On the world stage right now, I’m seeing cult-like dynamics play out that I know well from having spent 12 consecutive years in 2 consecutive cults. I have first-hand experience of the damage that cults bring to a person’s psyche and their lives and communities. That is happening now en masse through micro-targeting via increasingly intelligent advertisement-optimizing social media algorithms. Our psycho-social vulnerabilities are hacked, creating devastating confusion and taking the war tactic of divide and conquer to its max. (Jaron Lanier describes this in Ten Arguments to Delete Your Social Media Today.)
I also have hard-earned knowledge of what types of circumstances lead people to getting pulled into the orbit of these manipulative cult dynamics. I devoted most of my 20s and half of my 30s to abusive cult leaders. I have lost many loved ones to cults. After leaving the second, I starting getting curious. What had made me vulnerable? What were the tactics employed? And how can I build resilience to these tactics so that this time was the last time I succumbed to them?
There’s a lot to unpack there.
This post is about why I care.
One of the primary vulnerabilities I have seen is when we decide to stop actively applying the gifts of rationality. It might be for valid reasons. We’re overwhelmed at trying to balance all the things amidst a global pandemic that never had to get this bad, and climate collapse that threatens life on Earth. Whatever the reason though, at the point that we shut down, bad actors can swoop in and prey on our goodwill and our best intentions. If we are unwilling to engage rationally, then our innocence and our sincerity is wielded as a tool against our communities and our best interest.
I’ll keep writing about this and exploring how to discuss it, because it’s core to my motivation here. There are people I love who are still trapped in these cult spaces, and because of the nature of cults, they are not allowed to engage with me.
What I am interested in doing is to provide safe and non-judgemental resources for people who have found themselves entrapped in the snares of manipulation and wake up as if from a daze to a desire to get extricated.
Compelling to me is this tenet of integral theory: that when a collective is faced with new complexity, it will either evolve into the next stage of development, or it will revert to earlier stages and lose gains. It’s easy to see that we are currently at such a moment. The risk of reverting is real, and we see it all around us.
Was everything perfect? No, definitely not. Rather than being about going back, it’s about continuing to move forward. Continuously improving. Staying with it. Taking a rest and then getting up again to keep connecting with our values and aligning our actions with the outcomes we wish to see.
We need each other.
Let’s engage together.