The Cult Phenomenon

Even though there has been so many horrible incidents recently in the news and worldwide, cults seem to keep growing in number. We all know of the Jonestown mass murder and suicides, the Heaven's Gate UFO suicides and the WACO Texas cult. There are thousands more that are functioning and growing every day around us. Some are in our immediate vicinity. Cults are an unfamiliar social problem. Many of us just do not take the time to teach about how easy it us to get taken by a cult. Cult leaders are in the same category socially with con artists. They are opportunists who read the times and the ever-changing culture and adapt their recruiting and way of communicating to what will

appeal to that new recruit or member at a given moment. They find a person's weaknesses and use that weakness to manipulate that person. And, if they succeed, the new member ends up spending a fortune and many years following the phony doctrine of a cult.

As a result, changes occur to a person after joining a cult. Many people today have turned to a perceived spiritual leader or group seeking sanctuary, believing that they have at last found someone they can trust, something meaningful to believe in, someone who truly loves them unconditionally. When fraudulent and abusive dimensions of the group are discovered, cult members are often devastated and seek treatment with a variety of concerns?if they can escape. And escaping is very, very difficult indeed. While this may sound a bit overstated, it is not. "Many former cult members have said to me, 'If I had known ahead of time each of the things that I eventually, one step at a time, was going to be led into doing, I never would have joined'" (Singer 80). This is a feeling that a lot of ex cult-members have after leaving (or escaping) a cult's hold on their lives. Some ex cult-members even say that now they know how people feel who have defected from a homeland or country where they've tried to escape all of their lives, after they leave a cult.

In contrast to all that is bad or wrong with cults, one who may have been involved

in a cult, either fully or partially, can attest to some good things that may have come out of the experience. That is learning to be a team player, or maybe learning better way of communicating. Also even adopting better eating habits. Nevertheless, one who has experienced the cult life will inevitable say that it was a harrowing experience, at the very least.

As has been said, the typical or usual way that a cult keeps such a strong hold on their members is through mind control or "brainwashing". This is done in steps, starting on a low gradient and then through much stronger physical means. For example, demanding the member to work extremely long hours for days at a time. With little or no food, and no pay. In addition to that, the members in charge actually put the member through harassing and frightening them verbally into submission. Sometimes demanding to know why the newer member still has "connections with non-members". This is the final step in ruining the newer members lives by making them cut off all ties with the real world, and trying to make them totally dependent on the cult. Another way a cult may brainwash the newer member is to make them study the cult's own books or literature on an every-day basis. The founder of the cult writes these books. And the books are filled with that particular founder's own words and philosophies of how the group should think, act and be. Many of the books are completely out of touch with reality. And are actually made up fictional stories. The older members actually believe everything they read about that particular cult, even if it is fiction, especially if the founder of the group writes it. And older members who have been around for years are actually employing skillful use of logical fallacies, red herrings and high-pressure sales, though as victims of their own technology, they wouldn't characterize it that way.

"And it is because the changes cause the learning and adoption of a certain set of attitudes, usually accompanied by a certain set of behaviors, that the effort and the result are called thought reform" (Singer 62). This kind of brainwashing is totally subtle. And when you are a subject of it, you are not aware that it is happening or the intent of that influencing process taking place within you. In his memoirs, Cardinal Mindszenty wrote, "Without knowing that had happened to me, I had become a different person." This is the kind of feeling that a person has many years even after they have left the cult. The cults of today have brainwashing programs that are designed to unstabilize an individual's sense of self by undermining their basic consciousness, reality, awareness, beliefs and self-determination, self-esteem, independence and critical thinking skills. And it may take literally years to get all of that back.

But it is possible to leave a cult. Even though it is much more difficult to just pick up and say "I am leaving now, good-bye", it is possible. It takes years sometimes to actually recover from the experience of living within a cult. And many members experience extreme stress and depression after leaving. And usually the cult imposes punishment on those who leave or try to leave. Each has a certain set of punishments for

violators who leave. And there is always an internal language or jargon used in a cult, with terms used to denigrate or ridicule. So the one person who does speak out about the wrong being done in a cult is made to feel like a renegade, a spy and is ostracized from the rest of the group. And another factor which keeps most people from leaving is that they have been separated from their past by the cult group, including friends, family and important things that are needed to survive such as job connections, so that they have little or no contact with the outside world. And every group has its own derogatory terms that they use to speak about the outside or "real world".

"Fortunately, many members leave on their own accord after becoming disillusioned our 'burnt out'. The contradictions become too glaring and can no longer be ignored" (Singer 275). And usually a particular incident or a disagreement that is not rectified within the group is the cataclysm that initiates the move. People who leave a cult this way are dubbed with various terms that the cult's jargon has created within its denigrating system, so as to further humiliate the person who leaves. Most cults even have their own policies of discarding members who break down mentally or physically from the horrible stresses of cult life. "Understandably, we are usually very sensitive to our own group's criteria for inclusion or casting out" (Deikman 105). And sometimes the appearance of a member's concerned parent will scare the other members into forcing that member to leave, so as not to attract unwanted negative publicity by the concerned parent. And this happens quite often. "Devaluating the outsider is probably the most common cult-like behavior in everyday society, where it takes the form of regarding one's opponents as if they were a homogenous group with only negative traits" (Deikman 101). Outsiders are a threat because they may be sources of support, self-esteem, and comfort, offsetting the need for the group. Cult members internalize the group's value system and its sense of moral and intellectual superiority, and condescension toward the outside world. "In the cult, members get points for showing moral disdain for non-members and for members who faltered or left the group" (Singer 321).

After leaving a cult, nothing on the outside seems as important and grand as life was supposed to be in the cult. Members are told they were doing "world-class work" and that they had a "higher purpose". Most cults claim their members are the "elite of the world", even though individual members may be treated subserviently and degraded. Most members end up homeless, penniless and indigent after leaving cults. Even if, while they were in the cult, they held a position of authority. People who spent years in a cult tend to stay away from crowds and people in general. After being so badly ripped-off by the cult experience, they do not trust their own judgment, and do not trust other people. After leaving a cult, the ex-member looks at the jobs people do and sees them as hopelessly small and without meaning compared to his or her work for a cult that was purportedly saving souls or the world itself. In addition, the former member may not easily resume relationships with former friends and family because of the harsh way these relationships were most likely cut off when joining the cult. "Unlike the immigrant confronting novel situations, the person coming out of a cult is confronting the society he or she once rejected" (Singer 316). And therefore, many people commit suicide after leaving a cult. This is because all of their skills and beliefs and strength they once had before entering a cult have been taken from them, leaving them with nothing to fall back on in the outside world. At the same time, some people persist and benefit from the terrifying experience, "after they leave cults, former members clearly have a boundless spirit and unbeatable will to heal themselves, reclaim their independence and come out on the positive side of horrific experiences?a spirit and a will that I can only admire and uphold, more and more with each person I meet" (Singer 317).

In present time society, students and the population, including people of other races and countries and religions are all coming into contact with cults. The government should make it very, very hard for any cult to survive. By placing strict sanctions on any group who tries to become tax exempt by way of claiming to be a religion. The harm that comes to people who fall into cults is overwhelmingly disastrous. Consequently, many lives are destroyed by cults and their harmful ploys. "Institution think is vulnerable in America today. Cultist adherence is disliked and distrusted; it goes against the grain of the American myths of free will, independence, and self-determinism" (Scheflen, 156). Thus, cults, by their very structure are not democratic, do not promote freedom of speech and freedom of expression, and are the antithesis of groups and educational systems in which full human growth can develop.