# What cults are

A cult is a relatively recent broad term representing a wide variety of concepts:

1. A [religion](religion.md) someone regards as unorthodox, spurious, [taboo](morality-taboo.md) or [corporately abusive](hardship-abuse.md).
2. Great [devotion](addiction.md) to a [person](humanity.md), [idea](values.md), [object](reality.md), [movement](people-trends.md), or [work](creations.md).
3. A [small group](groups-small.md) who identify heavily with the above.
4. A [formal system](logic.md) of religious beliefs and rituals that veers into [taboo](morality-taboo.md) behavior.

[Legal](people-rules.md) identifiers of a cult come through the following elements:

1. A [charismatic](influence.md) leader who first embodies the group's [values](values.md), then the group trends to following their [personality](people-personality.md) as the values phase out
2. Extreme viewpoints relative to the [surrounding culture's norms](people-culture.md)
3. A [strict](people-rules.md), formal group hierarchy that [severely enforces](morality-taboo.md) those viewpoints
4. The group violates members' [rights and boundaries](people-boundaries-why.md) while also redefining the [members'](groups-member.md) thoughts and feelings

More than anything, its safest formal definition can be a [religion](religion.md) where the leadership is so [influential](power-influence.md) that they've persuaded members to [trust](mind-trust.md) their assertions to the point that they follow [irrational](logic.md) beliefs.

Cults are partially difficult to define due to the [group's](groups-small.md) collective [gaslighting](influence.md). In many respects, a cult could be regarded as the results of a highly successful [narcissist](mind-neurodivergence-clusterb-narcissist.md).

APPLICATION: While cults are sometimes obvious, there's a *spectrum* of cult-like behavior based on how much that group violates its members' [boundaries](people-boundaries-why.md) with their consent. On one end, it's a [well-marketed](marketing.md) product that implies a greater sense of meaning than what it really is, and goes all the way to a top-down [authoritarian](people-rules.md) society that advances genocide.

## Undue influence

Undue influence is a legal term where an entity takes advantage of their [position of power](power-types.md) over another entity:

- [Deception](people-image-distortion.md)
- [Flattery](influence.md)
- [Outright lies](people-lying.md)
- [Coercion](power-types.md)
- [Subliminal messages](symbols.md) (e.g., hypnosis)

Any person, however, only becomes a victim of undue influence when several simultaneous conditions happen:

1. They trust a person with [influencing skills](influence.md) as an authority figure farther than that person's legitimate authority.
2. That authority figure has a [story](stories-why.md) that doesn't reflect or accommodate [reality](reality.md).
3. That person decides to trust the authority figure's [story](stories-why.md) over their [understanding](mind-understanding.md).

APPLICATION: People aren't merely "brainwashed" into a cult. They had to have been trained towards high suggestibility beforehand. This would be [taboo](morality-taboo.md) to confront, but the parents of cult members are at least partly to blame for their membership and actions.

## Power

Most large groups use the [power of influence](influence.md) in some capacity, but cults use that influence and [trust](mind-trust.md) toward *very* unhealthy [purposes](purpose.md):

- The leadership is selfish and direct most contributed resources toward their interests.
- A leader is delusional toward believing they must follow directives that transcend mankind's judgment.
- A leader is delusional to believing they are simply operating toward the common interests of humanity.

Like the concepts of [power](power.md) or [hacking](mind-creativity-hacking.md), we [intuitively](mind-feelings.md) know it when we see it, but have a hard time [defining it](language.md). [Pop culture](stories-storytellers.md) has magnified the manipulation imagery, but cult-like behaviors can happen in any domain.

Most cults start with at least a few of several distinct experiences:

1. A deluge of [affection and kindness](people-love.md) by existing members to the new member ("love bombing").
2. Grandiose promises of avoiding [pain](hardship.md) or never having to [die](legacy.md).
3. Promises of special [power](power-types.md) unattainable otherwise, typically through becoming part of an elite society or ruling [class](people-classes.md).

To gain the necessary influence and maintain it, cult leaders are a *very* specific type of [personality](people-personality.md):

- Openness to Experience
  - High-enough Openness to express ideas in a new way, or revisit old ideas and share them with a new approach.
  - High-enough Intelligence to craft [believable lies](people-lying.md).
- Conscientiousness
  - High-enough Orderliness to maintain a set of rules that everyone abides by, but not so high that they defer to another external authority.
- Extraversion must be high enough to encourage and inspire people to follow them.
- Agreeableness
  - Low-enough Compassion to not care how others may feel.
  - Extremely high Politeness, which lends itself to them being charismatic.
- Neuroticism doesn't really matter, but they have to reframe their emotional reactions as still having some form of authority (e.g., a prophet, righteous anger).
- Further, Cluster B personalities are *always* capable of running a cult from their single-minded [pursuit of power](purpose.md).
- Generally, they will seem like one of the nicest and relatable people ever, but will be *very* [influential](influence.md) to bring others to their way of thinking.

## Recruitment experience

A cult proponent must be suggestible and malleable enough that they'll believe a consistent [pattern](symbols.md) of indoctrination from a single source across months and years.

Only a specific group of [personalities](people-personality.md) will *ever* [choose](mind-decisions.md) to join a cult:

- Openness to Experience
  - Low-enough Openness to simply [trust](mind-trust.md) someone else for information.
  - High-enough Openness to adopt new [trends](people-trends.md) foreign to their lifestyle.
  - Low-enough Intelligence to not ask questions that would make the leadership demonstrate they *don't* [understand](mind-understanding.md) everything.
- Conscientiousness doesn't really matter, though the cult will need to be *much* more consistent and complex with their rules proportional to that person's conscientiousness.
- Extraversion doesn't matter much, though introverts may be more susceptible from less social feedback from outside sources.
- Agreeableness
  - High-enough compassion to feel compelled to respond to shame.
  - High-enough politeness to desire honoring the group's standards.
- Neuroticism
  - High-enough withdrawal to let their feelings define their decisions.
  - High-enough volatility that a cult leader can routinely exploit their feelings.

However, long-term cults will adopt a few other types of people:

- [Cluster B personality disorders](mind-neurodivergence.md) will join a cult for [personal gain](purpose.md).
- People [suffering severe hardship](hardship.md) will join cults if they think that's their only option.
- Anyone born into a cult [family](people-family.md) will adopt the [lifestyle](people-culture.md) and a severe [false self](people-personality.md) which conforms to the above simply to survive.

Usually, joining a cult requires a large personal sacrifice.

- This sacrifice ensures the member has found [meaning](meaning.md) regading the group, since their efforts will validate that the sacrifice was worth it.
- Additional sacrifices compound onto the first sacrifice, meaning they develop *more* of a sense of meaning as they continue to give over everything to the group.
- Eventually, they've sacrificed all sense of [self](humanity.md), [identity](people-identity.md), [ownership](people-boundaries-why.md), or [agency](mind-decisions.md), and are so deeply entrenched into their efforts that the slightest [hope](mind-understanding-certainty.md) of any redemption can [keep them going](success-5_persevering.md).

## Advancing

Incrementally, the members are then introduced to further sacrifices to release control to the group, one small step at a time (BITE Model):

1. Behavior control - their [physical reality](reality.md):
   - The collective group ends up owning *all* their individual [creations and results](results.md).
   - This typically starts with [legitimately good habits](https://adequate.life/habits/), then moves to more intimate control methods.
2. Information control - how they [understand](mind-understanding.md) [reality](reality.md):
   - The group will typically give clear answers to more [controversial matters](people-conflicts-why.md), then work inward to otherwise non-negotiable or [taboo](morality-taboo.md) beliefs.
3. Thought control - how they [think](values.md):
   - Their values will be subtly shifted to conform with the group's shared standards.
4. Emotional control - how they [feel](mind-feelings.md):
   - Without any [philosophical connection](philosophy.md) to their understanding, submitting their feelings naturally follows as well.

By the end, the person has been transformed into a perfect extension of the leader's [desires](purpose.md):

- Complete compliance to the group's [cause](purpose.md), which is open to change if it's driven by a charismatic [personality](people-personality.md) more than a [value system](values.md).
- Tremendous hatred of everything that obstructs the group's cause, sometimes to the point of [violence](people-conflicts-war-why.md).
- Trusting the group more than themselves for just about everything, with all [conversations](people-conversation.md) involving the group or group activities.
- Any time they experience a [conflict](people-conflicts-why.md) with an outside source, they defer or deflect to their group's authority.

**Behavior control** involves [changing habits](habits.md), and is the most obvious for the public to notice:

- Instilling dependency and obedience, with permission required for all major [decisions](mind-decisions.md).
- Rewards and punishments modify positive and negative behaviors.
- Rigid rules:
  - How, where, and who that person can live with, associate with, or isolates from.
  - How, where, and who that person can have sex, wear clothing, choose hairstyle, eat/drink.
  - Manage, manipulate, or restrict their [sleep](sleep.md), leisure, entertainment, or vacation time.
  - An unreasonable amount of time spent with any type of [indoctrination/rituals](habits.md).
- Financially exploit them, manipulate them, or require them to be dependent.
- Punishing disobedience with beating, torture, burning, cutting, rape, or tattoo/branding.
- Threatening harm to family or friends or separating families.
- Forcing rape or for them to rape, encouraging corporal punishment, imprisonment, or murder.

**Information control** involves a *lot* of [image distortion](people-image-distortion.md):

- Deliberately, systematically lying to the person, often consistently across all members.
  - Only leadership is permitted to decide who needs to know what, and when.
- Minimizing access to non-approved [sources of information](stories-storytellers.md):
  - Extensive use of [propaganda](stories-storytellers.md) to advance an agenda, including snippets of outside information given with extensive context.
  - The group is publicly encouraged to shame and discredit outside information sources.
  - To accommodate the growing conflicts, sharing [myths](stories-myths.md) together that clarify why they're experiencing conflicts and that they're the hero of that conflict.
- Using an Outside vs. Inside doctrine:
  - The mindset is that nobody can understand the group's ideas unless they're in the group.
  - Ensures information is not freely and equally accessible.
  - Uses different levels of information control within the group.
- Encourages spying among members:
  - Uses a partnering system to monitor and control members' knowledge.
  - Any deviant thoughts, feelings, and actions are reported to leadership.
- Uses confession unethically:
  - The leadership use any information about transgressions to disrupt and dissolve identity boundaries.
  - [Forgiveness and exoneration](hardship-forgiveness.md) are withheld until they perform a significantly burdensome sacrifice to repay it.

**Thought control** is a [philosophical](philosophy.md) redirection that conforms a mind to a predetermined [value system](values.md):

- Members are required to internalize the group's doctrine as [absolute truth](mind-understanding-certainty.md).
  - This doctrine is subject to a black-and-white dichotomy, with no room for exceptions.
  - Only "good" or "proper" thoughts are permitted, which forbids *any* criticism of the leader, doctrine, or policy.
  - Rejection of [rational analysis, critical thinking](logic.md), and [constructive criticism](mind-understanding.md).
  - Alternative belief systems are illegitimate, evil, or not useful, which may include *other* cults or [reality itself](reality.md).
- Through repetition, manipulate memories to falsely insert past events that hadn't happened.
- The member is required to adopt a new [name](language.md) and [identity](people-identity.md).
- Copious amounts of [jargon and cliché](language.md) statements that obstruct access to [understanding](mind-understanding.md).
- [Hypnosis](habits.md) that alters mental states, undermine conscious thought, and can even make members [regress in age](maturity.md):
  - Denial, rationalization, justification, or [wishful](mind-trust.md) thinking
  - Chanting, mantras, and meditation
  - Praying, speaking in tongues, singing, or humming

**Emotional control** manipulates and narrows the range of [feelings](mind-feelings.md) applied to experiences:

- Declaring some feelings as inherently wrong.
  - Teaching emotion-stopping techniques to block specific unpleasant feelings like homesickness, anger, and doubt.
- Direct the person's feelings to them believing problems are *always* their fault, and never the leader's or group's fault.
- Promoting feelings of guilt or unworthiness:
  - [Identifying](people-identity.md) with inadequacy
  - Not living up to their potential
  - Insufficient or deficient [family](people-family.md)
  - A condemned past, including guilt imposed by history/society
  - Unwise affiliations
- Instilled [fear](mind-feelings-fear.md) of many things:
  - Thinking independently
  - Others' disapproval
  - The outside world without the group
  - Rejection, leaving, or being shunned by the group
  - Enemies and what they could do
  - Losing [salvation](religion.md)
  - Advancing various phobias that promote staying within the group
- Anger at everyone who *does* leave the group for being weak, undisciplined, not spiritual, brainwashed by family/counselor/opponent, or seduced by greed.
  - This can often mix disgust (at the perceived [evils](morality-evil.md)) and pity (for their perceived destitute state).
  - At the farthest end, they'll act on their thoughts of destroying the outside group and feel themselves to be "merciful" for performing the action.
- Extreme mood swings, with love bombing and praise one moment and utter condemnation the next.

APPLICATION: Gaslighting is a person trying to create a cult with a 1-person following.

In a [larger cult](groups-large.md), the [classes](people-classes.md) of leader/follower are *explicitly* enforced with formalized titles and a rigid hierarchy. Any [disputes](people-conflicts-why.md) are *never* addressed among peers, and *always* involve the leadership making a directed decision.

## Power expressed

Most [small groups](groups-small.md) can sit latent for *decades* without becoming a cult.

- They still exist, but only represent as [risks](safety.md) of becoming a cult until a charismatic personality arises to take advantage of the situation.

Some of these groups are patently obvious to anyone on the outside:

- [Violent](people-conflicts-war-why.md) extremist groups (e.g., terrorists)
- Cartels and organized [crime](legal-crimes.md) (e.g., mafia)
- [Human traffickers](people-slavery.md)
- [Charming](influence.md) [religious](religion.md) leaders and [human potential](politics-leftism.md) leadership
- [Multi-level marketing](marketing-mlm.md)
- Extreme [political action](politics-conservativeliberal.md) groups
- Abusive [family members](people-family.md) and [spouses](relationships-marriage.md)

APPLICATION: Calling something a cult isn't very relevant because most things in life have their cult [subculture](people-culture.md). Instead, look at *who* calls it a cult.

Generally, the public only notices cults when they violate [basic human rights](people-boundaries-why.md):

- People give up their property or inheritance to the group they're swearing allegiance toward.
- A person shuns their [family](people-family.md) and [friends](people-friends-why.md) while believing it's a [loving act](people-love.md), or leaves their family entirely.
- Belief in [corporal punishment](people-rules.md) without examining its basis.
- Desire to trust "God's will" to the point of letting a person die.
- Principled disregard for [human universals](humanity-universals.md) to the point of severe, permanent damage.
- Adolescents coerced toward sexual acts, permanently changing their gender, or sold as [slaves/prostitutes](people-slavery.md).
- Threatening people who may report child molestation or domestic violence.
- Engagement in [questionable arrangements](people-contracts.md) with others.
- *Severely* [inappropriate behavior](morality-taboo.md) to advance the cult's cause.

The thought reform of the group, however, isn't static, and Robert Lifton defined 8 criteria for extreme thought reform:

1. Milieu control: controlling what a person sees, hears, reads, and writes
2. Mystical manipulation (aka planned spontaneity): making the cult's teaching the one true source of information
3. Demand for purity: asserting that all things affiliated with the group are [morally](morality.md) good, so much that things outside the group are absolutely evil
4. Confession: provoking self-surrender in the members through their devoted confession of sins, which will make them abandon their past pre-cult life in the process
5. Sacred science: the cult's sacredness means it's entirely true, so questioning or criticizing those assumptions is prohibited
6. Loading the language: members learn to repeat jargon that shuts down all further thought on a matter
7. Docrine over person: anytime anything feels wrong, the member is provoked to feel they or their doubts are the problem, and not the doctrine
8. Dispensing of existence: When the morality of the group is absolute, then all those not in the group are bound up in evil, not enlightened, not saved, and don't have the right to exist

Once a cult has fully indoctrinated members, they will [decide](mind-decisions.md) to perform acts of violence on their own:

- Killing people who [didn't deserve it](morality-justice.md), sometimes while making it a [public spectacle](stories-storytellers.md).
- Operating a vehicle (e.g., [auto](autos.md), plane) to crash into buildings or crowds of people.
- Using weapons (e.g., guns, bombs) to attack a public place (e.g., school, convention center).
- At its farthest, with enough control, they can often [start a war](people-conflicts-war.md).

## Permitted

Some cults are vilified, but many cults can be endorsed by [strong authority figures](groups-large.md).

- Cult leadership can often curate a [public image](people-image-distortion.md) of generosity or kindness, even when most of the contributions don't serve anyone but the leadership.
- Cults are frequently part of the mechanism behind many [defective social systems](mgmt-badsystems.md).
- A cult may have tax-exempt or charitable [government status](people-rules.md).
- Most government intelligence agencies and militaries borrow from cult practices, if not outright being cults themselves.
- Many secret societies also borrow from cult practice.
- The leaders of relatively unrelated [large-scale organizations](groups-large.md) may be informally (but distinctly) all members of the same cult.
- Many [advertising-based organizations](marketing.md) (e.g., marketing firms) employ cult tactics to generate leads.

In fact, while it's [taboo](morality-taboo.md) to say in many parts of the world, many governments themselves (frequently with their [media propaganda](stories-storytellers.md)) are cults altogether.

The more [addicted](addiction.md) and isolated away from the rest of humanity, the more cult-like that group becomes. This has no limit, and can (but doesn't always) apply to many parts of society:

- Geek subcultures
- Hobby and political clubs
- Church groups
- Indigenous tribal societies
- Small towns
- Large corporations
- Social media

APPLICATION: All [addictions](addiction.md) are cults of 1+ people centered on that substance.

APPLICATION: To take extreme ownership of your life, with your thoughts, is essentially grabbing control of yourself and making a "cult" of your [personality](people-personality.md), for yourself alone.

[Amusingly](humor.md), in a free society, each [political party](politics-conservativeliberal.md) creates its own cult, then tends to call the other party a cult.

APPLICATION: Because of the [range of our personalities](people-personality.md), even a country-sized cult only has some adherents, with the rest only honoring the [culture](people-culture.md) for their [advantages](purpose.md). Even "mass formation psychosis" can only get 60-70% of the people all at once.

## Aftermath

Often, cult membership creates very severe effects upon a participant:

- Absolute sabotage of [personal freedoms](people-boundaries-why.md), to the point of having a broken [personality](people-personality.md) and unable to make [good boundaries](people-boundaries-why.md).
- Severe [trauma](hardship-ptsd.md) from the events performed *to* them.
- Bad [decisions](mind-decisions.md) and [their effects](results.md) they [chose](mind-decisions.md) to make *on behalf of* the group they trusted.

Once someone has been initiated, their future will only become a few possible ends:

1. They stay in the group, solely devoted to that group, and are eventually exploited.
2. If the group member finds a community *outside* the organization, they'll try to hybridize that group with their other group, but will ultimately be forced to choose between the controlling group and everyone else.
3. They try to become a force for good inside the organization, and often become a cautionary tale or martyr if they imply the group needs to [change](mgmt-7_changes.md).
4. they quietly leave the organization and [never integrate their shadow](people-personality.md) due to the [trauma](hardship-ptsd.md), and fade from any public attention.
5. they become a force for good, *outside* the organization, with an agenda to destroy that group's power.

They'll often veer *hard* into the polar opposite extreme value system:

- The "opposite" is defined by the mode of thought the follower takes:
  - A hyper-[religious](religion.md) cult follower will leave and become an atheist or pantheist.
  - An extremely [liberal](politics-conservativeliberal.md) activist may become highly conservative or apolitical.
- The only way they'll ever find [a healthy balance](people-goodlife.md) is by becoming equally entrenched in several groups until they start seeing they need to change their tactic.

The most powerful [influencers](stories-storytellers.md) to [bring down](people-conflicts-why.md) those cults are typically the people who have [integrated their shadow self](people-personality.md).

- They must acknowledge they were partly responsible for submitting their [will](mind-decisions.md) to another person.
- They *also* must acknowledge they were a victim of that leader exploiting their [trust](mind-trust.md).