How To Spot A Cult: 5 Warning Signs
Could you recognize a cult? What are the common ways that a cult recruits members? Here are five warning signs to help you identify a cult.
Have you ever joined a cult? Or have you ever followed someone because they had a magnetic personality? Here are five warning signs to help you spot a cult.
What Is A Cult?
A cult refers to people who are part of a group that holds uncommon beliefs.
A cult incorporates rituals to make the members believe they are part of a chosen group. A cult uses psychological strategies such as love bombing, isolation, and fear manipulation to recruit and retain its members. A cult is often built around a cult of personality.
By combining all these aspects, a cult effectively disassociates its members from reality. Cult members then begin to believe in magical thinking. This allows the cult to gain control over its members.
1. Common Types Of Cults
A cult can be built around mostly anything. One of the easiest ways to recognize a cult is that it breaks the world down into black and white.
This is easily seen in politics, where both sides attack each other and believe that the opposite side is evil. It can be found in spiritual leaders who choose to sway from doctrine.
Cults can be found in pop culture. An organization, group, or leader may popularize or recreate an old belief for the current age. The cult leader does this because they genuinely believe in it. The leader may want to make money from it. Or, the cult leaders view it as a way to acquire a following and gain power.
Cults of personality can be built around media personalities, social media influencers, and politicians. These individuals possess magnetic personalities. They are masters of persuasion. They understand the human psyche and are skilled in manipulating human psychology. These charming personalities use their skills to build a following and exert influence, often leading their followers into a cult-like devotion.
Get-rich-quick-schemes are also cults. They understand that it is human nature to be greedy. Get rich-quick schemes provide an easy solution to attain wealth, which is unrealistic. The simple solution attracts people who do not want to learn the complexities and life lessons of owning a business.
2. How To Identify A Cult Leader
A cult is always under the sway of a leader. The cult leader often exudes energy, charisma, and a mastery of persuasion. The leader likely has dark triad traits that attract people to them: narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism.
The cult leader then creates a series of rituals to coerce and manipulate inductees and group members to remain in the cult. Once the leader has members who believe in the cult's beliefs, the members help reinforce and add significant peer pressure on others to stay in the cult.
The cult's existence is intricately tied to the life of its founder. When the founder dies, the cult's structure and influence end.
3. Rituals
A cult has its own rituals and initiation process. A cult often has formal requirements for membership. After initiation, the cult members gather regularly to reinforce their beliefs. This is an opportunity for the cult leader to emotionally manipulate the group members. These speeches serve to reenergize the group and retain membership. The cult leader continues using psychological manipulation techniques to keep people in the cult.
My Amway Experience
When I was in college, I attended a young professional happy hour. While at the event, I met a young professional who told me he was an independent business owner. He invited me to meet him for coffee so he could give me a book. The book was Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Following getting coffee, he invited me to join a meeting to hear the pitch for Amway in a group setting. The highest-level Amway member in the region spoke to the group at the meeting. After joining Amway, you receive books, recordings, and videos of Amway’s holy texts to keep you in the MLM.
Amway blurs the line by confusing people with what being a business owner means. Rather than Amway members creating a business, they are middlemen with Amway stores to sell the company’s products. This is intrapreneurship, not entrepreneurship. There is then the whole pyramid-scheme element of recruiting others to move up in the various levels to make monthly income.
The element of truth Amway introduces people to is the ESBI model. Robert Kiyosaki is responsible for creating the ESBI model. Kiyosaki explains the four ways to make and generate income in his book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. The four quadrants of the ESBI Model are employee, self-employed, business owner, and investor.
The employed and self-employed models are active income. You actively trade your time for money as an employee or being self-employed. You will not make an income if you do not show up for work or choose not to work.
In contrast, in the business and investment models, you find ways to make your money work for you. These are passive incomes.
The business owner has people create products or services. The business owner can then sell those products or services to generate revenue and profit on each product sold.
By investing, you can earn income passively from interest in a high-yield savings account. You could invest in dividend stocks. You could own other financial assets, such as real estate, that you rent to a renter and make a profit from each month.
4. Prey On Human Desires
Cults prey upon a natural range of human desires. Certain desires are stronger in one individual, while someone else may have another yearning.
A person may want to believe they are special. Cults appeal to this desire by telling someone by joining they are part of a select group of people. Anyone outside is not part of the chosen group. The person has access to special knowledge that outsiders do not have.
People naturally desire sex, love, and belonging. Certain cults incorporate sex into their rituals. Or a cult promises that you will find your twin flame or the love of your life. A cult promises that by joining, you will find belonging. You will be part of a community seeking the same things from life as you.
Cults prey upon human's natural instinct to be fearful. This is seen with Doomsday and other cults that predict the world's end.
Cults also prey on happiness. Everyone wants to be happy. Happiness means different things to different people. The vagueness of happiness allows cults to attract people seeking what they believe will bring them joy. It could be wanting to become rich. It could be seeking spiritual enlightenment. It could be a desire to have special knowledge.
5. Psychological Tactics
Cults employ a range of insidious psychological tactics to ensnare and maintain members.
Confusion is a deliberate tool cults use to sow doubt in their members. By intentionally keeping things unclear, the cult disorients members. By deliberately making it difficult to find clear answers, cult members become dependent on the cult. The answers are kept out of reach and can only be found by moving up the ladder within the cult.
Cults use the psychological tactics of ignoring members to make the person believe that it is their fault. By avoiding a person, the cult gains more power of them. It is a psychological power maneuver. The person then blames themselves and becomes stuck. This results in the person becoming more reliant on the cult's teachings and leader.
Isolation is a cruel and manipulative tactic used by cults. CUlts compel members to meet in nonpublic places. Cults forbid them from sharing information with outsiders. This enforced loneliness is a form of psychological abuse. It further draws the members to seek answers from the cult and the cult leader.
Cults utilize social pressure from their true believers to recruit and retain members. By creating a sense of belonging and community, the cult makes individuals feel safer and more inclined to conform to its beliefs. Some who join may never want to leave. They think they have special knowledge and are among a chosen group.
How To Avoid Joining A Cult
There are simple methods that you can use to prevent yourself from joining a cult.
First, empower yourself with your critical thinking skills. If something sounds too good to be true or the teachings seem bizarre, it's likely a cult. Trust your instincts and your discernment.
Second, if you are still unsure. Do your research. Investigate and look into the leader. You can look further into the teachings to see if they make sense. You can then arrive at your own conclusion about whether or not it is a cult.
Third, learn cults' subtle psychological techniques to attract and gain members. These psychological strategies are also used outside of cults. By learning more about human psychology, you can be aware of
Fourth, be self-confident. Stop allowing yourself to be pushed around by others. Do not join out of peer pressure. Stand up for yourself.
Fifth, embrace the power of saying 'no'. By saying 'no,' you could save yourself from spending days to years in a cult. Learning to say 'no' is a critical life skill. Saying 'no' is a powerful tool that saves you time, energy, attention, and money.
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Summary
Cults spring up, luring people with the charisma of their leader. The promises of a cult resonate with fundamental human desires and emotions. With their profound understanding of human psychology, Cults can keep members within their grasp. When the charismatic leader departs, the cult often disintegrates. Think critically and avoid being recruited into joining a cult.
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