The Psychology of Belief: How to start a Cult, and other useful life tips.

Forgive the lack of updates, my last entry seemed to push a former friends buttons, so much that she did the sensible, and level headed thing and unfriended me on every medium possible and posted it to Reddit in an attempt to garner internet lynch mob from twoXchromosomes. Sadly (for her) her attempts to prove the validity of the post itself by damseling her hardest for a mob of white knights, failed. So... better luck next time V. I won’t miss you.

This left me to leave my blog for a while until the internet moved on to other things and it could be a sleepy little dumping ground for my random musings.

So! On with the proverbial show:

The Psychology of Belief: How to start a Cult, and other useful life tips.

Most people who hear “Psychology” will immediately think of Sigmund Freud, a rather clever fellow (for his time) but he did come up with some wacky stuff. One of the major criticisms of his theories are that they are “Unfalsifiable” a word so underused that it causes red wavy lines to appear on my word processing software.

Essentially it boils down to this; Sigmund sits you on his long couch and listens to you speak, and using his mighty analytical mind, informs you that your problems stem from subconscious desire to murder your father and claim your mother as your sexual partner (or murder your mother to claim your father if you happen to be a bearer of the lady-bits). You of course deny this quite strongly, with good cause, at which point Frued will drop this bombshell: “Ah but you see, one of ze symptoms of ze mental illness is your stronk denial, you must seek to be overcomink zis denial and bring ze subconscious desires into ze conscious mind, otherwise zhey may not be resolved!”

See how clever this is? Frued essentially claims to know your mind better then you do, and if you contradict him, BOOM he adds a diagnoses of “denial” to your mental illness checklist. Your only way out is to submit to his diagnosis and follow his instructions, otherwise you spend the rest of your life with a diagnosis of a Oedipus/Electra complex on top of your obviously staggering case of “denial”

Essentially, this is how you start a cult. And yes I am grossly oversimplifying, but allow me to explain.

You need three things, danger, absolution, and deferral of responsibility. It’s a powerful trio that plugs into some of the strongest psychological responses we have. Fear of the unknown, a desire for social acceptance, and the need to avoid cognitive dissonance (the discomfort that manifests when you have to entertain two ideas at the same time that you know are contradicting, but are also both true. For example, you know cigarettes are bad for you, but you also know you want a cigarette).

So to start your cult, you need to establish the source of the fear, the “Danger” that has been mentioned above. Hell, Satan, Reincarnation as a Dung Beetle, Communism, The Patriarchy, The Boogieman, Krampus, Capitalism, Fascism, high BMI index, the Illuminati, and so on, and so forth. It needs to be something that is prevalent or omnipresent, and also something that cannot be faced directly. An enemy that can be overcome easily will not sustain your cult, people will simply slay your boogieman and move on, it needs to be pervasive, enduring, and as impossible to confront directly as a fart is to a sword fighter. This level of prevalent (but not urgent) threat will stay in the minds of your followers, in the same way that a conscience is your internal watchdog, “the Danger” will be the internal threat, making you aware that it is forever looking over your shoulder waiting for you to fall into their sinister clutches.

And so, with this threat establish, you need to offer absolution! Something that people can flock to in order to offset this terrible fear. Be it a code, a ritual, a senior cult member’s platitudes, or some kind of donation or penance paid on a regular basis. Psychologically speaking, your brain releases the same sense of accomplishment from talking about an action as it does from doing it. So all that is required is to give your cult-members a chance to get it off their chests, and speak of their desire to be better people and conduct their own personal fight against the “danger” thus becoming better People, Christians, Muslims, Capitalists, Feminists, Communists, etc… It creates a sort of “high” that sustains you through the internal fear generated by your boogieman by letting you feel like you’re fighting back without actually doing anything, while also allowing you to feel the solidarity of others around you who are all sharing and buffering this emotional high.

Ever wonder why you feel great after having a discussion with your in-group about the beliefs (be they political or religious) feels so good? This is why, it gives you that sense of accomplishment without having to actually do anything. It’s amazing how well it motivates people.

The last and the scariest is the deferral of responsibility. I left this last because it’s linked strongly with the former two. The crushing guilt generated by the “danger” and its insidious influence on our day-to-day lives can become a little overwhelming, and not even the feelings you get from your “absolution” sessions can lift it. Or more dangerously you may fall in with a group that’s coping mechanisms for “absolution” involves extreme reactionary behaviour. What may have just been a lone recluse becomes a small cell of people, whose motivations are focussed and increased by their collective “absolution” talks. These are the kind of people who bomb abortion clinics, who shoot up schools, who commit mass murder, and other atrocities. And the thing that makes it possible when most other people would encounter extreme psychological distress at the thought of actively hurting a stranger is that they bear no personal responsibility for their actions. For you see, they are acting against the “danger” for the greater good, and the only person who can judge them is the one who grants them their absolution, a figure or concept usually as intangible as their “danger”. As a cult leader you ensure that your followers are no longer answerable to anything other than the laws and ideals you outline, you set their moral compass and ensure that they understand that any action taken against people who do not follow their compass is good, justified, and most importantly NOT their responsibility, for they are acting as agents of a higher power/ideal/ethical code, and therefore ultimately, that is where the responsibility for their actions will be laid.

Congratulations! You now have a cult!

So to put the above very crudely in the context of my Freud example:

“You have Oedipus/Electra Complex but I can treat you with Psychotherapy. Don’t worry that you don’t seem to be understanding this diagnosis, you’re in Denial, which we can also treat with Psychotherapy.”

Or in a religious context:

“You have Sinned but I can treat you with Tithes/confession/prayer. Don’t worry that you seem to not feel guilt about your sins, that’s demonic influence, which we can treat with Tithes/confession/prayer”

Or a political context:
“You’ve been named a communist but don’t worry we can solve this with McCarthism. Don’t worry if you don’t feel like a communist, you’ve just been brainwashed by subtle commie propaganda, but don’t worry we can treat you with McCarthism.”

Or a social context (and you know I couldn’t resist this one!):
“You’re a Patriarchal Misogynist but don’t worry we can solve this with Feminism. Don’t worry if you don’t feel like you’ve done anything wrong, that’s just your Internalised Patriarchy,  but don’t worry we can help you with more Feminism.”

I’d like to finish by saying that this may come off as me being anti-religious, and I assure you I find faith in a higher power to be one of the most wonderful things a person can experience, and for 99% of believers it’s a source of comfort and love that sustains them through the most difficult parts of their lives.

Sadly mankind has always been confronted with those who will exploit others in any way they can, and do it in the name of a higher power or ideal; even the devil can quote the bible.

Faith without works is dead, but blind faith may lead to some very dangerous works.