happen in an "undeveloped society". I mean, look around.
It's a fascinating insight into how people delude themselves. Some tribes cleared land to build airstrips, and constructed microphones and other paraphernalia such as a flight controller would use, out of twigs - and it gets more bizarre the further you look into it.
 

ThetanExterior

Gold Meritorious Patron
It's a fascinating insight into how people delude themselves. Some tribes cleared land to build airstrips, and constructed microphones and other paraphernalia such as a flight controller would use, out of twigs - and it gets more bizarre the further you look into it.
Yes and some have pictures of their dead leader on the wall and applaud them regularly and even set aside an office ready for him when he returns.
 

Cat's Squirrel

Gold Meritorious Patron
I don't think it necessarily happens that way, i.e. with someone deliberately starting out to set up a cult-like organisation.

It could be a sort of feedback loop where the teacher gets a lot of respect and affection from group members who are grateful for the help he's giving them, but he fails to handle this skilfully and starts laying down the law and becoming ever more dogmatic in his statements.

This attracts people who like a group where everything is black and white, there are no shades of grey and they don't have to think too much for themselves, etc. The teacher then drifts further and further away from the group, becomes more and more autocratic and the group members cease to question anything he says or does. Hence a cult is born.

I once went to meetings of an organisation which I now think had drifted into being a cult in this way although it started off with good intentions (and still did some good IMO). I'd prefer not to name it here as AFAIK I'm the only one who thinks that of this group.
 
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Cat's Squirrel

Gold Meritorious Patron
A further note on this; Ken Wilber once wrote a defence of cults as part of his introduction to one of Da Free John's books (which I still have somewhere), but he later felt John had gone off the rails. I couldn't comment as to whether or not he was right here as I don't know what happened, but here's his essay anyway;

http://www.adidawilber.com/on_heroes_and_cults/

[P.S. Wilber wasn't talking about Hubbard here, and I don't think he would have defended him if he was. Nevertheless, I think Wilber has a point about the people he does talk about (although possibly not Da Free John; I think the jury's still out on him.]
 
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La La Lou Lou

Crusader
It's easy to blame the cult leaders of wanting to control people, but the people who latch on to cult leaders are actually as much to blame. If the leaders didn't get unconditional wide eyed worship from their devotees the relationships wouldn't develop into a cult.

Imagine you say something a bit clever, and suddenly a small group of people nod and start saying how wise you are.

Someone says that cerulean blue and cadmiun yellow produce a better green than ultramarine and cadmium yellow. People ask you to write books, and post on You Tube. The idea changes people's lives, their art work gets better as a result of this revelation. Cyanologist groups form from people who have read Cyanology books.

Then the leader gets attacked, someone posts nasty things about the leader's private life in 'The Artist'.

People start to say how Cyanology has uncovered a conspirational plot to sell 'blue' paint, and that big paint corporations are making a fortune from selling ultramarine pigments and are altering mainstream education to hide the fact that cyan and yellow can make a better green.

There is a small degree of truth, one that can be observed to be true, cyan and yellow make green, you have followers, you have attackers, an invented plot, but it causes a 'them and us', a separation from the mainstream, a cult is born.
 

Xenu Xenu Xenu

Patron Meritorious
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Gib

Crusader
This is kinda an interesting News Story....

I guess Cults get started with one guy/girl....and some sort of controlling others impulse (domination), then...experimentation as to what "works..."?

Kinda an interesting topic...

I would like to know, what is the basic chink or susceptibility in one or one's mental makeup/armor that allows this to happen....

I guess if one were allowed to add, sleep deprivation, food deprivation...and other physical controlling mechanisms....then stronger control/manipulation is possible...

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/07/0...ntcmp=ob_article_footer_text&intcmp=obnetwork
Hubbard read Le Bon and applied what Le Bon said, this explains it:


Just connect dots.
 
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TheOriginalBigBlue

Gold Meritorious Patron
Yes and some have pictures of their dead leader on the wall and applaud them regularly and even set aside an office ready for him when he returns.
Unfiltered Kool Menthol cigs were discontinued in 2003. I wouldn't want to be the LRH Communicator who has to explain why the pack of cigs on his desk are over 16 years old.
 

Gib

Crusader
Hubbard read Le Bon and applied what Le Bon said, this explains it:


Just connect dots.
if we go to the 1:22 mark on the video, Le Bon explains what is a crowd, or cult.

Le Bon defines a crowd as a a group of individuals united by a common idea, belief or ideology.

In hubbard's history we have first the idea of dianetics, where any two people can clear themselves, that's the belief, or idea. Of course the rhetoric of the dianetics book is that hubbard cleared people and used rhetoric case studies in that book to persuade the reader of the book that hubbard was correct. And hubbard presented hisself in a logical manor. During that time many dianetics grass roots crowds happened.

When that petered out, hubbard came up with the religion angle and called it scientology, knowing how to know. Scientology was the idea of OT, operating thetan. The belief was compared to budda in ending the cycle of birth of past deaths, but with scientology one could have full awareness of past deaths and come back from death with full knowledge thus ending the endless cycle of birth and then death for trillions of years.

And thus we have a so called Bridge to Total Freedom.

The crowd that hubbard created thru scientology was called franchises and missions, and also central orgs. Now we call center orgs as Church's of Scientology.

In circa 1965 we have hubbard creating another sub crowd known as the Sea Org. The elite of the elite of the beliefs, ideas.

And now we have a cult as the modern day folks like to say.

What's remarkable is that no clears or OT's exist.
 
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programmer_guy

True Ex-Scientologist
IMO, a group does not start out as a cult but becomes a cult later.

Also, we need to define what we mean by the term/concept "cult".
 
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