Signs You’re in A Cult [article]

[pcgame]

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[JebSanderson]

what dont u like ?

I don't like Molyneux. I think he's an idiot.

He is a megalomaniac, aka he has narcissistic personality disorder and is in denial of same.
With respect to philosophy he is anal and closed minded and has lofty opinions of his own theories, i.e. his narcissism.

His understanding of psychology is amateurish while he purports to be somewhat of an expert. In order to 'argue' he requires the stage where he can spin a tale to set the stage for the argument, aka a political commentator who puts up their speech to set the tone and then allows others brief sound bites.

He can not tolerate strong criticism of his views due to his narcissism. He holds others to be 'bad' *aka immoral*, psychologically impaired, or dumb if he is disagreed with assertively and consistently, regardless of the quality of the argument contrary to his.

 

[heavenlyboy34]

He is pretty cultish if you ask me. I don't like him. He's definitely worse than Ron Paul, Tom Woods, or Adam Kokesh, whom could all also be called cultish (Ron not so much, but unfortunately, some people do accuse him of that). If anyone of us is cultish, it's him.

He does some useful stuff once in a while. He's somewhere between RP and Ayn Rand in terms of cultishness.

 

[JebSanderson]

He does some useful stuff once in a while. He's somewhere between RP and Ayn Rand in terms of cultishness.

Ayn Rand and her Objectivist bs is pretty damn cultish.

 

[heavenlyboy34]

Ayn Rand and her Objectivist bs is pretty damn cultish.

Yep. But don't tell an Objectivist that, or you'll get a good, long lecture on why you can't possibly be right.

 

[JebSanderson]

Yep. But don't tell an Objectivist that, or you'll get a good, long lecture on why you can't possibly be right.

I'm pretty sure Ayn Rand died friendless.

 

[libertyfanatic]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html

 

[Mr. Perfidy]

I think that the problem is that the OP's definition of a cult is just lame; really that is a description of all human social order. I challenge anyone to think of any existing or extinct human group that did not have these properties.

Brainwashing Techniques

First of all-language. Every group communicates with like communication- from our earliest and most vulnerable stages, people with more knowledge and power than us (parents/elders, etc) MAKE US FORM OUR THOUGHTS AND IMPRESSIONS INTO THEIR WORDS. So right there from the time you are a toddler, you are in a cult, according to this definition.

Charismatic Leaders

unless a leader is leading because he alone monopolizes some kind of weapon and can force compliance with his will, EVERY LEADER is charismatic. Duh- that's why people follow them. There is nothing weird or immoral about being led, or leading people.

Rituals

Again I challenge everyone to name for me a single human grouping that does not participate in rituals. Rituals are the means by which the group's conceptual existence on the plane of ideas is manifested to the world of the senses. Nothing strange or bad about that.

Jargon

That is pretty lame because jargon is really a subset of Brainwashing; it is a means of communicating first an internalization of a given set of principles, and also of inclusion in a group that can decode the terms. I love drugs, for example, and the street, and we have jargon so that we can coordinate our lawlessness while minimizing detection. I might say in public to a friend, "Im only tryin' to pay a buck for that onion" Purely economic conversation- at the table next to me might be some wall-street journal kinda people, talking about NASDAQ and the CBO; greek to me. They are having an entirely economic conversation though. But using jargon, to communicate their groupness to each other.

Culture of Fear

again this is a property of humanity as a whole; all living things feel fear. Similarly, all motivation and affirmation can be flipped to be perceived as fear of their negation. Therefore, a culture that promotes say, free love, could easily be perceived as one that fears monogamy. A monogamous culture could easily be seen as one that fears sexual expression. Fear is in individuals though; one man might join a group and identify with it because he loves its cause, the other, because he hates its opposition.



I think that we have to rethink our idea of CULT altogether, and remove from it a negative connotation. Maybe because I played mad d&d since I was like 8, my definition of a cult would be something like,
"a group that defines itself outwardly by indicators detectable by human senses (language cues, fashion, etc) and inwardly be agreement on a given set of principles or values." Thus we have cults of all types of human interests, specializations, and appetites: the cult of family, the cult of the body, the cult of knowledge, the cult of deception, of sex, etc etc etc. All cults have a leadership, because all human populations have people that are generally intellectually lazy or trusting, and minorities that are generally intellectually curious and skeptical.


and I would add that I call the authoritarian cult of the State, as it manifests itself in the Left and the Right, Imperial Orthodoxy.

 

[libertariantexas]

If I understand it correctly, cults and religions are pretty much the same thing, but religions have been around longer?

A "cult" becomes a "religion" after it's been around for ~150-200 years.

Mormonism has nearly made the transition from "cult" to "religion."

Scientology and Christian Science need more time, and are therefore still "cults" on their way to becoming religions.