So that works if it's possible to actually reach the person and the family agrees that they need help to get out. What if the family is part of the problem or is tricked? (I recently read https://elan.school/ about this unimaginably horrible Kids for Cash-like scheme/cult. The only thing I can think of to prevent such things would be to get parents, teachers, lawmakers and social workers to read those stories too.)
Dude you can't just drop a link like that without warning how deep the rabbit hole goes.
You posted this 5 hours ago. It's 2am here and I'm still reading from just a few minutes after you posted. This is a horrifying train wreck of a story, I can't look away. It's unbelievable these things went on for so long!
Same, I would love this as a quirky detective-type series. There's something very adorable about the man buying himself a bright green parrot to comfort himself that he must not be very good at his job if he can't convince someone to leave an enema-cult (I swear, that reads like something out of some author I love but I can't think of the name). But also the amount of love and empathy it'd take to do this kind of work, and also almost private-investigator-type scheming (taking the tour through the religious library and passing by the eastern spirituality section to establish a common ground and level of trust) just adds so many layers
Trying to read this to the end feels impossible - the Guardian keeps flicking the page to show ads and the page refreshes for no reason and I’m sure their ads impressions numbers are going through the roof. Feels like ad fraud.
Some pull quotes, since people seem to be struggling with page loading:
> his client, a woman who had recently finished her master’s at a prestigious university, had been drawn into a scam job. It was essentially a pyramid scheme built around a health regimen. Before you could sell it, you had to try it, so you knew what you were selling.
> The regimen? Multiple enemas a day. “It escalated to 40 to 60 enemas a day,”
> All groups have a rhythm, like a pulse across the calendar year. We have holidays, and we have tax season. There are highs and lows.
> Furthermore, Kelly and Ryan urge their clients not to speak with the media. The firmest “no” I ever got was when I asked Ryan if I could speak to a former client.
> One of their cases in the 90s involved a cult leader who was systematically sexually assaulting the group’s members. [NB: do you have any idea how little that narrows it down]
> the girl’s uncle, their client, had a very difficult time finding anything positive about the group or the leader who had allegedly raped his niece
> What Kelly and Ryan mean when they say these groups are “offering something” to people, it is exactly that. There is a hole a group fills: alienation from community, family, sexuality; pressure to follow a certain life plan, addiction, unrealized spirituality, economic catastrophe – all reasons to join a group
Interesting read. Framing things as a "cultic relationship" makes a lot of sense to me. The part about using your experience as a basis of truth determination being flawed and a source of vulnerability also was pretty insightful.
I'm a little surprised by mention of pushback and accusations of being cult apologists, only because what they're describing as their method is pretty similar in principle to some widespread and empirically validated therapies for more common things. It's just much more invasive, to understate things. I guess at some point there are probably basic immediate safety issues that arise, where taking time has its own risks.
The piece left me thinking that the reasons people become involved with and attached to cults might not be different at some fundamental level from a lot of other psychological problems they get themselves in — just a matter of degree or pervasiveness.
I’d strongly recommend the documentary “Behind the Curve”. The close look at people in (not quite a cult) gave me a visceral appreciation for what draws people to it (it provides acceptance for people who sorely lack it) and why it can be so hard to leave (one’s identity becomes so tied up in it).
I went down the rabbit hole of researching both cults and deprogramming groups a few years ago and one of the things which I found remarkable was how much overlap in methods there was between the two. Different groups go to different extremes, but the overlap between the two is such that in many cases they can only be distinguished using social context, and in some cases I am pretty sure the deprogramming groups are in fact cults masquerading as groups to help former cult members because those make the best members for new cults.
Interesting space. I'm glad I don't have any personal reason to be involved.
I recently read the book "Combatting Cult Mind Control" by Steven Hassan, a professional who also helps people leave cults. His approach isn't as much of a "long game" as Ryan and Kelly's approach. One thing that Hassan explains is that MLMs are often very similar to cults, and he also explains the difference between cults and religion.
Another book to read is The Running Grave by Robert Galabraith (pen name for J.K. Rownling.) One of the detectives joins a cult to try and get someone out. The book is well researched and gives an insider's view of a cult.
The best thing I have ever read on this subject is https://harpers.org/archive/2013/11/the-man-who-saves-you-fr... - it is a truly wild ride, profiling David Sullivan, a private investigator who specialized in helping people get their loved ones out of cults and was based in the San Francisco Bay Area for many years.
Fantastic article. And their "light touch" approach seems very correct.
Now --
What counts as a cult?
One sufficient condition, in my opinion, would be ritualized sexual abuse, especially of children.
But this is baked even into several mainstream religions, if you only open your eyes.
What is good, at least, is that, like viruses, cults/religions generally evolve to be less harmful to their hosts over time. (This is over time scales of multiple human generations. Within a single generation, a cult may do just the opposite, as it becomes marginalized from society and increasingly normalizes deviance, e.g. Aum reacting to humiliation in Japanese elections by releasing Sarin.)
Examples of this "taming" process: Flayed prisoners of the Aztecs are now dancing skeletons, "local color", used in America to sell tacos. Likewise the Abrahamic religions are an evolution of animal sacrifice cults, themselves echoing earlier human sacrifice cults; they are still shaking off frankly-insane practices, but could be worse. The history of LDS provides a less dramatic example, but one recent-enough that early stages are still well-documented in the historical record.
And if all this sounds New Atheistic, note that I am actually quite sympathetic to (almost apologetic for) certain aspects of religion (though I increasingly do wonder whether it is religions that teach goodness, or whether it is goodness that religions must attach themselves to for legitimacy, mixing it with other content). (For example I have pushed back, here, against characterizations of Christianity as "right wing", as that is not at all the content of the New Testament.)
One thing is certain: If a religious identity has bound itself to a person, then attacking the person will only strengthen the identity. The memetic parasite and the human victim must be clearly distinguished. Failure to do this results in violence against people which only strengths the meme. Blood for the blood god.
I suspect many of these memes can be tamed to the point of decency over multiple generations. Though they always carry the risk of reversion to older forms. Somehow the "DNA" is still there. So I'm not sure. They have to be stabilized to their nondestructive manifestations.
I also wonder about "non-religious" cult dynamics, e.g. those attached to political movements (both MAGA and woke), or financial/moral/credit systems, e.g. crypto.
One of my concerns also is the way that Silicon Valley leaders may study these methods not to defend against them but to exercise them in the formation of totalizing company cultures. Theil and Karp have been explicit about this. It distresses me: You should read about the scapegoat mechanism to destroy it, not to start using it.
cult (noun): A religion or religious sect generally considered to be extremist or false, with its followers often living in an unconventional manner under the guidance of an authoritarian, charismatic leader -- American Heritage Dictionary
Without the "generally considered to be extremist or false" it would be quite hard to even identify a cult. It's mostly used as way to slur a disfavored group. It's an element of a Russell conjugation, like I am part of a spiritual awakening, you belong to a religious sect, they are in a mind-control cult.
I was raised as a Jew. I consider that to be a cult, if one of the milder religious ones. My peewee football team was a cult. I belonged to a cultic political party, and worked for a startup that closely met the definition.
So getting someone to leave a cult is going to be the same as getting them to forsake any other community, just with the added coercion of social acceptability. There's no magic, no brain unwashing, it's the same kind of persuasion used to sell a vacuum cleaner.
> Without the "generally considered to be extremist or false" it would be quite hard to even identify a cult.
The extremism is an integral part of what makes folks regard something a cult. Would anyone have cared that NXIVM was running dodgy self-improvement seminars upstate, if they hadn't also been coercing and branding women?
> I consider that to be a cult, if one of the milder religious ones
Various sects within the various organised religions certainly qualify as cults. I think a fair case could be made for many of the milder ones as well, on the basis of how they tend to treat women/children/etc (restrictive rules about clothing/education/personal-freedom/etc)
Minor thing, but I prefer ‘cultish’ to ‘cultic’ for your usage. In academia, ‘cultic’ means anything to do with worship and lacks the association with cults as discussed in this thread, whereas ‘cultish’ is how I usually see people adjectivize ‘cult’ in the way you are doing.
> It's mostly used as way to slur a disfavored group.
I generally agree. The divide between religion and cult is just a distinction between what's deemed acceptable behavior by society. Obsessing over a person who died thousands of years ago? Totally "normal." Obsessing over a single living person? Totally a cult.
This is not a useful definition of a cult, though it is a short one.
The primary characteristic of a cult is that adherents find it difficult to leave, not because of the specific beliefs of the religion (e.g. Islam) but because of the mechanism of control.
"Unconventional manner" doesn't really cut it.
The key definition of a contemporary cult from the perspective of someone who has seen people join one is that the cult turns people inward to the cult and encourages them to cut off not just friends who question their belief but ultimately all non-cult friends and family.
In fact you could argue that the primary quality of a mainstream religion is that it points itself outwards towards non-believers and does not condition receiving its care on belief itself.
For example, the Unification Church is on a slow trajectory towards mainstream religion. The University Bible Fellowship, absolutely a cult and quite a scary one, is not on that trajectory.
I think most definitions of cults are too brief. To truly be a cult I reflect on the cults I've read about.
For example, cults have a tendency to make members feel safer as members of the cult, which can be done by making "outsiders" seem hostile and "insiders" seem safe: see for example Mormons and Jehovah's witnesses sending people out to bother people door to door, which results in them getting yelled at by non Mormons.
Cults often require one's entire social circle to be cult members. This comes with the threat of total social isolation from friends and loved ones if you fall out of the cult and are made incommunicado. Thus while I like to cheekily refer to religions as cults, most major religions these days don't fall into this category in this highly diversified world.
Why did the original post for which these are the discussions disappear from HN?
I cannot even find it with a word search and it should not have been displaced from the top 30 yet.
I posit that those podcasters and streamers in the modern media environment are like cult leaders. It's a spectrum from journalist to entertainer to cult leader and we're tilting more towards the latter. The market finds a way.
36 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 58.9 ms ] threadYou posted this 5 hours ago. It's 2am here and I'm still reading from just a few minutes after you posted. This is a horrifying train wreck of a story, I can't look away. It's unbelievable these things went on for so long!
> his client, a woman who had recently finished her master’s at a prestigious university, had been drawn into a scam job. It was essentially a pyramid scheme built around a health regimen. Before you could sell it, you had to try it, so you knew what you were selling.
> The regimen? Multiple enemas a day. “It escalated to 40 to 60 enemas a day,”
> All groups have a rhythm, like a pulse across the calendar year. We have holidays, and we have tax season. There are highs and lows.
> Furthermore, Kelly and Ryan urge their clients not to speak with the media. The firmest “no” I ever got was when I asked Ryan if I could speak to a former client.
> One of their cases in the 90s involved a cult leader who was systematically sexually assaulting the group’s members. [NB: do you have any idea how little that narrows it down]
> the girl’s uncle, their client, had a very difficult time finding anything positive about the group or the leader who had allegedly raped his niece
> What Kelly and Ryan mean when they say these groups are “offering something” to people, it is exactly that. There is a hole a group fills: alienation from community, family, sexuality; pressure to follow a certain life plan, addiction, unrealized spirituality, economic catastrophe – all reasons to join a group
I'm a little surprised by mention of pushback and accusations of being cult apologists, only because what they're describing as their method is pretty similar in principle to some widespread and empirically validated therapies for more common things. It's just much more invasive, to understate things. I guess at some point there are probably basic immediate safety issues that arise, where taking time has its own risks.
The piece left me thinking that the reasons people become involved with and attached to cults might not be different at some fundamental level from a lot of other psychological problems they get themselves in — just a matter of degree or pervasiveness.
Interesting space. I'm glad I don't have any personal reason to be involved.
I recently read the book "Combatting Cult Mind Control" by Steven Hassan, a professional who also helps people leave cults. His approach isn't as much of a "long game" as Ryan and Kelly's approach. One thing that Hassan explains is that MLMs are often very similar to cults, and he also explains the difference between cults and religion.
Another book to read is The Running Grave by Robert Galabraith (pen name for J.K. Rownling.) One of the detectives joins a cult to try and get someone out. The book is well researched and gives an insider's view of a cult.
sounds interesting, can you please summarize it, if possible?
The Man Who Saves You from Yourself (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7903938 - June 2014 (139 comments)
Now --
What counts as a cult?
One sufficient condition, in my opinion, would be ritualized sexual abuse, especially of children.
But this is baked even into several mainstream religions, if you only open your eyes.
What is good, at least, is that, like viruses, cults/religions generally evolve to be less harmful to their hosts over time. (This is over time scales of multiple human generations. Within a single generation, a cult may do just the opposite, as it becomes marginalized from society and increasingly normalizes deviance, e.g. Aum reacting to humiliation in Japanese elections by releasing Sarin.)
Examples of this "taming" process: Flayed prisoners of the Aztecs are now dancing skeletons, "local color", used in America to sell tacos. Likewise the Abrahamic religions are an evolution of animal sacrifice cults, themselves echoing earlier human sacrifice cults; they are still shaking off frankly-insane practices, but could be worse. The history of LDS provides a less dramatic example, but one recent-enough that early stages are still well-documented in the historical record.
And if all this sounds New Atheistic, note that I am actually quite sympathetic to (almost apologetic for) certain aspects of religion (though I increasingly do wonder whether it is religions that teach goodness, or whether it is goodness that religions must attach themselves to for legitimacy, mixing it with other content). (For example I have pushed back, here, against characterizations of Christianity as "right wing", as that is not at all the content of the New Testament.)
One thing is certain: If a religious identity has bound itself to a person, then attacking the person will only strengthen the identity. The memetic parasite and the human victim must be clearly distinguished. Failure to do this results in violence against people which only strengths the meme. Blood for the blood god.
I suspect many of these memes can be tamed to the point of decency over multiple generations. Though they always carry the risk of reversion to older forms. Somehow the "DNA" is still there. So I'm not sure. They have to be stabilized to their nondestructive manifestations.
I also wonder about "non-religious" cult dynamics, e.g. those attached to political movements (both MAGA and woke), or financial/moral/credit systems, e.g. crypto.
One of my concerns also is the way that Silicon Valley leaders may study these methods not to defend against them but to exercise them in the formation of totalizing company cultures. Theil and Karp have been explicit about this. It distresses me: You should read about the scapegoat mechanism to destroy it, not to start using it.
I was raised as a Jew. I consider that to be a cult, if one of the milder religious ones. My peewee football team was a cult. I belonged to a cultic political party, and worked for a startup that closely met the definition.
So getting someone to leave a cult is going to be the same as getting them to forsake any other community, just with the added coercion of social acceptability. There's no magic, no brain unwashing, it's the same kind of persuasion used to sell a vacuum cleaner.
The extremism is an integral part of what makes folks regard something a cult. Would anyone have cared that NXIVM was running dodgy self-improvement seminars upstate, if they hadn't also been coercing and branding women?
> I consider that to be a cult, if one of the milder religious ones
Various sects within the various organised religions certainly qualify as cults. I think a fair case could be made for many of the milder ones as well, on the basis of how they tend to treat women/children/etc (restrictive rules about clothing/education/personal-freedom/etc)
Minor thing, but I prefer ‘cultish’ to ‘cultic’ for your usage. In academia, ‘cultic’ means anything to do with worship and lacks the association with cults as discussed in this thread, whereas ‘cultish’ is how I usually see people adjectivize ‘cult’ in the way you are doing.
I generally agree. The divide between religion and cult is just a distinction between what's deemed acceptable behavior by society. Obsessing over a person who died thousands of years ago? Totally "normal." Obsessing over a single living person? Totally a cult.
The primary characteristic of a cult is that adherents find it difficult to leave, not because of the specific beliefs of the religion (e.g. Islam) but because of the mechanism of control.
"Unconventional manner" doesn't really cut it.
The key definition of a contemporary cult from the perspective of someone who has seen people join one is that the cult turns people inward to the cult and encourages them to cut off not just friends who question their belief but ultimately all non-cult friends and family.
In fact you could argue that the primary quality of a mainstream religion is that it points itself outwards towards non-believers and does not condition receiving its care on belief itself.
For example, the Unification Church is on a slow trajectory towards mainstream religion. The University Bible Fellowship, absolutely a cult and quite a scary one, is not on that trajectory.
For example, cults have a tendency to make members feel safer as members of the cult, which can be done by making "outsiders" seem hostile and "insiders" seem safe: see for example Mormons and Jehovah's witnesses sending people out to bother people door to door, which results in them getting yelled at by non Mormons.
Cults often require one's entire social circle to be cult members. This comes with the threat of total social isolation from friends and loved ones if you fall out of the cult and are made incommunicado. Thus while I like to cheekily refer to religions as cults, most major religions these days don't fall into this category in this highly diversified world.
HN:
- asks you to self-assign a new name upon joining
- has a leader
- has a hierarchy (rating system)
- esteemed texts which promise by adopting a strange method (Lisp) that you can achieve higher levels of wealth and self actualization
should I be worried?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xxgRUyzgs0