It’s an interesting piece, and I think it’s intended to be satirical (and done rather well).<p>But, I grew up in an <i>actual</i> cult. The comments here to the effect of “everything’s a cult” and “startups are cults” and “HN is a cult” - oh gosh. Nothing could be further from the truth. HN is not a cult, folks.<p>I’m glad people can make those jokes though, because I immediately know they didn’t experience what I did. They have never experienced the ongoing heartbreak of losing your entire <i>world</i> when you leave - your family, your friends, your job, your social life, your religion, your <i>everything</i>. People who get out don’t tend to make light of it.<p>In any case: know that there are actual cults in operation, and they do tremendous harm. The “everything’s a cult” stuff allows them to operate more freely these days.
A lot of people here seem to be offended by this essay because of the literal definition of the term "cult" and start looking for potential cults they may be part of. I think they are mistaken.<p>To me, this essay clearly speaks about the maladaptive conditioning we receive from our families and society in general during childhood and adolescence which causes us to suppress our feelings and authentic selves and treat the pain of it with medication, distraction, and OCD behaviors instead of healthy emotional release.<p>But I might just be projecting.
I liked it, but it sounds more like initiation into a cult than deprogramming from one.<p>> You were born to parents who started your indoctrination from day one.<p>Separation from one's own parents is a cult mind control tactic.<p>> Like it or not though, the cult has left noticeable marks on you. In fact, that's how we identified you.<p>Guilt is another mind control technique.<p>> Unlike your cult, we encourage you to feel these feelings to their fullest if at all possible.<p>This is another tactic called disinhibition.<p>> If these feelings ever get too much to handle, simply press the red button on the device on your wrist, and you will be relieved of these feelings for a two hour time period.<p>Drug abuse.<p>> Want food? Press the green button on your wrist device, and the meal of your choosing will be prepared for you.<p>Change of diet is a mind control tactic as well.<p>> You are also welcome to feed, pet, and generally take care of the various cats and dogs that wander the premises. They are specially trained as companion animals and are here to make you feel better and, hopefully, lift your mood.<p>Love bombing is typically done with humans but OK.<p><a href="https://cultinformation.org.uk/article_cult-concerns.html" rel="nofollow">https://cultinformation.org.uk/article_cult-concerns.html</a>
Every now and then an article gets to the front page of this website that completely baffles me as to the reason it got there. Could someone explain this one to me?
Aside from all the content-free "Everything I Don't Like Is A Cult" chuntering I already see, what is the point of this? I thought it was a dig at how cult-like the "anticult" deprogramming stuff was back during the last big scare in the 1980s, but it isn't that, because the victims of deprogramming sessions weren't free to leave. That was rather their big problem: They kidnapped people and held them in motel rooms and such and they pointedly weren't free to leave until they'd been psychologically broken. So the part where this says "you" (some imaginary person in this second-person fiction thing) are free to leave undercuts that point, leaving this pointless.<p>I do have a point, though: Saying everything is a cult is bad for the same reason saying every relationship is abusive is bad. It gives cover to the real abusers. After all, if every situation is equally terrible, there's no real reason to leave the ones which are, in point of fact, terrible. "Everywhere else is just as bad" is a powerful tool for abusers to use on their victims.
Very clever. The scariest monster remains unseen.<p>I try to live my life being open to challenging and being challenged by anything. But there are some things — needing money, clothes, electricity — which are hard to escape. I’ll try and have another go though, I promise.
While we always are part of a generalized belief system, some are open ended and some are closed ended. That is to say, if you are willing to postpone your “truth statements” in order to promote your own critical thinking and inquisitive behavior, you are probably open ended. If someone attacks your <i>insert belief statement</i> , and if you do not feel threatened, you are willing to entertain beliefs other than your own, without surrendering your individual capacity for critical thinking and curiosity, that is probably open ended belief.<p>There are many things we probably belief that we <i>want</i> to belief rather than are true. That does not have to be a problem. Problems usually arise when we make future statements that entail a salvation aspect. “Do this and everything will be better” , “follow me because I know better.” The more exclusionary the tone of this salvation message, the more cultish it will score.<p>Some good resources :
<a href="https://www.igotout.org/resources" rel="nofollow">https://www.igotout.org/resources</a><p>A recent book to imagine what it’s on the inside is the book Cult Trip : inside the world of coercion and control.
In all honesty you have probably been in culty things<p>Most aren’t extreme - there’s also just the toxic, narcissistic leader people are eager to please, that attracts sycophants and exerts a high level of ostracism on folks that don’t conform. You can find yourself backing into these situations almost unconsciously. There’s an entire field of studying malignant narcissists and high control groups. And we all have a little narcissism / eagerness to belong we need to look out for.<p>Many mundane workplace settings, community groups, political movements, sports teams can easily become “culty”
Essay reads like a cult essay. Kinda like: 'Sorry to inform you that you are in a cult, but stay here, we'll fix you up and make you better.'<p>It reminds me of spam saying "your computer has been infected with a virus, download this tool (definitely not the real virus) to cleanse your computer".
Since the day we're born we're interpreting the world around us, or we're told stories explaining it. We live in our image of the world, not in reality.<p>When grown up, most are afraid of the real world, protecting their dreamy world with ferocity, afraid to peek out.<p>It takes courage to face it.
Well, I'm only interested in the part where they provide free arbitrary meals on demand. The economics of that are intriguing, but, hey, since I'm clearly a poor soul to save, they can't deny me this right, right ?<p>Where do I sign up for your totally-not-a-cult thing ?
Another way of saying we are all a great distance from absolute truth about the world. Which my cult says is absolute nonsense. Some cults are better than others
Take the cult test. Apply it to a company you work at. See how you feel:<p><a href="https://cult-escape.com/cult-test/" rel="nofollow">https://cult-escape.com/cult-test/</a>
Meh…<p>Culture = Cult.<p>How deep.<p>For those interested, read Bruno Latour, it’s a lot finer. It’s about how you compose with the various traits of your culture to make sense of the world. People build their own Frankenstein-like culture. A lot of scientists are also religious. We choose what we want to believe in, and how we do it is what is interesting.
One characteristic of cults is how they get defined and define themselves. They define themselves in conjunction with everyone "outside" but it goes further as "outside" itself gets defined partly by them and partly by others. For example, if a bunch of newspapers says "X organisation is a cult" then it provokes a kind of self-reinforcing reaction in the organisation to separate themselves more from those not in the group. The group becomes more strong by defining itself in comparison to those outside the group. A member of a group finds their membership and sense of belonging stronger when people outside the group separate them. Polarisation isolates the poles but it also strengthens them.<p>It's therefore kind of one sided to say that a cult isolates a member from the outside world, although they do actually do that. It also gives a potential path away from dangerous cults to be formed - it's about allowing groups to exist within ones life and allowing people to move around - a kind of tolerance for the other or the margins.<p>Outside of cults, 2 examples: A good example of the group solidification mechanism is in the parallel with US politics where people in either sides think it's the other side that polarises politics. "I'm not an extremist you are". There's also an example of Reddit about subreddits and communities. Reddit organisation labelled subreddits "communities" where before the labelling the people who visited subreddits didn't think of themselves as a community. "communities" were created to isolate certain problematic subreddits who indeed had a unique group identity. Quarantine was introduced at the same time to perform the isolation. Subreddits turned into communities by becoming identified as such from within and outside but also the communities own self-culture, moderation rules became stronger because they were labelled as such.<p>I can recommend Spying in Guru Land for a book about cults. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2487851.Spying_in_Guru_Land" rel="nofollow">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2487851.Spying_in_Guru_L...</a>
I’ve seen so much quibbling at what criteria actually makes something a cult. Some religions get labeled as cults, when others don’t, and the without much differentiation between them. Some atheistic communities have just as many cult-like attributes as religious ones, but don’t get labeled as a cult. The same goes for political groups, companies, philosophies, and online communities. It seems like most human communities have cult-like characteristics.<p>I’ve come to the conclusion that the word “cult” isn’t very useful as a descriptor, at least in terms of the thing it’s describing. Rather, it’s far more useful as a descriptor of the person using the word to describe something. As the post indicates, we all belong to a cult of some kind, or engage in some level of cultish behavior. If I label something a cult, it doesn’t tell you much about that thing itself, or ways in which it is more of a cult than anything else, but it does signify my disapproval of that thing, which probably, at a base level is due to reasons unrelated to the cult-like behavior of that group.<p>In short, the labeling of something as a cult doesn’t actually do anything to describe that thing. Rather it’s a Rorschach test for the person doing the labeling.
The word cult has different meanings when used academically and colloquially [1]. The academic meaning has more to do with analyzing shared-culture groups by identifying clusters of material culture and beliefs. I.e. the cult of Apollo, or the cult of St. Nicholas.<p>Cult in the sense used in this article is in the modern sense of a group of people heavily controlled by a charismatic leader via a belief system.<p>Some academic "cults" certainly fit the definition of modern colloquial
"cults", but not all. Some are just religious/cultural clusters.<p>1. <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3511972#:~:text=...a%20cult%20is%20usually,and%20individualistically%20oriented%2C%20and%20deriv%2D" rel="nofollow">https://www.jstor.org/stable/3511972#:~:text=...a%20cult%20i...</a>
I have come to realize that every imposition of power from an individual or a group has the same characteristics.<p>From a narcissistic single person in the family, to an evangelist, a religion, a state. They all follow the same patterns.<p>It's pervasive but if you pick your poison carefully you will be in a place that lets you have the maximum freedom (a democratic state, a healthy family dynamic, atheism or a very liberal spirituality). The majority howver willingly or not will pick the power system where they think they are most comfortable (usually the one they grew up with).
Perhaps I'm stating the obvious, but "...sorry to inform you..." is just one post of many on the blog.<p>Those seeking more context should check out the home page and some of the other posts. Two items emerge quickly: the blogger left Utah several years ago and is now probably an atheist.<p>But the writing is great -- haunting and mysterious. Nice find.
Usually, "cult" is used in a negative way to define a group of ppl with strong, too strong, "in-betweeners" behavior.<p>One of the time which surprised me: got some feedback of ppl who did work for mozilla.<p>That said, it can happen with real religion based network of ppl: it is so strong (economy included), my country state had to setup some laws to deal with this.
Its funny to read what reads to me as Hacker News middle-class contrarianism about how silly people use the term cult, when I grew up with parents in actual cults that led me to going in foster care and ultimately severing all ties to them due to their dangerous behavior.
> The comments here to the effect of “everything’s a cult” and “startups are cults” and “HN is a cult” - oh gosh. Nothing could be further from the truth. HN is not a cult, folks.<p>While reading, I assumed they were talking about western civilization itself.
What I find remarkable is that both the word "culture" (as in the culture you were born in) and "cult" have the same stem.<p>When you think about it, the entire article can out of the box apply to both.
There is a non-fiction book that essentially reads like this. It's polemically titled "God Wants You Dead." It's only marginally about religion.
This is a pointless article that baits the reader into thinking there is a point, as evidenced by the fact that you can read many comments here of people trying to extract meaning out of it and not find anything that is actually profound and not incredibly overwrought.
"The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he did not exist."<p>The greatest trick the progressives ever played was convincing the world that Qanon did exist.