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Cake day: February 6th, 2024

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  • “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Rules and leaders are needed, but they always have the chance of being misused. That why checks and balances are always needed.

    You have the normal rules and norms, but what if you take them to an absurd level. Let’s say your in a Club. It has a rule that only members allowed and every member has to dress nice and be clean and presentable at all times inside. Well one member falls into the food table, getting food all over them and breaking their leg. Does the manager of the Club demand the person who fell get up and leave immediately? After all they are no longer clean and presentable. Well a reasonable Club would care more about having the person not move and getting emergency services in there. A cult would demand they get up and leave. The emergency personnel wouldn’t be allowed inside anyway since they are not members.

    I see the parallel because I see cults as normal behaviors taken to the extreme.







  • I think of cults as more of systems of control. MLMs, jobs (Theranos), large-group awareness training (nxivm), political groups (Maga), exercise groups (CrossFit), fandoms, book clubs, families, online groups, etc can all be cults.

    I suggest the podcast IndoctriNation⁠ by Rachel Bernstein to see many ways these “systems of control” as she calls them can manifest.

    I personally think that cult behavior is just normal behavior taken to the extreme so there really isn’t an opposite. Maybe being alone with no relationships.

    The various types of groups we are on family, friends, work, recreational, etc have various controls on how you act and speak. This isn’t necessarily bad. You probably want to be a little different with family than with your hobby group. I explained the broader meaning of cults to my Dad and he said the Marines have those aspects. I think an important part to know if a group is probably fine is if you can leave with no issues. If there are consequences to leaving the group that’s a huge red flag.

    I suggest looking at the BITE Model of Authoritarian Control. Which is a useful tool to check if a group is a cult. You can read up on problems with this tool, but it’s still a good starting point.

    Edit: No one joins a cult. They join groups for positive reasons and then those groups either turn into cults or as they get deeper into the group the control parts are introduced.

    We all probably brushed up against cults without knowing. You could go to an exercise/spiritual/hobby/other group and what you don’t know is if you had gotten more involved and took the special classes, or volunteered and became a part of the in group you could have become a part of a cult.