Cults
What makes a cult? What makes a cult different from a religion? Are they damaging or dangerous?
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Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer, for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Chris Wragg and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing how to be a complete cult. Nick,
Speaker B: attack on the Tokyo subway in: Speaker A:definition of cult, basically? Okay, I mean, cult tends to have a spiritual religious aspect to it in its traditional usage, right? So maybe that can be a starting point about what is the difference
Speaker B:between a religion and a cult. Well, now you've got the problem of trying to define what a religion is, which is not, which is kind of kicking the can down the road a bit. Well, let's do that, though.
Speaker C:Let's kick that can. Okay, well, I mean, if you look at the origins of cult, it's from the Latin cultus, which was about worship. So it's generally historically been used, but it was originally used for the act of worship itself, and not the group performing the worship. But as you, as you look at it, sort of more modern usage, through into kind of the 19th century in England, it was, it started to be used as a reference to religious groups who were seen as unorthodox in some way. And it is always in this context being used as, like you say, a pejorative, and one which is about excessive devotion, you know, and then subsequently, you know, various psychologists have looked at the term and defining the characteristics of a cult, you know, and around things to do with, you know, charismatic leadership, some form of indoctrination process, you know, and one which is coercive and involves brainwashing. And also, particularly for sort of damaging cults, and, you know, ones which we want to stop, a sense of cult members being exploited in some way, or being convinced to do things that are not actually in their own interest. So, you know, it depends what perspective you're coming from when you look at defining cults. But, you know, there are precious, as it happens, there are precious few legal definitions of what a cult is.
Speaker A:I mean, because it's tempting to sort of say, well, what's the difference between a religion that's 50 years old and a cult, right? But actually, I think you've done quite a good job there. What was it? Charismatic leader, coercive? You mean like the Pope? Well, I don't think he's that. I don't think people are particularly coerced. And I don't think he's that charismatic. What about Jesus Christ? Is he charismatic?
Speaker B:I don't know. You're saying Jesus was was uncharismatic.
Speaker A:But okay, but no, but I think it needs to satisfy all of them. So for example, Was Christianity a cult then? Hold on, but hold on. So one of the things that Chris actually, I don't think he did mention, was weird and out of their beliefs, right? Hold on, so let me carry on. And so I think on that, by that definition, something like Christianity, especially when these ideas seem quite new, definitely would be weird and out there. There's this motherless man who's come, whose mother was... Fatherless. No, but whose mother was, did I say motherless or fatherless? Motherless. Sorry, this fatherless man whose mother was knocked up by God. And yeah, that's definitely weird and out there. How coercive or harmful it is? I mean, don't know. But charismatic? Yeah, I'd give you that. But I don't think it satisfies all of them.
Speaker B:No, I think you'd be hard pressed to find one that satisfies all of them. Although I've actually had a go. I've had a go rating various beliefs on a scale. A cultometer. Yeah, exactly. I'm tempted to say that, you know, like Dylan Thomas was supposed to have said, I can't find any evidence that he did, that an alcoholic is someone you don't like drinks as much as you. And I'm tempted to say that a cult is just a religion with fewer followers than you, you know, it sort of feels like it's very hard to come up with a sort of, you know, all encompassing definition that gets rid of religions, but keeps the things we think of as cults. And so there's an organization called the International Cultic Studies Association. And to be honest, looking at the website, you'd think they were a cult. They're quite weird and inaccessible. But they've got this simple and easy 15 point checklist, which is excessive zeal, an unquestioning commitment to a leader, the discouragement of dissent, the use of mind altering practices, a lot of dictatorship from the leadership about how people ought to live, elitism, the sort of us be them mentality, lack of accountability among the leaders, the idea that the ends justify the means, whatever the means are, the use of shame and guilt to influence and control people, subservience to the leader requiring people to cut ties with family, people who aren't in that cult, the obsession with bringing in new members and in making money, and needing to devote an inordinate amount of time to the group, and so on. And then the belief that, you know, life inside the group is more important than life outside. And there's no meaningful life outside the cult. So anyway, I had a quick go at some things that you might think of as cults. So I started with Apple users. So people who are Apple fanboys and fangirls. And I came to about seven or eight out of 15. So there's quite a few there, which is I imagined them being quite devoted and zealous and to the memory of Steve Jobs. Certainly something I've seen. Elitism, definitely something you get in Apple user, a sort of lack of accountability, certainly a kind of interest in making money and acquiring new believers. So there's quite a few indicators there. Protestantism, right? Four out of 15, I reckon. So just a few. Interesting, Apple more culty than Protestantism. Fundamentalist Islam, I'm thinking of the sort of ISIS model. 14 out of 15. Oh, the only one that I couldn't meaningfully say was part of ISIS's doctrine was the use of mind altering substances or practices. And then finally, I thought I'd have a go with with physics.
Speaker C:Well, I would argue that there are, you know, they do have religious indoctrination camps. And while they may not use mind altering substances, they do use kind of
Speaker B:brainwashing type activities. I suppose you could say that chanting, perhaps the chanting, reciting
Speaker C:the Quran and things, maybe. And the use of extreme imagery to sort of, you know, shock people.
Speaker B:They're already on 14 out of 15. And then so I thought, well, let's take physicists as a group. Imagine a bunch of physicists at a convention or something. I've got them at three out of 15. And that's mainly the nerdiness. They're the kind of preoccupation and the belief that physics is super important. So these are all sort of very much my kind of caricature. What about, I mean,
Speaker A:you might be able to do this ad hoc more or less. What about board gamers? Board gamers, I'd put
Speaker B:them in probably in the same sort of bracket as physicists, it would be the same things coming out. The fact that life, you know, life without board games is meaningless. And there isn't, but unlike physicists, actually, board gamers are quite, they're a proselytizing religion. They always want to find new board gamers and convert them. So I think board game is slightly higher. Probably looking at four or five. Yeah. So anyway, I think it's quite useful to do it that way without sort of trying to come up with a definition, which definitely rules things in or out. That sort of says, look, things are more or less culty. By the way, I mean, that website
Speaker A:or organization did a pretty good job. I know you said they're quite culty. I mean, that sounds
Speaker B:pretty... I think it's pretty good. I think that checklist does a good job of sort of according with our intuitions about what seems more or less culty. You're in the cult already. Yeah. Sign me up. Where do I sign? I want to hand over my life savings to these guys. That's the initial engagement with the group. So where do we go from here? Well, I got a few thoughts about this. Because in a way, I sort of want it to be... Is there somewhere in the sort of, you know, somewhere between five and 10 on that scale where we can say that something is meaningfully different, right? In a way, what I'm trying to do, I suppose, is protect things like board gamers and and physicists from being tarred in any way with the same brush as sort of ISIS, you know, rather than saying they're on... It's a sliding scale. Now, if you look at definitions of cults, it does tend to... It's essentially around the idea of a group which is defined by a set of beliefs and behavioral norms. That's what most kind of sociological definitions of cults look at. It's the belief. It's a set of beliefs that causes the group to cohere rather than, for example, you know, your mates down the pub who might all believe different things and instead are, you know, unified by some other thing, geographical proximity or whatever. And a slightly more advanced definition would say they're socially deviant beliefs. But of course, that's vulnerable to the fact that, well, social deviance is defined merely by being different to what everyone else believes. Lots of things that we think are good were once socially deviant. So, you know, that's not even necessarily... Even board gaming. Right. Can you believe it? Good Lord. So I have a hypothesis which I'll throw out, which is that a cult is a group in which the reason, the reason that people are part of it is the need for social acceptance from that group, rather than because of the beliefs of that group are in some way either true or useful.
Speaker C:Well, that's it. I mean, that's, that is an interesting definition. But I think there are lots of circumstances where you can think of that being true, which, which most people wouldn't think of as cult. So like people who feign to like a particular type of music, for example, you know, or a particular band, they don't really like them. But what they want is the social acceptance from the group who do like that, that music. And yet you wouldn't necessarily think of
Speaker B:that as a, as a, as a cult. Yeah, I mean, I just, I guess I'm thinking about belief and, well, it's hard to, it's hard to separate belief and behaviour and, you know, from preferences, actually. So no, that is a good point. And I also think, yeah, but I suppose the only thing I'd say, it's possible to imagine you have some people who really do like that band. I mean, you know, there can't be no one who likes the band, they have to come from somewhere. And then when they're big enough, you know, people go, oh, I really like them too. Despite the fact they've only just discovered them. And, you know, look them up on Google, because all their mates are into it. So yeah, I mean, you know, they would be sort of, if you like the culty end of the following.
Speaker A:Yeah. Look, we're about halfway through.
Speaker B:Well, hang on. So I think maybe, maybe, maybe what that means is there are basically, there isn't a cult and a non-cult. What there are is people who do things in a culty way about a particular activity or belief and people who do it in a non-culty way.
Speaker C:And I think, I think there are two things here. I think one is, it's, it's quite dangerous territory, because a cult is a pejorative, it's quite dangerous territory to start labelling cults. But obviously, some of them are, some of them are damaging. So that, you know, that's why there is no legal definition. And if you look at things like the, you know, the First Amendment of the US Constitution about protection, freedom of religion, and this aversion to legally defining what a cult is, because one person's cult is just another person's, you know, unorthodoxy or their, you know, their, their religion. So, so there's that issue about it being, it being difficult. And if you look at the, you know, the struggles that some organisations like Scientology have had around the definition of the cult and wanting to not be defined as a cult, you know, particularly in countries like Germany, there's, that's obviously a, a fraught process is, you know.
Speaker B:Why do they need to worry about whether or not they're a cult, if there's no legal definition of cult?
Speaker C:I think it's because of that, that, well, I think it's more about their struggle for recognition as a religion, as opposed to something else, which is defined as a, as a cult. And maybe that's, you know, maybe it is about being accepted as being a legitimate set of beliefs, and a cult being a label, you stick on something that isn't an acceptable set of beliefs. Yes, and the, the second thing is around that, that issue you were talking about of, you know, is it, is it about people? And are, is it about the behaviour of those people, not the, the group set of beliefs itself? And there is sort of evidence to, to suggest that some people are more susceptible to being members of cults or being drawn into, to cults. And so that there is maybe a, you know, an element of it being personality dependent, and, you know, things like dissatisfaction with one's life, or, you know, kind of spiritual sense of, of identity, and being a moron. Well, yeah, I mean, maybe, maybe there's a, there's an element of, you know, that, that capacity to question and be sceptical. But I think, you know, a lot of these people are vulnerable, right? They've displayed addictive behaviours previously. There's no, there's no surprise that religions and some cults, you know, when they're looking to recruit members, they engage with communities that are,
Speaker B:that are vulnerable. Yeah, people always, people always, you know, get, join, become, you know, Christians after their mum dies of cancer, and not just after they've won the lottery. That's right. Yeah. I, but I, yeah, I mean, that, well, that suggests then, well, if we're thinking about, let's think about how to sort of, how do we immunise ourself against, ourselves against harmful cults, you know? And obviously, no one in a cult thinks that they're, they're in a harmful cult, by and large, right? It's only really outsiders who are able to say, this is definitely harmful, these people are worse off than they would be if they weren't in the cult. But how do we, I mean, the question is whether or not, if people are, if we, what we're saying is that there are people who are kind of inclined to be culty, and to look for groups, where they get their, all of that need for social inclusion, and, you know, lots of rules and all of that kind of thing, which people like, is there, is there other things? Should we be basically, instead of trying to talk them out of it, trying to pull them into a healthy cult? Yeah, well, I mean,
Speaker C:arguably, recruiting them into the Navy or something. Yeah, yeah, or as Wikipedia editors,
Speaker A:or something. Dare I say board gamers? Yeah, board gamers, yeah. We're getting close to wanting to
Speaker C:be drawn to, to draw to a conclusion. Well, so I, so I think there's, there's an element which is, you know, which we've discussed is, like, many of the things that define a cult are not necessarily bad things, like group cohesion, and loyalty to members, and following, following orders are not necessarily per se bad things, right? The, the point, so, and they are, they are qualities which you share in common with other kinds of groups, which are viewed as being positive, like, you know, Nick was referring to the armed forces, or, you know, or board gamers, or doing charitable, you know, activity. So I suppose the thing is identifying what's bad about cults, and making sure we don't, we don't succumb to those, because they exist in all areas, right? You know, we talked about, you know, sort of the development of corporate cults, and within organisations, you might get a charismatic leader, who, you know, leads everybody over the edge of a cliff at some point. So, you know, what is it we're, we're trying to avoid? And I suppose, you know, it's things like unquestioning following of a set of, a set of
Speaker B:rules. Well, I mean, you know, I've just looked at the checklist, trying to find out what the bad things are. And you're right, I mean, the thing is that there are, I've just sort of sketched out in the back of my head, three ways that cults can be bad. So firstly, the only one here, which is really unambiguously bad, is the idea that ends justify the means. So in other words, that the cult's aims, whatever that might be, and it might typically be to expand, to recruit more people, justifies any kind of activity. And so, you know, that's why, I mean, you know, ISIS, or for that matter, the Nazis, would have been fine if they kept themselves to themselves, right? It's the fact that they're in, they insist on, you know, killing people in pursuit of their aim, that seems to be the problem. Am I right here? Right? I mean,
Speaker C:Yeah, it's the point at which they engage with the real world and start to...
Speaker B:Yeah, but it's like, look, I mean, you've got, I mean, if the Nazis had not killed anyone, had been quite tolerant, but nevertheless stuck to their beliefs about Aryan supremacy, and so on, would they have been a problem? If they hadn't been invading people and slaughtering people by the million? Is there anything wrong with being a Nazi? Right? So, so sorry, this brings me on to my other two suggestions about how it's bad. One is it's bad for other people. Because people in cults are a pain in the ass, instead of being functioning members of society, because it's all they go on about instead of doing something else, right? So it's kind of bad, because, you know, most cults encourage dysfunctional behaviour, or at least behaviour that is kind of doesn't contribute things. But you know, I'm not too bothered about that. I'm a libertarian, right? So I don't really mind. If people want to do things that are unproductive, that's up to them. But the other thing is, I think it's bad for the for the people involved. And you know, my evidence for that would merely be just the large number of people who leave those cults. It's a bit like East Berlin and West Berlin, right? People never got shot trying to escape to East Berlin. And people don't get killed for trying to, you know, join ISIS, right? They get killed for trying to leave ISIS. And so it sort of seems to me that is all you need to know, which is better, East or West Berlin? Well, which side do people get shot trying to get to? And it's the fact that people would risk their life to leave cults, which sort of suggests that it's bad for the people involved. But you know, each to their own. We need to stop there. But before we
Speaker A:do, Chris, do you have a favourite cult, either current or historic? Apart from the cult,
Speaker C:obviously? Yeah, yeah. Well, yes. So I suppose the one that I've come across, which just the bizarreness strikes me as not a favourite, but one which, which interests me, was when I was looking at Iraq and the security situation in Iraq. Just one day out of nowhere, 500 Iraqis in the south of Iraq turned up into a town and shot everything up. And it turns out they were a group called the Soldiers of Heaven, a Shia millenarian sect. And nobody knew they existed. And yet they managed to mobilise, you know, a few hundred people with guns to turn up and start causing trouble. And they had, you know, sort of, as many millenarian cults do, they had a whole bizarre set of beliefs that were... What does millenarian mean? Sort of apocalyptic, you know,
Speaker A:focused on the end of days. Okay. They're like interesting people. Yeah. Nick? It's the
Speaker B:Pythagoreans. Okay. So the, obviously Pythagoras, who we know from his famous triangular theorem, was also, you know, he also sort of founded this cult in Greece back in the day, I'm going to say a few hundred years BC. And in amongst all the wonderful mathematical activity that you can only imagine was going on, there was all this kind of bonkers set of beliefs as well. So they believed, Pythagoras believed, that beans had souls, for example. Okay. So bean eating was strictly forbidden. And they also held that there was no such thing as irrational numbers. So numbers that can't be expressed as a fraction, right? They didn't think that there was such a thing as numbers that couldn't be expressed as a fraction. And, you know, there are, I'm afraid. But anyway, so this was such an important point of belief that someone got executed by being thrown into the sea from a cliff, off a cliff, for daring to suggest, I think he said that the square root of two was irrational. So yeah, I just like, they just sound great. I definitely have been a Pythagorean.
Speaker A:Yeah. Who needs Rolls Royces and free sex when you've got... Really interesting triangles. Yeah. Yeah. They had three key points, presumably. Okay. Gentlemen, we're going to stop there. Thank you, as always, for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Nick Hare and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights. That's all for now. Thanks. Bye-bye.
