The mechanics of a cult

The word “religion” is derived from Latin roots meaning “to re-bind”. The purpose of religion is to re-bind you to life so that you can go ahead and live it without writhing in existential Angst.

In many respects, humans are unique in the animal kingdom. Most animals don't worry about dying except when they are aware of an imminent threat. We can tell this because we can measure their physiological responses to threats, and watch them dissipate quickly after the threat goes away. Humans are one of the few animals who chronically worry about their ultimate fates: sickness, old age, the possibility of poverty, and death. Part of the reason must be our relatively large cerebral cortex, which is designed to handle abstractions. Another reason might be our ability to communicate abstract ideas; so even if one were not predisposed to existential Angst by one's-self, one might get the idea from someone else. Cetaceans (whales and dolfins) seem to be capable of some sort of communication, which along with their big complex brain is probably why they are the only animals other than humans known to get depressed and intentionally commit suicide.

Do other animals worry? Sometimes humans are slightly amused if concerned to catch their pet dog or cat obviously having a nightmare while they twitch and whimper. I don't think they worry as much as we do, but it is one of those fascinating paradoxes of evolution that the seeds of a revolution are always planted before they are entirely manifest. This is counter-intuitive, and the reason that many people reject the whole idea of evolution.

My purpose in this essay is not to talk about healthy religious sentiment that does what it's supposed to do. I'll do that from time to time in a lot of different essays. Instead, since the over-arching theme of my blog is what went wrong with Western Culture, I'm going to write about what happens when religions go dysfunctional. I'm going to refer to dysfunctional religious sects as “cults”.

There are two kinds of cults. One bears a resemblence to religious sects in terms of ritual and myth, while the other one is harder to identify because the rituals and myths are subtle and modernistic. There's really no substantial difference in terms of impact, but the first kind of cult is easy to recognize, while many people, particularly in Western cultures that accept modernist fallacies without question, are unable to detect the 2nd kind of cult. I will give examples of both kinds of cults.

The basic problem that religions are supposed to solve is that of existential Angst: unhappiness and despair because our lives seem to be pointless, because no matter what we do or how we live our lives, our ultimate fate is always the same. The lie that lures people into cults and cultish behaviors is that if you perform one or more actions and achieve certain goals, then your life will be fulfilled.

Now, the cults can't deliver. I've already written about that, but just for a recap, here it is again: no experience or thing will give you lasting fulfilment. At best, it's like a “recreational drug”: the reward center of your brain is stimulated for a while, but not only does the initial stimulus wear off, but in the futute it takes more of whatever it was that stimulated it the first time to achieve the same effect, until finally you are too jaded to get any pleasure out of the experience at all—though you may end up addicted to the experience anyway (this is one way of thinking of Hell).

True Religion (capital "R") coaxes you (sometimes gently, sometimes brutally) into accepting that fact and learning to live with it. Cults exploit the fact. Because they have to account for your lack of lasting fulfilment, almost every cult has a “bogeyman” to blame for your eventual disappointment. I had to add the qualifier “almost” because a very few cults, such as the notorious “Heaven's Gate” cult, culminate in ritual suicide which effectively prevents the adherents from ever having to go through the disappointment phase!

Another way they account for their lack of delivery is to always emphasize the past or, more commonly in our Modern Age, the future. Paradise is just around the corner...if only you give your all to vanquishing those bad people who stand in our way. Placing the happy time in the future has lead to a number of science-fiction based cults such as Dianetics and the various cults involving space aliens coming to save us.

Cults can mutate with astonishing speed. Marxism spawned Feminism, so-called “Civil Rights” (ie, race-warfare in lieu of class warfare), Gay activism, and a vast number of mini-cults based on personal differences (age, ability, health, et cetera), some of them appearing on or adopted by the Right. Difference-baiting cults derived from marxism seem to take advantage of a vulnerable sweet-spot in the human psyche which they infect as as a mind-virus (meme); this particular mind-virus is prone to frequent mutations as new generations discover differences that can be exploited by a new variant of the virus. It's much like most new computer software virii being nothing but older versions with a few minor tweeks made by people who aren't smart enough to write their own. Marxist cults are, quite frankly, for dummies.

Sometimes cults spawn new cults not for new agendas, but to pursue old agendas under a new disguise when too many people have become disillusioned with the old cult. This is called “revolution within the form”.

There is another aspect of many, but not all cults. Sometimes the cult leaders swallow their own poison and actually believe their own lies. More often, the cult leaders are quite conscious of their deception of their followers. Cults are frequently planted in order to further various political agendas. The “Christian Zionist” cult is a case in point: the people who planted it (and continue to lead it) are neither Christian nor, traditionally, theistic. In these cases of intentional deception, you often find at least 2 different layers of belief and practice: the outer cult for proselytes and the outside world, and the inner cult.

One more aspect of most cults is the cult figure. The whole point of a cult is to take advantage of the need to satisfy egoistic cravings. Who better to lead it than a megalomaniac? Here is a short list of famous cult figures: Sun Young Moon, Kim Il Sun, Mao Dze-Dung (I'm sorry, but that is the accurate transliteration of his name), Vladimir Lenin, Leon Bronstein, Betty Friedan, Karl Marx, Moshe Dyan, Golde Meir, Ayn Rand, Che Guevara, Jim Jones, the “televangilists” (ALL of them), Madaleine Murray O'Hare, Madeleine Albright, Bhaghwan Rajneesh, L Ron Hubbard, and Martha Stewart (the Yuppie Cult).

The cultists often believe that their cult figure has magical powers. Moshe Dayan for example is often claimed to have walked from Poland to Israel when he was 2 years old (actually, he was born at a Kibbutz in Palestine). Rabbi Menachem Schneersohn is said to have resurrected from the dead and is now living in Israel waiting to lead the armies of Israel against the nations. Mao Dze-Dung was the subject of numerous hymns praising his power to protect even when he wasn't physically present, for example, that “when the storm rages and I am frightened, I think of you and everything will be alright”.

By now you should see the pattern. Consider some modern cults and look for the pattern yourself: Feminism, Gaia-worship, Humanism, Modernism, Objectivism (Ayn Rand's own personality cult), Political Activism, Yuppyism, and Zionism. Each one promises personal gratification through ...(insert cult objective here). Most of them promise fulfilment at some future time that never seems to arrive. Almost all of them have someone to blame for the postponement of Paradise. Most of them have a cult figure; a few have several, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes in succession. Many of them involve magic, often while pretending to be “scientific”.

All of them are immensely destructive. Understanding how they infect the mind is the key to resisting them.

One more warning: when someone finally feels disillusioned about a cult, sometimes they flee right into the arms of...another cult! A common mistake is to assume that if a cult doesn't work, it's seeming “opposite” will work. For example, if Socialism and Collectivism don't work (and they don't), maybe Ayn Rand's capitalistic and individualistic Objectivist cult will work (it doesn't). After young American hippies rejected their parent's “crass materialism” in the 1960s, they tried “sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll”. If prodigal Yuppyism doesn't work, try Gaia worship. Sit on the floor in your yurt eating a bowl of cold brown rice and see if it makes you feel whole.

When everything seems to fail, people sometimes finally give up searching for that magic bullet. This disillusionment can lead to depression and hopelessness.

Unfortunately, the cure can degenerate into the disease. The Buddha taught that craving for things and experiences was the cause of suffering, but many people fail to achieve inner peace through, for example, Buddhist practices such as Zazen because so powerful is the ego's desire for gratification, that it can twist the cure for itself into more of the disease. Many people try something like meditation seeking a sense of gratification which they confuse with inner peace, and come out disappointed and disillusioned when they fail to achieve it. It is like antiviral software on your computer: strange as it may seem, there is nothing to stop the antiviral software itself from becoming infected with a virus, and infecting the rest of your software! There's nothing wrong with antiviral software per se. There's nothing wrong with anti-ego as long as it hasn't been infected with ego.

The only cure for existential Angst is to accept the world the way it is—although you are free to try to change it, you must be willing to accept your own limitations. There is no way around this; twisting the practices which are supposed to help you accept the world the way it is in order to to achieve some sort of blissful experience (“Nirvana”) isn't going to work, and it's not the fault of the practices, but of the practitioner who is trying to cheat.