When the above factors are coupled with various personal anxieties, a person becomes susceptible to recruitment into a cult. The one constant factor for being a potential recruit is personal change. When a person has a major life change, they are likely to become involved with a cult. Graduation from high school, graduation from college, divorce, and other such life altering events are likely to cause a person to become susceptible to cult involvement. Furthermore, life has become empty for many people in our throwaway, hedonistic society. Anything that involves a family--which is what a cult is--can be very appealing. People want simplicity; a cult provides ready-made answers. Cults possess very specific views and critiques of society that draws people to join.
Another primary factor that can contribute to someone joining a cult is the acceptance that the cult offers. Cult recruits may have been social outsiders. This lack of acceptance can be due to the person’s role in their environment or to biological reasons that make it difficult for the person to function normally. Often the person feels as if the cult was the first time that someone listened to or understood him or her.
Cults “isolate the recruit from all outside influences, deprive the person of sleep, deliver long lectures, and feed the person a diet low in protein” (Gard n.p.). Furthermore, often a method called psychological stripping is used. Gard sites a specific instance of a cultist who was a member of a group lead by a man named Ron: “If you got out of line or if Ron felt like bringing you down to nothingness, you had to stand in front of the group and listen while they told you what was wrong with you. They made you feel that everything you experienced before joining the group was evil and disgusting. Only Ron could build you up and remold you in the image of God” (Gard n.p.).
Cults perpetuate themselves by creating extremely strong bonds that make it difficult for members to extricate themselves. Furthermore, the cultist cannot maintain relationships outside of the cult. Cults completely control their members and every aspect of their lives. This pervasive control spans even to the reality that the members experience; “actions that may appear spontaneous actually are controlled by the leader” (Lamberg n.p.). This control extends to spiritual and scientific truth. Cult members who question the ‘truth’ also must accept a negative view of themselves.
“Every year thousands of young people abruptly turn their backs on family, friends and future to join one or another of an estimated 2500 communal groups in North America whose values, dress and behavior seem totally alien to everything the joiner has stood for” (Levine 21-22). It is very likely that this trend will continue until potential cult members are identified and helped through the trauma that causes people to become recruits. In the following, we will discuss our subject further by comparing Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan and Islamic fundamentalists.
The profiles of the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States reminded me of members. Many of those who carried out the attacks in the U.S. were highly educated, just like top Aum figures involved in the cult’s heinous crimes in the early to mid-1990s. “This symbolizes the troubles brought by the rapid development of global capitalism in recent decades” (Shimada 198).
Shimada examines how the cult developed hatred toward society so deep that it led to the crimes, including the 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway system that killed 12 and injured over 5,000. He believes that the Sept. 11 attacks are different from past terrorist acts in the sense that it was a symbolic attack against Western civilization, while having almost no political aim comprehensible by those other than the perpetrators. “The attacks appeared to be more of a message that expresses the terrorists’ antagonistic feelings toward what the U.S. symbolizes culturally, rather than how the U.S. has involved itself in Mideast affairs” (Shimada 243). The attacks reflect the dramatic socioeconomic changes in the Middle East over the past decades and the trend toward globalization, which likely caused a sense of loss of traditions and identity among people in the region. “In an era of dynamic social changes, people, especially serious students with ideals, tend to be concerned about their country’s future. They worry whether their countries are heading in the right direction” (Shimada 315).
”For the Sept. 11 terrorists, I think economic growth and globalization appeared to be a threat to their traditions. Then, the U.S. -- an icon of capitalism -- became their target,” Shimada observed (374), adding that Aum Shinrikyo also had strong antipathy toward the U.S. During the 1960s and 1970s, when Japan experienced rapid economic growth, students actively engaged in political radicalism, possibly out of similar frustration that something was wrong with the country. One of the highly educated men reported as being responsible for the terror attacks is Mohammed Atta, an Egyptian-born architect who is believed to have flown American Airlines Flight 11 into the World Trade Center. and other top members of al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization accused of sponsoring the attacks, are also said to be elite intellectuals from relatively developed countries in the Middle East. Likewise, many of Aum’s top figures, who played active roles in the cult’s criminal acts, received high-level education in Japan.
But why lean toward religion? Shimada says that one reason is the diversification of values that occurs as society loses a single, absolute identity.
It has become increasingly rare for material success to be embraced by intellectuals as their prime objective in life. Likewise, a country’s economic development, in which the young elite often play a central role, no longer seems to be everything, given the many social problems that surface when striving for economic growth. That in turn generates profound apathy toward society, a sort of identity crisis that can often turn people’s eyes to the spiritual world, including religion. For those who joined Aum or al-Qaeda, religious fundamentalisms, which encourage an opposite lifestyle from that of mainstream society, most effectively filled the void in their minds. (Shimda 437-438)
He pointed out that increasing interest in occultism and the spiritual world among the younger generation in Japan also symbolizes their dissatisfaction with materialism. Islamic fundamentalists and Aum members also have in common their material and sexual stoicism, which is naturally embraced from their hatred toward a mainstream culture that encourages materialistic values. We can say that the people in the changing society who lack their identity came across these religious fundamentalisms that can meet their needs for strong, absolute identity.
Works Cited
Gard, Carolyn. “The Power and Peril of Cults.” Current Health 2 1 May 1997: 18-20.
Lamberg, Lynne. “Psychiatrist Explores Apocalyptic Violence in Heaven’s Gate and Aum Shinrikyo Cults.” JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association 16 July 1997: 191-193.
Levine, Saul V. “Radical Departures.” Psychology Today August 1984: 20-27.
Paloutzian, Raymond F. Invitation to Psychology of Religion, 2nd edition. Allyn & Bacon, 1996.
Shimada, Hiromi. Aum -- Why a Religion Led to Terrorism. Tokyo: Transview, 2001.
Whitsett, Doni P. “A Self Psychological Approach to the Cult Phenomenon.” Clinical _ Social Work Journal, Winter 1992, Vol. 20 Issue 4: 363-375.
