BS: What do you think cults have in common?

Subject: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Sep 20 - 04:43 PM

I know sex abuse is prominant in cults but we all have different ideas.
Smart people are not immune. I've seen cults up close and what looks like eye candy is far from it. What is also prominant is deceit.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: keberoxu
Date: 01 Sep 20 - 06:05 PM

Donuel, are you by chance referencing "The Vow,"
the documentary exposé of the
NXIUM group?
I have done no more than read reviews of the documentary,
and it sounds really ... stark.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 01 Sep 20 - 07:03 PM

"Cult" just means you don't agree with what they believe and do, and there aren't enough of them to use lawsuits or the criminal justice system to shut you up.

Get postmodern about it. The word only makes sense in terms of the power wielded by those who define social categories.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 01 Sep 20 - 07:09 PM

Great theory, Jack. Not so in practice.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Sep 20 - 08:30 PM

The original post is unfocused, therefore the thread is pointless.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 01 Sep 20 - 09:27 PM

National Public Radio is running a Parcast podcast series titled Cults (click).

Jack is right in one sense - one current definition of "cult" is "a group that believes something the speaker doesn't believe," but I think that's a cynical definition. The idea of "cult" is an interesting phenomenon.

I'd venture to describe is as a group of people bound together by an irrational belief, often resulting in bizarre or antisocial behavior. In general, cults seem to be groups of people following an authority figure, and adhering blindly to the leader's teachings and practices.

The podcast series gives some interesting examples.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Ebbie
Date: 02 Sep 20 - 02:02 AM

Following an authoritarian figure, yes, but surely goes beyond that. There must be some kind of visceral response to that figure that recognizes him or her as being superior over all others. There has to be some kind of religious response in some way, I think. Either that the respondents believe that he is sent directly from the Deity or is the Deity itself.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Mr Red
Date: 02 Sep 20 - 02:35 AM

The original post is unfocused, therefore the thread is pointless.
not part of the solution obviously. True to form though.

I was told by a Canadian who lives quite near to the Mennanite community in Ontario that the seemingly benign "back to nature" aura of it all hides some pretty negative practices. All he said was "child abuse". I doubt it was that common, but it was hidden. Are the Mennanites a cult?

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Penny S.
Date: 02 Sep 20 - 03:48 AM

I think the Mennonites count as a bona fide denomination - they have proper hymnbooks and all.
And show me a church/religion that has not had hidden child abuse at some time or another.
Cults have peculiar attitudes to policing the boundaries between them and the world outside, seeking to prevent members leaving, unless they seek to expel them and cut them off from their friends and relations.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Sep 20 - 04:47 AM

You appear to have merely defined organised religions, Joe. You need more. Maybe a charismatic control-freak grooming leader at the helm who is able to justify vile practices to his followers.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Sep 20 - 05:01 AM

The separation of children from the family is also a cult practice. So is the act of shunning by cult members against its critics.

A&E has a series on cults and extreme groups like LDFS, Sanctuary church...   HBO has the Vow.

A dominant micro manager is typical but certain militias simply have God and patriotism as their symbolic leader ordering them to use their AK's as a last resort against a tryannical dovernmnt.

Trumpism is a cult imo

Steve I thought you took a vow.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Sep 20 - 07:09 AM

I'm trying to rescue you from your silly first post. I'm helping you.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Sep 20 - 07:18 AM

Google and read this. What makes a cult a cult?

Holly Meyer [e-mail]
Published 7:10 PM EDT Sep 15, 2016
How can you tell if a group is a cult or not?

After a recent report about a cat-worshipping, end-times group in Middle Tennessee, we asked cult expert Janja Lalich to explain what makes a cult a cult.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Thompson
Date: 02 Sep 20 - 07:59 AM

At the end of the novel The Boys from Brazil (about a Nazi cult cloning Hitler and reproducing the events of his childhood), the one surviving clone is playing. He's making a toy stadium, and dreaming to himself (from my recollection of this long-ago-read book by Ira Levin) of how, if you could get a lot of people together, things could be really good.

And this is the basis of cults. People are out for good, but they also must exclude some other group or groups of people. We're the good people; the others (with differently coloured skin, speaking a different language, worshipping their different gods in different ways, using a different form of transport, of a different sexual orientation from us) are bad. We are put-upon; everyone is against us. It's just not fair. But if we people - the good people - join together (and I think I'll write a song for us about us) we can build the perfect world.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: leeneia
Date: 02 Sep 20 - 01:33 PM

If a group does not allow newbies to sleep, it is a cult. (This is not the only criterion.)

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 02 Sep 20 - 02:17 PM

There are Mennonites, and then there are Mennonites. As with almost all religions, different members have different views of their religious practices. Those who tend toward a fundamentalist, literalist, ideological view of the denomination, are the ones likely to get into trouble.

Those who see their faith as more of a cultural and philosophical context, tend to be more open-minded. Apparently, Mr. Shaw understands only the former.

I used to live in Fresno, California, home of a large Mennonite population with a college. These are Mennonites who are more philosophical, and the college has fostered some serious scholarship. Mennonites are quite ardent pacifists, and do a lot for the cause of peace and social justice worldwide. The Mennonites in Fresno were generally conservative in dress, but very few of them followed the severe lifestyle and dress that is practiced by more conservative Mennonites. I found the Fresno Mennonites to be delightful people who enjoyed intelligent discussion.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Charmion
Date: 02 Sep 20 - 02:43 PM

I think most modern, secular definitions of the word "cult" include the notion of exploitation. Groups that promise recruits spiritual rewards in exchange for abandoning their pre-conversion friends and family and handing over all their assets -- they're cults. Groups that work really, really hard to convince members that their salvation depends on doing things that are morally repugnant or actually illegal -- they're cults.

Mennonites are Anabaptists with a communal tradition, and lots of them live in southwestern Ontario. I see them almost every day; they range from the very pious Old Order folks who spurn electricity, automobiles and even buttons on their clothes to the teenaged girls who work at my favourite garden centre, who wear tee-shirts and shorts and little starched muffin-cup caps pinned over their plaited hair. Typical Mennonite businesses are closely related to agriculture and the home: they sell food, or nursery plants, or animal feed, or furniture they build themselves in the shop out back. Mennonites are also very big on charity; the local United Way is headed by a Mennonite (who happens to be married to the woman I play tunes with), and most of the local relief organizations are organized and run by Mennonites.

Oh, and Mennonites don't proselytize -- if you want to be a Mennonite, you pretty well have to be born or marry into a Mennonite family. They would not chuck you out if you showed up at the Mennonite church on Sunday, but you would be a visitor for a Very Long Time.

Cults proselytize.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 02 Sep 20 - 02:49 PM

My boss once wrote on my appraisal that I was becoming a cult. I don't know how she got the job seeing as she couldn't even spell cult...

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Sep 20 - 05:03 PM

If I wanted a Google answer I would seek one. I wanted to know how this community thinks about such things and several people had a different take that was thought provoking. People like Jack, Penny and others

Working without a salary is another common factor in cultism.
Paying fees for social and prestige promotions within the cult is a dead giveaway.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 02 Sep 20 - 05:43 PM

You should try Google and Wikipedia more often, Donuel. Discussions are far more productive if they're based on facts. Pure opinion is more-or-less worthless - it has to be grounded in something to have value.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: leeneia
Date: 02 Sep 20 - 05:58 PM

Now really, Dave!

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Sep 20 - 06:10 PM

Best post in thread, Dave. I'm pissed off that you were more brave than me in putting it that way... ;-)

Nah then, Joe. I did not intend the pejorative in that post, just saying as I was that you had unintentionally defined organised religions. I'm no aficionado of the latter, as you know, but they are most decidedly not cults. I did say in the reply to your post what more was needed than you'd said to define a cult, and I also gave you something to google in a separate post. Perhaps I understand a little more, and you understand a little less, than you think...

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 02 Sep 20 - 06:31 PM

A cult is a larval sect.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Jeri
Date: 02 Sep 20 - 06:52 PM

There are some perfectly good definitions in Google and Wikipedia, and the people who've contributed to them are probably smarter than any one of us.
Cults are about control. They're about power, and the beliefs aren't the main thing - they're excuses.
It may be simplistic, but I tend to look at what happens to people who question, or what happens to people who leave, or try to.

...and if sleep deprivation is a sign that an organization is a cult, consider every military's basic training (that I'm aware of). But you can ask questions, and you can leave.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Sep 20 - 10:00 PM

Dave maybe your boss was trying to spell clutz without a k?

I was surprised that the Jehova witness' are such a nefarious cult.
I've seen cult members distance or dispose of books that could be antithetical to their holy book or written cult rules.
Human tribalism is very prone to cultism. Insistance that even the way people speak or think can be condemned so that independant thought is percieved as an enemy of the people by folks who consider themselves the masters of the cult. Jeeze there's not any of those folks here, are there? If there are, they are best ignored since they do not change. They may think they are traveling a bumpy road but the truth is their own permanent personality, like oblong wheels on their car, are the source of the bumps they feel.
Cults imo are the birthplaces of conspiracy theories.
Champions of the greatest BS is nationalism as well as religion.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Sep 20 - 10:25 PM

As ever, bullshit.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Sep 20 - 11:25 PM

ignored

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: The Sandman
Date: 03 Sep 20 - 02:38 AM

Cults[to some extent] attract those who wish to control and those who wish to be disciples.
Mudcat to some extent, is a case in point.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: The Sandman
Date: 03 Sep 20 - 02:44 AM

defintions of cult.
a system of religious veneration and devotion directed towards a particular figure or object.

   

2.
a person or thing that is popular or fashionable among a particular group or section of society.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 03 Sep 20 - 03:08 AM

Is a migrant labour fruit farm a cult?

How about a prison?

The children's care division of a social work department?

A pyramid sales operation?

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Penny S.
Date: 03 Sep 20 - 04:16 AM

The social work department depends on the department. The group that took children from Orkney on the grounds that the Quaker (and other) parents were a child abusing cult had characteristics of a cult themselves.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: keberoxu
Date: 03 Sep 20 - 11:20 AM

Well, I was going to speculate,
Is the Kennedy family a cult,
but it occurred to me that my question is different than that ...
there were a few generations of people who idolized the Kennedy family
and that is a different question.

This past week, in the Massachusetts state primary,
a Kennedy youngster named for Joe Kennedy with roman numeral III
was defeated in a race for Democratic candidate for Congress.
Defeats happen every year,
but this is the first such defeat for a Kennedy
and it is making national news.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 03 Sep 20 - 11:26 AM

Xtianity started off as a cult. Then it got more members and was a sect of judaism. Now it's a scourge in its own right, to wit, a religion.

Like I said, a larval sect.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Sep 20 - 12:23 PM

It would be helpful if we kept the useful word "cult" to its generally-accepted quite narrow definition. Charmion has it right. And do the read the piece by Janja Lalich in the Tennessean that I mentioned yesterday. You may not agree with everything she says but the piece at least puts us in the ballpark The major religions are not cults and political parties/"Trumpism" are not cults. Jehovah's Witnesses do not belong to a cult. There is far more to a cult than something you find distasteful or with which you vehemently disagree.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 03 Sep 20 - 02:06 PM

Well there's Donald Rump, he's a bit of a cult !

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Jeri
Date: 03 Sep 20 - 03:30 PM

John, you misspelled that.
What Charmion and Steve (and I) said.
It's not a "cult" because it's small, or unpopular. It's about the control freakery.

Christianity was never a cult. Scientology, I think, was/is. And that Jim Jones shit. Sun Myung Moon, and Heaven's Gate, and other things I'm not aware of.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: The Sandman
Date: 03 Sep 20 - 03:57 PM

Yes,it is intriguing.I see and watch behaviour, the people that delight in telling others what to do, that volunteer to control others
Cults have this in common, Someone at the top who exploits other members of the cult
FOR EXAMPLE the leader of the Rajneesh AND HIS MANY Rolls Royces.
But then there are some people who wish to believe in something, who seem happy to be exploited, and those people who delight in being the adminstrators of the gurus orders

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Ebbie
Date: 04 Sep 20 - 03:36 AM

A wide segue here: to The Sandman: you mentioned the Rajneesh. After he was deported and the group disbanded their place was put up for sale. I and some friends went over to have a look. I have a fairly large tolerance for eccentricity but I can say that the atmosphere was the strangest I have ever felt. It was churning, chaotic, unbound, untied to anything solid. I can't even describe it.
.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: The Sandman
Date: 04 Sep 20 - 03:48 AM

I visited one of his joints at an open weekend, the food was very good, and it was well organised but at the same time it was defintely a cult of the personality, fortunately mudcat has not gone that far, yet.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: The Sandman
Date: 04 Sep 20 - 03:51 AM

Power corrupts but absplute power corrupts absolutely

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Donuel
Date: 04 Sep 20 - 06:43 AM

https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/qanon-gop/

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 04 Sep 20 - 09:02 AM

Xtianity absolutely started as a cult, then was a jewish sect, and is now a religion. Read the history of it.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 04 Sep 20 - 10:38 AM

Unfortunately, there isn't much historical evidence that the leader of your supposed cult actually existed at all. He is supposed to have riled the Romans big time, but there isn't a single completely convincing mention of him in contemporary Roman writings, of which there are many, just a handful of hazy references to a chap who might or might not have been Jesus. Still, it makes a good yarn, and it must be true because it's in the bible, and the Bible SAYS it's true... However, somebody started it and it was found disagreeable by many, and it got a few chaps into big terminal trouble. But that isn't enough for us to call it a cult.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: mayomick
Date: 04 Sep 20 - 10:55 AM

Cults regard the cult with the closest resemblance to their own cult as more dangerous than the evil they set themselves up to combat

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 04 Sep 20 - 03:57 PM

There was no historical jesus but that did not stop the cult that gew up to be Xanity from forming.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 04 Sep 20 - 04:15 PM

I did not say definitively that there was no historical Jesus. Don't get me in trouble with Joe.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: The Sandman
Date: 04 Sep 20 - 04:53 PM

Steve, careful, he might throw holy water at you

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Donuel
Date: 04 Sep 20 - 06:27 PM

Joe is devious but harmless and should be hailed for his organizational skills and music historian expertise. His skill is that of a scribe and not an editor. While ultimate communication is that of music he is not astute in politics or independant creative thought. In other words if Leonardo D'Vinci was his contemporary they would not be friends. Joe would take the side of the church, and as its disciple could betray Lenny. The saga of child abuse in the church still seems murky to me.
Rules were broken and posed quite a problem for Jou who is about rules.

A cult can be big or small. Just because the holy church is big doesn't mean it isn't a cult of BS. They have had time to perfect their craft.

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 04 Sep 20 - 06:43 PM

Take no notice of that shite, Joe. I merely made a joke!

Subject: RE: BS: What do you think cults have in common?
From: Jeri
Date: 04 Sep 20 - 07:28 PM

Don, maybe leave going after religions you don't like, or people you don't like, and answer the original question. What do cults have in common? I still think it's control. There are other factors, but most of them are ways the control freakery present.