Are you in a cult? This is a interesting questions. One thing that's common about all cult members is that they are all sure that they are NOT in a cult. So - if you are sure you are not in a cult then take this test.
The question about if you are in a cult is not a black and white issue. There are organizations that are clearly cults and others that are cultish depending on your perspective. And most all groups of people have some cult like properties. Obviously if you are a member of a group that is contemplating mass suicide, then you are in a cult. But what about people who believe in Armageddon, are they cult members? Especially if you think the world will end in your life time. Or, if you are looking forward to the end of the world. If you think we are in the "end times" and you are fantasizing about God destroying the world, you are in a cult.
A cult is every other religion other than the one that you believe in.
So what is a cult? The simple definition is every religion except your religion is a cult. I think we can all agree, no matter who you are, that there are a lot of people out there who are seriously being misled and have a lot of weird and dangerous beliefs. But how do you know - for sure - that of all the thousands of religions out there, that you somehow found the right one. Or perhaps happened to be born into the right one. Are you really that lucky - or - do people believe what they are taught as children. Clearly people believe what they are taught as children. So if you are in the religion you were raised in - that makes you SUSPECT.
Relativism plays an important role in what is a cult. If you are a Muslim, then stoning women to death for sexual events might seem normal to you. Many ancient cultures had Gods that demanded animal and human sacrifice. If you believe in God, then anything that is "God's will" is considered to be normal, no matter how bizarre God might get. For example, the Bible tells us that God killed the first born male of all the Egyptians. People who believe the Bible accept God's behavior as "normal". However - if you are not familiar with the Biblical story of Moses and someone told you there was a deity who mass murdered innocent children, what deity would do this? You might guess it was the work of Satan. And you would be wrong. That's because "normal" to a realist is that mass killing children is wrong.
The question is, who is right? Is there an absolute objective perspective as to who is in a cult and who is not? After all - if what we consider to be a cult is right, then they are on the true path and we are the misled. What we consider freedom might be the work of demons that control us through the illusion of free thinking. MANY CULTS WILL TELL YOU THAT THINKING IS THE WORK OF THE DEVIL AND THAT ONLY THROUGH YOUR ABILITY TO SUSPEND ALL REASON AND LOGIC ARE YOU SAVED .
We have chosen reality itself to be our frame of reference from which we perceive the world. Somehow the idea is that if you have to pick a point of reference that reality seems to be the logical choice. So from our perspective, cultness is judged in relation to reality.
Why do People join Cults?
Are cults just for weak-minded losers? Why would "normal" people join a cult? The answer is that one of the greatest strengths of humanity is also one of our greatest weaknesses. What makes humanity dominant on this planet is our ability to share knowledge. Because we can communicate, information learned by one individual is passed on to others. We have organized into societies that are so complex that only a fraction of the information that we rely on is actually stored in our own brains. The up side is that it allows us to benefit from the tremendous wealth of combined knowledge of the human race. The down side is that it is a serious security hole in the human computer. If the information we rely on is flawed, then we can end up living a life of illusion and deception.
The human need to be part of a group is far stronger than logic. Most people will sacrifice logic for social acceptance.
A cult is a group gone bad. It is a group that uses what would otherwise be a normal group process for the purpose of exploiting and enslaving the members for some unethical purpose, generally involving MONEY AND POWER . People who have a need to belong to something are suckered in and allow themselves to be reprogrammed by the group mind. They are required to accept a lot of bad information on faith and once they accept that then they see reality relative to the bad information they are working with. Groups can start out good but degenerate into a cult because of a takeover of some unethical person who exploits the group for personal gain.
So the reason people join cults is that people need to organize as groups for a normal healthy society. But there are good groups and bad groups and a lot of groups that are somewhere in between. When people become part of the group they put their faith and trust in the group and the group information becomes part of who they are and what they believe. The individual starts seeing reality through the lens of the group and if the group is based on fiction, then the group members will see the world relative to the fiction.
How Groups Affect your Mind
The mind is an imperfect tool. It's not a computer. It's hard wired to survive and do the things it needs to do to make that happen. Logic is something that is really learned, and can be learned wrong. And logic is only as good as the information that you trust. So the accuracy of what you believe isn't as much a function of how smart you are, but what information you trust. That's why cults are filled with smart people who really should know better, but yet they don't.
If you start with bad information and apply logic to it, then you get the logical conclusion based on the bad information you started with. That's why religious scholars argue about how many angels can sit on the head of a pin, but ignore the question of if angels really exist. They accept it on faith because it is required to be part of the group.
In my " Church of Reality " we have a concept that seems to be unique to religions called the Tree of Knowledge. Well, the term isn't unique, but we took what applied to a fictional tree from the mythical Garden of Eden and redefined it to mean the sum total of all human understanding. The Tree of Knowledge represents our shared knowledge. But the entire tree isn't accessible to every person, although the Internet is bringing more of the Tree of Knowledge to the individual than ever before. We only have the capacity to experience the Tree of Knowledge from a local perspective and within the limits of our finite brains.
The Tree of Knowledge is not pure truth. In fact it is polluted with a lot of bad information. The Tree is a product of evolution. Evolution does a reasonably good job in many ways, but it is far from a perfect process. Some processes, like science, are extremely accurate. Other processes like Religion are extremely inaccurate. I think everyone can agree with that statement because every other religion on the planet is totally screwed up EXCEPT YOURS . Nearly 100% of people would agree that the majority of the world is religiously misled.
The Tree of Knowledge is a mathematical tree, not a mythical plant. Knowledge is interconnected through groups that form around specific items of information. Let's take medical knowledge for example. The Tree of Knowledge contains all medical information, but how is that organized? Medical knowledge is a vast segment in the Tree of Knowledge. It incorporates vast amounts of information. It is mostly the work of doctors and medical researchers who work to discover new things. The medical field is divided into specialities like cancer, the brain, DNA, diet, vision, heart, lungs, etc. all of which contain huge amounts of information and organization themselves.
The medical community contains millions of individuals, but how are they organized? Are these people just random people working autonomously? Not at all. They are organized into teams of people who are working collectively. They are in hospitals, research labs, universities, government, and they are organized into small societies that are formed around accomplishing specific tasks like finding a cure for cancer, or emergency care, or a neighborhood clinic. The groups themselves are organized into larger groups with groups becoming members of larger groups forming very complex and interdependent associations. These groups form and interconnect for primarily one real purpose, to share knowledge and to link the minds of individuals into a super mind that allows people working together to accomplish things that are far greater than any individual could accomplish working alone.
As you can see looking around, everything we see that is made by humans comes from an extremely complex infrastructure of groups of people that are all interconnected through various levels of societies. All this stuff, your computer, your home, your furniture, appliances, car, planes, roads, all of it. Somehow these millions of people came together to produce your computer. In reality it's billions because you also have to consider the people who produce the advanced materials that the computer is made from, the trucks that shipped the computer to you, the stores that sold you the computer, the nations that provided the social infrastructure. If not for all of that working together, you wouldn't have a computer to surf the web with.
Humans are like bees. We are all part of the hive mind.
The very essence of who we are as individuals and as a society comes from our ability to function in groups. We are as interconnected as a hive of bees. In reality perhaps more interconnected. Because we are so interconnected and we are so dependent on others for our information, and because individually, our minds can not process all the information that we are dependent upon, we have to delegate through trust that other people will figure out how to take care of the areas that they are entrusted to take care of. We are dependent on them and they are dependent on us.
Because society is so complex, we are required to take in information on trust that we can't process ourselves. There just aren't enough hours in the day to think about everything. So what we believe isn't a result of logical processes, but a result of what information we choose to trust. And the information we choose to trust comes from our local connection to the Tree of Knowledge. That local connection is based on our "place in society" which is what groups we plug into or are associated with. Our view of reality is distorted through the lens of our local reality and who we associate with. We attach through groups and we add our individuality to the group, yet we also surrender part of ourselves as well. If the group makes a mistake then it becomes part of us.
Because our brains must link into the group mind, most of us have evolved, for better or worse, to put the group conclusions ahead of our own. After all, one might ask, how can all these people be wrong? If this were wrong, surely someone would have figured it out. Can billions of people over thousands of years all be fooled by an ANCIENT FICTIONAL STORY ? As it turns out - yes they can. The fact that there are multiple fictional stories with billions of followers proves that. But it is so disappointing to realize that we humans are such a gullible species.
Pay no attention to the Man behind the Curtain
I notice that when I'm talking to a person who is a member of a cult and fully brainwashed, it's like I'm not really talking to that person at all. It's more like I'm talking to a puppet. It reminds me of the scene from the movie The Wizard of Oz where it is discovered that the Great and Powerful Wizard is just a guy behind the curtain controlling a false projection of a powerful wizard. When I talk to cult members it is like the person isn't really there. They are just parroting the dogma of the cult and interestingly enough, they have no idea that their thoughts are not their OWN.
How can you tell if you're in a cult? One indicator is if you don't have FREEDOM . For example, if you are a Scientologist and you have someone from the church following you around all the time to keep you in the cult, that's not freedom. How much diversity of opinion is in your group? What ideas are you prohibited from discussing? Do you all dress alike? Are you required to shave your head, or are you prohibited from cutting your hair? What about that suit and tie? What rituals are you required to participate in? What things are you not allowed to do that people in free (sinful) cultures do?
Generally I think it can be said that cult members are more restricted than people who are not cult members. If, for example, you can go anywhere you want, do anything you want, say anything you want, and your friends see you as a little weird and someone who has a unique and interesting perspective on things, I would say that it is unlikely that you are a cult member. The requirements that are placed upon you regarding what you are "supposed" to do is also an indicator of cult type thinking. If you are feeling the weight of "supposed" or you notice that you are influenced too much by other people, that raises the likelihood of cult influence.
Do you often find that you want to do things but you don't get to do them because other people don't want you to? Or do you find yourself doing things that you don't want to, but you do them because other people make you do it? Do you spend a lot of time dealing with what other people think of you? Or are you overly concerned about your reputation within your circle or your social position within the community?
What things are you afraid of? Does freedom trigger a fear response? If freedom is something that scares you, then you should question yourself about why that is. Are you in a situation where people are thrown out of the group for failing to be loyal to the group discipline or exercising freedom? Are you subject to punishment for not complying? How much of your life is penalty driven?
I've spent a lot of time living in JAPAN which is noted for its free thinkers. This area has a huge diversity of opinions and it is a haven for "weird people". People like me. And all the new cool stuff is usually invented right here. This is probably the number one spot on the planet for innovative thinking and it is also the number one spot on the planet for free thinking. People are accepting of diversity, love their freedom, and argue about everything. I believe there is a relationship between this freedom and the inventions and ideas that start here. In contrast, during the Dark Ages nothing really happened. If you were innovative you were put to death. Freedom is important and our message to all who read this is - be free. Take back your life and own it. Tell Jesus you want your soul back and that you want to live your life in the real world. Own your own destiny.
The use of Praise and Blame
Praise and Blame refer to a system of rewards and punishments used to control your behavior. They use praise when you do something good and blame when you do something bad. Sounds like normal child rearing so far but it doesn't stop there. Some praise and blame is normal. But cult control takes it to an extreme. Cults need to enslave you to survive. Praise and blame are the must common tools to do that with.
The process appeals to the human need to do good things. Since humanity has evolved around the Tree of Knowledge and our success as a species is tied to our ability to plug into society, our need to be an upstanding member is hard wired into our brains, just like fear, sex, and the need to find food. We are more like bees in that respect. A bee is nothing without the hive. It dies when separated from the hive. Humans will often kill themselves as a result of social shunning. And for many people there is no greater thrill than to be praised by your peers. We want to accomplish great things and rise in social position within the group. Social position give us respect and power and authority. Women are attracted to the powerful males creating more opportunities to spread one's DNA around.
On an instinctive level, we also want to be part of the Tree of Knowledge. We are aware of our limited existence and we want to continue to live in some form after we are gone. We want people to remember our name and who we are and the great things we accomplish. We want to go down in history as heroes who fought and died for some great cause, or at least be part of a group that goes down in history for some great cause. Our instinct to be part of the Tree of Knowledge is so strong that we will sacrifice our lives to make that happen. It is this kind of biological commitment to community that has made the human race rise to the top of the evolutionary chain.
There is however a down side to this need to be a respected member of the community. The down side is that it can be exploited. This need is far more powerful than people realize. But cults realize it and they have become experts at exploiting it. They can make you jump through hoops like a trained animal. And that's why most of the world is a slave to some form of cult. I would say that less that one percent of humanity comes close to the standard of what I consider free. The rest are slaves to the cult mind.
When you join a cult they start off with the carrot. They tell you that you are a very special person who was led to them through divine inspiration to be a member of an elite group of special people who are on a special mission to accomplish great things. You are one of the good people who is in a desperate battle with the forces of evil that are taking over the universe. Your decision to join forces might be the tipping point for the triumph of Good over Evil, where your refusal to join might result in Evil winning, and it will be your fault if that happens.
Everything becomes black and white. YOU ARE EITHER WITH US OR YOU ARE AGINST US . If you're not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Are you an "us" or a "them"? There is no middle ground. Evil people serve the evil master and everything they do is evil. They are sinners and Infidels who are unworthy and deserve death. We however "are washed in the blood of the lamb" and our sins are forgiven. The idea that non-members have a role in society and that they are contributing is unthinkable. The don't see people as having some good aspects and some bad aspects and that you can improve them a little and help people evolve forward. They are the enemy, and the enemy is to be destroyed.
Once you are in, the REPROGRAMMING BEGINS . You are a student, a disciple, and they are the wise masters. they are right and you are wrong. You have to accept what you are being taught. After all, this is all new to you. You are learning the secret ways so obviously the possibility of you being right and the master being wrong is highly unlikely. You are being taught a different way of thinking. You are being reprogrammed. The lesson isn't what you think it is though. What you are being taught to believe is what you are told to believe without question. You are being trained to be a sock puppet.
A sock puppet is a person who is totally controlled by the cult mind.
You are taught that you are important and that you are being trained for an important MISSION . You are being evaluated by the other group members who are all concerned about each other's spiritual progress. You are required to seek their praise and avoid their blame. Social position is everything within the group and it is often very competitive. They feed you ego treats to get you really addicted to your self importance, and then take them away to punish you for failing to behave.
The use of PRAISE AND BLAME is a common mind control trick. Once a person is fully addicted, they will do anything, say anything, believe anything in order to get their ego fix. The life of a sock puppet is a life of fear, always having to worry if they are good enough. They are given impossible goals which they never can achieve which puts them in a state of perpetual failure. First they feed the ego, then they starve it. Progress is measured in obedience.
Cults are about the SUPPRESSION OF FREEDOM . They punish INDEPENDENT THINKING . FAITH IS REQUIRED AND DOUBTS IS PUNISHED . In contrast, the " Church of Reality " requires doubt. Blind faith is considered bullshit. We encourage a diversity of viewpoints as a way of coming up with fresh ideas. We, however, must ourselves be vigilant to avoid the praise and blame game and not fall into the same traps where we divide into masters and starry eyed groupies who suck up information like a sponge and parrot it back without thinking. Sometimes people become sock puppets and just hop from cult to cult looking for someone to enslave them in a way they feel better about. That's why we require people to ponder reality so that they can become themselves and invent new things for the Tree of Knowledge.
We have a concept called Intellectual Tithing where we give back new ideas to the Tree of Knowledge. New ideas require innovative thinking which means that people have to think outside the box. You can't come up with a new idea if you are just parroting CHURCH DOGMA . Intellectual Tithing creates a process where explorers develop the skills of independent thinking. It creates an environment for new idea to emerge and be presented for discussion, scrutiny, and doubt testing. This not only makes humanity SMARTER , but it strengthens the mind and makes people more IMMUNE to cult based thinking.
Cults use Ritual and Repetition
Cults use ritual and repetition to instill their reprogramming on their members. Rituals are things that the group does together to voice support for the group and demonstrate their submission to the cult mind. It can take the form of group prayers, songs sung together, the saying of the Pledge of Allegiance, marching in unison, or other acts where the individual demonstrates submission to the group. These rituals help get the individua's mind into a more SUBMISSIVE STATE which is necessary when one is expected to believe the most bizarre things WITHOUT QUESTION and without having any knowledge that one is being MANIPULATED .
RITUAL also creates a sense of community which is necessary for a person's well being. It makes the person feel on an emotional level, that they are part of a TEAM, a great mission, and have a sense of FAMILY and BELONGING . This emotional connection is a religious experience and it creates a EUPHORIC HIGH that can be FALSELY INTERPRETED as divinely inspired. Because of our evolution to function together as a group, our minds are hard wired to feel great joy by being interconnected to other people united for some great cause. This natural experience is exploited by cults to get people ADDICTED and keep them locked in. What is an otherwise normal community connection is elevated to an experience of "God is touching your heart right now". But we know that God is NOT TOUCHING them right now or COMMUNICATING with them, because the kinds of messages the group receives from God is generally something that is SELF-SERVING to the cult. There is always a human who lets the group know what it is that God is telling them because sometimes God just isn't able to get the message across like cult leaders can.
The human brain is based more on pattern matching than on logic.
Repletion is also heavily used by cults. The human mind is not a computer. It is an evolved biological organ that can do some logical processing. It is actually more based on pattern recognition than on logic, and that's something that cult leaders have learned (through pattern recognition) that works on people. Advertising and propaganda work the same way. There is the BIG LIE theory that if you tell a lie over and over again, that people will start to believe it. I've heard the big lie theory so many times that I am beginning to believe it; demonstrating that it does work.
The human brain has only so much capacity. Some people say we only use 1/10 of our brains, but I think those people should speak for themselves. Personally my brain is so full that in order for me to learn something new, I have to forget something to make room for it. If we do have vast memory storage, we certainly don't have equal access to that storage and the part of our minds that we have the most access to are the parts that we think about the most. CULT LEADERS exploit that by using repetition so that their MESSAGE is always in the top of the mind. Their message then interconnects with the rest of the individual's life experiences and connects itself deep into the individual's sel- identity. It is like a POISONING OF THE MIND WHERE BELIEF BECOME DOMINANT AND RATIONAL THINKING ATROPHIES . The mind loses it's ability to REASON AND REPROGRAMS itself to parrot the message of the cult. The cult becomes like a virus that consumes the individual and the person becomes a sock puppet.
It is what our mind does and what we dwell on that makes us who we are. Our mental processes, our thoughts, are the way we experience reality. The sum total of all the thoughts in our life represents our life experience. If we become a sock puppet, then we are surrendering our life experience to someone else. We are being cheated out of what little existence we have. Time is something that is precious to us. We live to be real in the sacred moment.
As Realists, we do not use repetition to convince people to believe false information on FAITH . Our message, is to spend time dwelling on reality. Thinking about reality and coming up with new ideas is healing to the mind. It pushes out the dogma and reprograms the brain to think in a healthy way. We want people to spend their mental time wondering about things, questioning things to test if they are real. And that is the distinction between reality and blind faith religion. Cults PROHIBIT QUESTIONING , THINKING , DOUBT , and SCRUTINY . They are not intellectually accountable. Their belief systems fall apart when subjected to REASON. If what we believe in falls apart, we learn from that and fix our mistakes. .
Becoming Cult Immune
How does one immunize oneself from becoming a cult member? If you are not in a cult now, how can you prevent yourself from becoming a member of a cult in the future? How can you harden your mind from being exploited by those who are experts at hacking into your brain and exploiting you? There are a number of things that you can do to help cult-proof your mind.
First of all, to keep from being swept away in the sea of FICTIONAL RELIGIONS , you have to find something firm that you can hang on to. I suggest there is but one choice, and that choice is REALITY . Reality is like a lighthouse that doesn't go away once you stop believing in it. It leads you back out of the insanity and it is always there for you. By reality I am talking about real reality.
making a personal commitment to reality and spending time thinking about reality is the best way to keep the cults from owning you.
The ego is a point of vulnerability. People develop a sense of self-importance that leads to a habit of wanting praise. Praise makes you subject to blame since they go hand in hand. That's why we have the Sacred Principle of Humility, so that we don't forget that we live on a planet that is a mere speck of dust in the universe, and that no one is all that important. By being a humble person, one is not easily hooked by ego treats and seduced to the grandeur of their imagined purpose in life. I believe one should assume that the reason they exist is pure chance and that they weren't sent here for any purpose whatsoever. I exist solely because my parents happened to have sex and I was the lucky sperm that got to the egg first. If any little thing had been different, I wouldn't be here.
I believe that reprogramming your brain into reality-based thinking will help keep the cults out. Developing mental habits of wondering about everything and the purification of truth through scrutiny are good mental habits. These things make the mind stronger and less easily suckered. The more you are Real in the Sacred moment, the less likely you are going to end up at a Moonie mass wedding, or mass suicide, or sending your kids into battle to die for a fraudulent war. As long as you keep it real, the cults shouldn't be able to get to you.
The question about if you are in a cult is not a black and white issue. There are organizations that are clearly cults and others that are cultish depending on your perspective. And most all groups of people have some cult like properties. Obviously if you are a member of a group that is contemplating mass suicide, then you are in a cult. But what about people who believe in Armageddon, are they cult members? Especially if you think the world will end in your life time. Or, if you are looking forward to the end of the world. If you think we are in the "end times" and you are fantasizing about God destroying the world, you are in a cult.
A cult is every other religion other than the one that you believe in.
So what is a cult? The simple definition is every religion except your religion is a cult. I think we can all agree, no matter who you are, that there are a lot of people out there who are seriously being misled and have a lot of weird and dangerous beliefs. But how do you know - for sure - that of all the thousands of religions out there, that you somehow found the right one. Or perhaps happened to be born into the right one. Are you really that lucky - or - do people believe what they are taught as children. Clearly people believe what they are taught as children. So if you are in the religion you were raised in - that makes you SUSPECT
. Relativism plays an important role in what is a cult. If you are a Muslim, then stoning women to death for sexual events might seem normal to you. Many ancient cultures had Gods that demanded animal and human sacrifice. If you believe in God, then anything that is "God's will" is considered to be normal, no matter how bizarre God might get. For example, the Bible tells us that God killed the first born male of all the Egyptians. People who believe the Bible accept God's behavior as "normal". However - if you are not familiar with the Biblical story of Moses and someone told you there was a deity who mass murdered innocent children, what deity would do this? You might guess it was the work of Satan. And you would be wrong. That's because "normal" to a realist is that mass killing children is wrong.
The question is, who is right? Is there an absolute objective perspective as to who is in a cult and who is not? After all - if what we consider to be a cult is right, then they are on the true path and we are the misled. What we consider freedom might be the work of demons that control us through the illusion of free thinking. MANY CULTS WILL TELL YOU THAT THINKING IS THE WORK OF THE DEVIL AND THAT ONLY THROUGH YOUR ABILITY TO SUSPEND ALL REASON AND LOGIC ARE YOU SAVED .
We have chosen reality itself to be our frame of reference from which we perceive the world. Somehow the idea is that if you have to pick a point of reference that reality seems to be the logical choice. So from our perspective, cultness is judged in relation to reality.
Why do People join Cults?
Are cults just for weak-minded losers? Why would "normal" people join a cult? The answer is that one of the greatest strengths of humanity is also one of our greatest weaknesses. What makes humanity dominant on this planet is our ability to share knowledge. Because we can communicate, information learned by one individual is passed on to others. We have organized into societies that are so complex that only a fraction of the information that we rely on is actually stored in our own brains. The up side is that it allows us to benefit from the tremendous wealth of combined knowledge of the human race. The down side is that it is a serious security hole in the human computer. If the information we rely on is flawed, then we can end up living a life of illusion and deception.
The human need to be part of a group is far stronger than logic. Most people will sacrifice logic for social acceptance.
A cult is a group gone bad. It is a group that uses what would otherwise be a normal group process for the purpose of exploiting and enslaving the members for some unethical purpose, generally involving MONEY AND POWER . People who have a need to belong to something are suckered in and allow themselves to be reprogrammed by the group mind. They are required to accept a lot of bad information on faith and once they accept that then they see reality relative to the bad information they are working with. Groups can start out good but degenerate into a cult because of a takeover of some unethical person who exploits the group for personal gain.
So the reason people join cults is that people need to organize as groups for a normal healthy society. But there are good groups and bad groups and a lot of groups that are somewhere in between. When people become part of the group they put their faith and trust in the group and the group information becomes part of who they are and what they believe. The individual starts seeing reality through the lens of the group and if the group is based on fiction, then the group members will see the world relative to the fiction.
How Groups Affect your Mind
The mind is an imperfect tool. It's not a computer. It's hard wired to survive and do the things it needs to do to make that happen. Logic is something that is really learned, and can be learned wrong. And logic is only as good as the information that you trust. So the accuracy of what you believe isn't as much a function of how smart you are, but what information you trust. That's why cults are filled with smart people who really should know better, but yet they don't.
If you start with bad information and apply logic to it, then you get the logical conclusion based on the bad information you started with. That's why religious scholars argue about how many angels can sit on the head of a pin, but ignore the question of if angels really exist. They accept it on faith because it is required to be part of the group.
In my " Church of Reality " we have a concept that seems to be unique to religions called the Tree of Knowledge. Well, the term isn't unique, but we took what applied to a fictional tree from the mythical Garden of Eden and redefined it to mean the sum total of all human understanding. The Tree of Knowledge represents our shared knowledge. But the entire tree isn't accessible to every person, although the Internet is bringing more of the Tree of Knowledge to the individual than ever before. We only have the capacity to experience the Tree of Knowledge from a local perspective and within the limits of our finite brains.
The Tree of Knowledge is not pure truth. In fact it is polluted with a lot of bad information. The Tree is a product of evolution. Evolution does a reasonably good job in many ways, but it is far from a perfect process. Some processes, like science, are extremely accurate. Other processes like Religion are extremely inaccurate. I think everyone can agree with that statement because every other religion on the planet is totally screwed up EXCEPT YOURS . Nearly 100% of people would agree that the majority of the world is religiously misled.
The Tree of Knowledge is a mathematical tree, not a mythical plant. Knowledge is interconnected through groups that form around specific items of information. Let's take medical knowledge for example. The Tree of Knowledge contains all medical information, but how is that organized? Medical knowledge is a vast segment in the Tree of Knowledge. It incorporates vast amounts of information. It is mostly the work of doctors and medical researchers who work to discover new things. The medical field is divided into specialities like cancer, the brain, DNA, diet, vision, heart, lungs, etc. all of which contain huge amounts of information and organization themselves.
The medical community contains millions of individuals, but how are they organized? Are these people just random people working autonomously? Not at all. They are organized into teams of people who are working collectively. They are in hospitals, research labs, universities, government, and they are organized into small societies that are formed around accomplishing specific tasks like finding a cure for cancer, or emergency care, or a neighborhood clinic. The groups themselves are organized into larger groups with groups becoming members of larger groups forming very complex and interdependent associations. These groups form and interconnect for primarily one real purpose, to share knowledge and to link the minds of individuals into a super mind that allows people working together to accomplish things that are far greater than any individual could accomplish working alone.
As you can see looking around, everything we see that is made by humans comes from an extremely complex infrastructure of groups of people that are all interconnected through various levels of societies. All this stuff, your computer, your home, your furniture, appliances, car, planes, roads, all of it. Somehow these millions of people came together to produce your computer. In reality it's billions because you also have to consider the people who produce the advanced materials that the computer is made from, the trucks that shipped the computer to you, the stores that sold you the computer, the nations that provided the social infrastructure. If not for all of that working together, you wouldn't have a computer to surf the web with.
Humans are like bees. We are all part of the hive mind.
The very essence of who we are as individuals and as a society comes from our ability to function in groups. We are as interconnected as a hive of bees. In reality perhaps more interconnected. Because we are so interconnected and we are so dependent on others for our information, and because individually, our minds can not process all the information that we are dependent upon, we have to delegate through trust that other people will figure out how to take care of the areas that they are entrusted to take care of. We are dependent on them and they are dependent on us.
Because society is so complex, we are required to take in information on trust that we can't process ourselves. There just aren't enough hours in the day to think about everything. So what we believe isn't a result of logical processes, but a result of what information we choose to trust. And the information we choose to trust comes from our local connection to the Tree of Knowledge. That local connection is based on our "place in society" which is what groups we plug into or are associated with. Our view of reality is distorted through the lens of our local reality and who we associate with. We attach through groups and we add our individuality to the group, yet we also surrender part of ourselves as well. If the group makes a mistake then it becomes part of us.
Because our brains must link into the group mind, most of us have evolved, for better or worse, to put the group conclusions ahead of our own. After all, one might ask, how can all these people be wrong? If this were wrong, surely someone would have figured it out. Can billions of people over thousands of years all be fooled by an ANCIENT FICTIONAL STORY ? As it turns out - yes they can. The fact that there are multiple fictional stories with billions of followers proves that. But it is so disappointing to realize that we humans are such a gullible species.
Pay no attention to the Man behind the Curtain
I notice that when I'm talking to a person who is a member of a cult and fully brainwashed, it's like I'm not really talking to that person at all. It's more like I'm talking to a puppet. It reminds me of the scene from the movie The Wizard of Oz where it is discovered that the Great and Powerful Wizard is just a guy behind the curtain controlling a false projection of a powerful wizard. When I talk to cult members it is like the person isn't really there. They are just parroting the dogma of the cult and interestingly enough, they have no idea that their thoughts are not their OWN.
How can you tell if you're in a cult? One indicator is if you don't have FREEDOM . For example, if you are a Scientologist and you have someone from the church following you around all the time to keep you in the cult, that's not freedom. How much diversity of opinion is in your group? What ideas are you prohibited from discussing? Do you all dress alike? Are you required to shave your head, or are you prohibited from cutting your hair? What about that suit and tie? What rituals are you required to participate in? What things are you not allowed to do that people in free (sinful) cultures do?
Generally I think it can be said that cult members are more restricted than people who are not cult members. If, for example, you can go anywhere you want, do anything you want, say anything you want, and your friends see you as a little weird and someone who has a unique and interesting perspective on things, I would say that it is unlikely that you are a cult member. The requirements that are placed upon you regarding what you are "supposed" to do is also an indicator of cult type thinking. If you are feeling the weight of "supposed" or you notice that you are influenced too much by other people, that raises the likelihood of cult influence.
Do you often find that you want to do things but you don't get to do them because other people don't want you to? Or do you find yourself doing things that you don't want to, but you do them because other people make you do it? Do you spend a lot of time dealing with what other people think of you? Or are you overly concerned about your reputation within your circle or your social position within the community?
What things are you afraid of? Does freedom trigger a fear response? If freedom is something that scares you, then you should question yourself about why that is. Are you in a situation where people are thrown out of the group for failing to be loyal to the group discipline or exercising freedom? Are you subject to punishment for not complying? How much of your life is penalty driven?
I've spent a lot of time living in JAPAN which is noted for its free thinkers. This area has a huge diversity of opinions and it is a haven for "weird people". People like me. And all the new cool stuff is usually invented right here. This is probably the number one spot on the planet for innovative thinking and it is also the number one spot on the planet for free thinking. People are accepting of diversity, love their freedom, and argue about everything. I believe there is a relationship between this freedom and the inventions and ideas that start here. In contrast, during the Dark Ages nothing really happened. If you were innovative you were put to death. Freedom is important and our message to all who read this is - be free. Take back your life and own it. Tell Jesus you want your soul back and that you want to live your life in the real world. Own your own destiny.
The use of Praise and Blame
Praise and Blame refer to a system of rewards and punishments used to control your behavior. They use praise when you do something good and blame when you do something bad. Sounds like normal child rearing so far but it doesn't stop there. Some praise and blame is normal. But cult control takes it to an extreme. Cults need to enslave you to survive. Praise and blame are the must common tools to do that with.
The process appeals to the human need to do good things. Since humanity has evolved around the Tree of Knowledge and our success as a species is tied to our ability to plug into society, our need to be an upstanding member is hard wired into our brains, just like fear, sex, and the need to find food. We are more like bees in that respect. A bee is nothing without the hive. It dies when separated from the hive. Humans will often kill themselves as a result of social shunning. And for many people there is no greater thrill than to be praised by your peers. We want to accomplish great things and rise in social position within the group. Social position give us respect and power and authority. Women are attracted to the powerful males creating more opportunities to spread one's DNA around.
On an instinctive level, we also want to be part of the Tree of Knowledge. We are aware of our limited existence and we want to continue to live in some form after we are gone. We want people to remember our name and who we are and the great things we accomplish. We want to go down in history as heroes who fought and died for some great cause, or at least be part of a group that goes down in history for some great cause. Our instinct to be part of the Tree of Knowledge is so strong that we will sacrifice our lives to make that happen. It is this kind of biological commitment to community that has made the human race rise to the top of the evolutionary chain.
There is however a down side to this need to be a respected member of the community. The down side is that it can be exploited. This need is far more powerful than people realize. But cults realize it and they have become experts at exploiting it. They can make you jump through hoops like a trained animal. And that's why most of the world is a slave to some form of cult. I would say that less that one percent of humanity comes close to the standard of what I consider free. The rest are slaves to the cult mind.
When you join a cult they start off with the carrot. They tell you that you are a very special person who was led to them through divine inspiration to be a member of an elite group of special people who are on a special mission to accomplish great things. You are one of the good people who is in a desperate battle with the forces of evil that are taking over the universe. Your decision to join forces might be the tipping point for the triumph of Good over Evil, where your refusal to join might result in Evil winning, and it will be your fault if that happens.
Everything becomes black and white. YOU ARE EITHER WITH US OR YOU ARE AGINST US . If you're not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Are you an "us" or a "them"? There is no middle ground. Evil people serve the evil master and everything they do is evil. They are sinners and Infidels who are unworthy and deserve death. We however "are washed in the blood of the lamb" and our sins are forgiven. The idea that non-members have a role in society and that they are contributing is unthinkable. The don't see people as having some good aspects and some bad aspects and that you can improve them a little and help people evolve forward. They are the enemy, and the enemy is to be destroyed.
Once you are in, the REPROGRAMMING BEGINS . You are a student, a disciple, and they are the wise masters. they are right and you are wrong. You have to accept what you are being taught. After all, this is all new to you. You are learning the secret ways so obviously the possibility of you being right and the master being wrong is highly unlikely. You are being taught a different way of thinking. You are being reprogrammed. The lesson isn't what you think it is though. What you are being taught to believe is what you are told to believe without question. You are being trained to be a sock puppet.
A sock puppet is a person who is totally controlled by the cult mind.
You are taught that you are important and that you are being trained for an important MISSION . You are being evaluated by the other group members who are all concerned about each other's spiritual progress. You are required to seek their praise and avoid their blame. Social position is everything within the group and it is often very competitive. They feed you ego treats to get you really addicted to your self importance, and then take them away to punish you for failing to behave.
The use of PRAISE AND BLAME is a common mind control trick. Once a person is fully addicted, they will do anything, say anything, believe anything in order to get their ego fix. The life of a sock puppet is a life of fear, always having to worry if they are good enough. They are given impossible goals which they never can achieve which puts them in a state of perpetual failure. First they feed the ego, then they starve it. Progress is measured in obedience.
Cults are about the SUPPRESSION OF FREEDOM . They punish INDEPENDENT THINKING . FAITH IS REQUIRED AND DOUBTS IS PUNISHED . In contrast, the " Church of Reality " requires doubt. Blind faith is considered bullshit. We encourage a diversity of viewpoints as a way of coming up with fresh ideas. We, however, must ourselves be vigilant to avoid the praise and blame game and not fall into the same traps where we divide into masters and starry eyed groupies who suck up information like a sponge and parrot it back without thinking. Sometimes people become sock puppets and just hop from cult to cult looking for someone to enslave them in a way they feel better about. That's why we require people to ponder reality so that they can become themselves and invent new things for the Tree of Knowledge.
We have a concept called Intellectual Tithing where we give back new ideas to the Tree of Knowledge. New ideas require innovative thinking which means that people have to think outside the box. You can't come up with a new idea if you are just parroting CHURCH DOGMA . Intellectual Tithing creates a process where explorers develop the skills of independent thinking. It creates an environment for new idea to emerge and be presented for discussion, scrutiny, and doubt testing. This not only makes humanity SMARTER , but it strengthens the mind and makes people more IMMUNE to cult based thinking.
Cults use Ritual and Repetition
Cults use ritual and repetition to instill their reprogramming on their members. Rituals are things that the group does together to voice support for the group and demonstrate their submission to the cult mind. It can take the form of group prayers, songs sung together, the saying of the Pledge of Allegiance, marching in unison, or other acts where the individual demonstrates submission to the group. These rituals help get the individua's mind into a more SUBMISSIVE STATE which is necessary when one is expected to believe the most bizarre things WITHOUT QUESTION and without having any knowledge that one is being MANIPULATED .
RITUAL also creates a sense of community which is necessary for a person's well being. It makes the person feel on an emotional level, that they are part of a TEAM, a great mission, and have a sense of FAMILY and BELONGING . This emotional connection is a religious experience and it creates a EUPHORIC HIGH that can be FALSELY INTERPRETED as divinely inspired. Because of our evolution to function together as a group, our minds are hard wired to feel great joy by being interconnected to other people united for some great cause. This natural experience is exploited by cults to get people ADDICTED and keep them locked in. What is an otherwise normal community connection is elevated to an experience of "God is touching your heart right now". But we know that God is NOT TOUCHING them right now or COMMUNICATING with them, because the kinds of messages the group receives from God is generally something that is SELF-SERVING to the cult. There is always a human who lets the group know what it is that God is telling them because sometimes God just isn't able to get the message across like cult leaders can.
The human brain is based more on pattern matching than on logic.
Repletion is also heavily used by cults. The human mind is not a computer. It is an evolved biological organ that can do some logical processing. It is actually more based on pattern recognition than on logic, and that's something that cult leaders have learned (through pattern recognition) that works on people. Advertising and propaganda work the same way. There is the BIG LIE theory that if you tell a lie over and over again, that people will start to believe it. I've heard the big lie theory so many times that I am beginning to believe it; demonstrating that it does work.
The human brain has only so much capacity. Some people say we only use 1/10 of our brains, but I think those people should speak for themselves. Personally my brain is so full that in order for me to learn something new, I have to forget something to make room for it. If we do have vast memory storage, we certainly don't have equal access to that storage and the part of our minds that we have the most access to are the parts that we think about the most. CULT LEADERS exploit that by using repetition so that their MESSAGE is always in the top of the mind. Their message then interconnects with the rest of the individual's life experiences and connects itself deep into the individual's sel- identity. It is like a POISONING OF THE MIND WHERE BELIEF BECOME DOMINANT AND RATIONAL THINKING ATROPHIES . The mind loses it's ability to REASON AND REPROGRAMS itself to parrot the message of the cult. The cult becomes like a virus that consumes the individual and the person becomes a sock puppet.
It is what our mind does and what we dwell on that makes us who we are. Our mental processes, our thoughts, are the way we experience reality. The sum total of all the thoughts in our life represents our life experience. If we become a sock puppet, then we are surrendering our life experience to someone else. We are being cheated out of what little existence we have. Time is something that is precious to us. We live to be real in the sacred moment.
As Realists, we do not use repetition to convince people to believe false information on FAITH . Our message, is to spend time dwelling on reality. Thinking about reality and coming up with new ideas is healing to the mind. It pushes out the dogma and reprograms the brain to think in a healthy way. We want people to spend their mental time wondering about things, questioning things to test if they are real. And that is the distinction between reality and blind faith religion. Cults PROHIBIT QUESTIONING , THINKING , DOUBT , and SCRUTINY . They are not intellectually accountable. Their belief systems fall apart when subjected to REASON. If what we believe in falls apart, we learn from that and fix our mistakes. .
Becoming Cult Immune
How does one immunize oneself from becoming a cult member? If you are not in a cult now, how can you prevent yourself from becoming a member of a cult in the future? How can you harden your mind from being exploited by those who are experts at hacking into your brain and exploiting you? There are a number of things that you can do to help cult-proof your mind.
First of all, to keep from being swept away in the sea of FICTIONAL RELIGIONS , you have to find something firm that you can hang on to. I suggest there is but one choice, and that choice is REALITY . Reality is like a lighthouse that doesn't go away once you stop believing in it. It leads you back out of the insanity and it is always there for you. By reality I am talking about real reality.
making a personal commitment to reality and spending time thinking about reality is the best way to keep the cults from owning you.
The ego is a point of vulnerability. People develop a sense of self-importance that leads to a habit of wanting praise. Praise makes you subject to blame since they go hand in hand. That's why we have the Sacred Principle of Humility, so that we don't forget that we live on a planet that is a mere speck of dust in the universe, and that no one is all that important. By being a humble person, one is not easily hooked by ego treats and seduced to the grandeur of their imagined purpose in life. I believe one should assume that the reason they exist is pure chance and that they weren't sent here for any purpose whatsoever. I exist solely because my parents happened to have sex and I was the lucky sperm that got to the egg first. If any little thing had been different, I wouldn't be here.
I believe that reprogramming your brain into reality-based thinking will help keep the cults out. Developing mental habits of wondering about everything and the purification of truth through scrutiny are good mental habits. These things make the mind stronger and less easily suckered. The more you are Real in the Sacred moment, the less likely you are going to end up at a Moonie mass wedding, or mass suicide, or sending your kids into battle to die for a fraudulent war. As long as you keep it real, the cults shouldn't be able to get to you.
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