↑ It’s not that smart people aren’t capable of believing in cultish things, it’s that smart people are better at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.
- “Language change is always reflective of social change, and over the decades, as our sources of connection and existential purpose have shifted due to phenomena like social media, increased globalization, and withdrawal from traditional religion, we’ve seen the rise of more alternative subgroups”
- "The Cult of Trump describes an “influence continuum representing groups from healthy and constructive to unhealthy and destructive. Hasan says that groups toward the destructive end use three kinds of deception: omission of what you need to know, distortion to make whatever they’re saying more acceptable, and outright lies.”
- "An ethical group will be up-front about what they believe in, what they want from you, and what they expect from your membership. And leaving comes with few, if any, serious consequences"
- "Our nomadic hunter-gatherer ancestors used to pack their village squares to engage in ritualistic dances, though there was no practical need for them. Modern citizens of countries like Denmark and Canada, whose governments prioritize community connection (through high-quality public transportation, neighborhood co-ops, etc.) self-report higher degrees of satisfaction and fulfillment. All kinds of research points to the idea that humans are social and spiritual by design. Our behavior is driven by a desire for belonging and purpose. We’re “cultish” by nature."
- Interesting to think about the advent of niche political/social groups even as a function of urban planning and design → how does urban design lend itself not only to the individualistic qualities of people but to which kinds/archetypes of people develop meaningful connections?
- Burton, a theologian, reporter, and author of Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World. → “Remixed” describes the tendency of contemporary seekers to mix and match beliefs and rituals from different circles (religious and secular) to come up with a bespoke spiritual routine
- “The Harvard Divinity School study named SoulCycle and CrossFit among the groups giving America’s youth a modern religious identity. ‘It gives you what religion gives you, which is the feeling that your life matters….the cynicism we have now is almost antihuman. We need to feel connected to something, like we’re put on earth for a reason other than just dying. At SoulCycle, for forty-five minutes, I feel that’” (quote from 26 y/o actress and SoulCycle enthusiast living in LA)
- Things like SoulCycle make the grand “search for purpose” addictive and accessible because of how easily/neatly packaged it is. It’s easy to commit, it’s short, it’s easy to leave, and it influences you quick and fast, rather than being something you have to manually extract value out of.
- Less about what religions are and more about what religions do → provide (1) meaning, (2) purpose, (3) a sense of community, and (4) ritual
- Easier and easier for people to not find these things at Church → kind of reminds me of conversation Noa and I were having about practice vs. belief based religions
- "For most of America’s history, there were comparatively few directions a person’s career, hobbies, place of residence, romantic relationships, diet, aesthetic—everything—could easily go in."
- "The sheer quantity can be paralyzing, especially in an era of radical self-creation, where there’s such pressure to craft a strong “personal brand” at the very same time that morale and basic survival feel more precarious for young people than they have in a long time"
- The idea of living in an era of radical self-creation resonates with me very strongly because it relates back to the idea of being insecure about “building my personal brand” → value in being a generalist vs specialist. But there’s even an addiction to the idea of being your own special sort of generalist → search for “uniqueness” in the combination of skills you have (your broader niche) vs uniqueness in the singular skill you excel at.
- "Following a guru who provides an identity template—from one’s politics to one’s hairstyle—eases that chooser’s paradox. This concept can be applied to spiritual extremists like Scientologists and 3HO members, but also to loyalists of social media celebrities and ‘cult brands’ like Lululemon or Glossier. Just being about to say ‘I’m a Glossier girl’ or ‘I follow Dr. Joe Dispense’ softens the burden and responsibility of having to make so many independent choices about what you think and who you are. It cuts the overwhelming number of answers you need to have own to a manageable few. You can simply ask ‘What would a Glossier girl do?’ And base your day’s decisions—your perfume, your news sources, all of it—on that framework"
- "Society’s attraction to so-called cults (both the propensity to join them and the anthropological fascination with them) tends to thrive during periods of broader existential questioning. most alternative religious leaders come to power not to exploit their followers, but instead to guide them through social and political turbulence."
- 4th Great Awakening in America in 1960s & 70s → Vietnam War, Civil Rights Movement, both Kennedy assassinations. At this time, U.S. was very unsteady in it’s belief (almost ideologically nascent because of the turbulence of faith/hope/policy/dread). Spiritual practice spiking at this time, but the overt reign of traditional Protestantism was declining, so new movements arose to “quench that cultural thirst”
- Includes everything from Christian offshoots like Jews for Jesus and the Children of God to Eastern-derived fellowships like 3HO and Shambhala Buddhism to pagan groups like the Covenant of the Goddess and the Church of Aphrodite to sci-fi-esque ones like Scientology and Heaven’s Gate
- "What’s new is that in this internet-ruled age, when a guru can be godless, when the barrier to entry is as low as a double-tap, and when folks who hold alternative beliefs are able to find one another more easily than ever"
- the facelessness + anonymity of breaking the initial “barrier to entry,” which is basically non-existent, mentality of it doesn’t hurt to try prevails and sucks people in. more often than not, you don’t realize what you’re sacrificing by subscribing because you don’t have any upfront costs. doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try different things, but you should be very wary of the belief system + organizational structures of organizations that promise things that may seem too good to be true
- "The result of all these institutions is the same: a power imbalance built on members’ devotion, hero worship, and absolute trust, which frequently facilitates abuse on the part of unaccountable leaders. The glue that keeps this trust intact is members’ belief that their leaders have a rare access to transcendent wisdom, which allows them to exercise control over their systems of rewards and punishments."
- More often than not, it seems as though justification stems from people/members wanting to avoid regret and/or face ramifications of their decisions that led them to be as deep in a community as they are and avoid coming to terms with lost money and lost time. but it’s a sunk cost fallacy. In modern religions and cult-like groups, I think that people justify the actions of their leaders in order to justify why they are so deeply subscribed to or dependent on a belief system in the first place.
- "If the boundaries between cult and religion are already slippery, those between religion and culture are more porous still"
- "A linguistic concept called the theory of performativity says that language does not simply describe or reflect who we are, it creates who we are. That’s because speech itself has the capacity to consummate actions, thus exhibiting a level of intrinsic power (making a promise, performing a wedding ceremony, or pronouncing a legal sentence). When repetitive, speech has meaningful, consequential power to construct and constrain our reality."
- "Thought terminating cliches also pervade our everyday conversations: expressions like 'it is what it is,' 'boys will be boys,' 'everything happens for a reason,' 'it’s all God’s plan,' and 'don’t think about it too hard' are all common examples."
- "The behavioral economic theory of loss aversion says that human beings generally feel losses (of time, money, pride, etc.) much more acutely than gains: so psychologically, we’re willing to do a lot of work to avoid looking defeats in the eye. Irrationally, we tend to stay in negative situations, from crappy relationships to lousy investments to cults, telling ourselves that a win is just around the corner, so we don’t have to admit to ourselves that things just didn’t work out and we should cut our losses"
- "An unshocking 2018 poll by the Multiple Chronic Conditions Resource Center found that 81% of American millennials are unsatisfied with their healthcare experience, due to everything from high insurance costs to institutional race and gender bias"
- also U.S. lack of public fitness programs (ex. Japan radio calisthenics broadcasts) → clear why younger Americans take health into their own hands + seek community through it
- combining this withdrawal from mainstream preventative medicine and frequent disillusionment/confusion around faith, especially structured faith and it’s constraints, cult fitness exploded to fill these corporeal and spiritual voids
- it’s when elements of belonging, self-worth, and empowerment enter the picture that members are moved to renew their fitness memberships year after year → "language is the glue that binds that “addictive” combo of community and motivation"
- "It’s not that smart people aren’t capable of believing in cultish things, it’s that smart people are better at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons"
- “Akin to a horoscope, QAnon’s generic posts allow participants to convince themselves that they’re being spoken to uniquely—like this community singularly holds the answers to the world’s suffering—all the while camouflaging the fact that a unified belief system doesn’t actually exist”
- "There’s a religious power in quote-grams that far predates social media...comes from the Protestant Reformation, when there was a big shift in focus away from religious imagery and onto text. the Protestant valuing of the Bible made it a much more text-based religion, and ever since, our culture has looked to snack-size proverbs for guidance and gospel, convinced that when it comes to written quotes, what you read is what you get"
- "In a sense, we can’t even claim to be growing “less religious” when social media’s job is explicitly to generate ideological sects, to pack people’s feeds with suggested content that only exaggerates what they already believe"
- "In the book Strange Rites, Tara Isabella Burton writes 'America is not secular but simply spiritually self-focused'"
- Review of Cultish by The Atlantic: "I know more people who worship at the altar of Peloton than I do who go to church. And with anything that engenders devotion and financial commitment alike, there’s space for exploitation to occur"