Downhill

People do not knowingly join “cults” that will ultimately destroy and kill them. People join self-help groups, churches, political movements, college campus dinner socials, and the like, in an effort to be a part of something larger than themselves. It is mostly the innocent and naive who find themselves entrapped. In their openhearted endeavor to find meaning in their lives, they walk blindly into the promise of ultimate answers and a higher purpose. It is usually only gradually that a group turns into or reveals itself as a cult, becomes malignant, but by then it is often too late. -Deborah Layton in Seductive Poison

Until recently, I hadn’t spent longer than three seconds of thinking time on the topic of cults. I had no reason to; I had never known anyone who had ever had any involvement, to any degree, with cults.

To me, cults had always been something weak people joined. People who lacked the capacity to think for themselves. People who wanted others to make the decisions in their life. People who could easily be deceived. I knew I would never join a cult. I even remember the Hale-Bopp incident and how we laughed at the stupidity of the people. I never stopped to think what had caused these people to become non-individuals that acted like lemmings. I assumed they had always been so.

A few weeks ago, I got in touch with an old college friend. A good friend who had asked me to call him a few months prior but between my vacation and usual hectic state, I’d put off calling him. When I finally got around to dialing his number, it didn’t take me long to ask about his girlfriend and get the shocking news. This girl that he’d dated for quite some time, a computer scientist, had left him to join a cult. Of course, she denied its being a cult, but it was quite obvious to him and I knew him to be rational and felt confident taking his word.

I must admit that “joining a cult” would not have been in my top-500-reasons-why-couples-break-up list. As I plunged into my diatribe of how I would never join a cult, he asked me to read Seductive Poison and said we would chat afterwards. I read the novel and decided the above quote drove home the point my friend was trying to make.

While I still think it takes a certain mindset to join a group that evolves to be a cult, I can recognize that it’s a lot more likely for a regular human to temporarily enter such a mindset than I would have originally thought. There are times in most people’s lives where we feel like we’re ready to give up. It might be because you lost a loved one, a job, a lot of money or many other reasons. But almost all of us go through a phase, however short or long it might be, where we feel alone, misunderstood and under-appreciated. Many of us lack self-esteem and want to make our loved ones proud.

The cult-leaders strike during those moments. They take the person who feels at the bottom and lift him up. They give him a purpose. They make him feel proud and important. Since most cults start as an encouragement or salvation tactic, they don’t cause alarm flags to rise in the person’s mind. By the time, the movement becomes a full-fledged cult, the people on the inside have long stopped questioning.

And that’s the crucial point.

You must never stop questioning. It’s necessary to reevaluate life constantly. Once you stop questioning, you never notice anything, you are now no different than a sheep in a herd. We display this behavior consistently. We think a lot before we make a decision but once it’s made, we don’t feel the need to reconsider it.

A common pitfall in long-term relationships is not realizing that you’ve long stopped loving your partner. You’re still together only cause it’s practical and that’s how it’s always been. Same goes for a long-term job. You don’t ponder whether you still like it. You just do it day in and day out until you get to the next level and then you keep doing what you need to to get to the next level, and so on. You never stop and think about whether you are happy.

The only time we stop to rethink is if something major goes wrong. A partner cheats or you don’t get an expected promotion. At that point, you’ve hit another low.

I’ll buy that if you’re depressed enough, you may be out of your mind enough to get involved in a cultish movement, but once you’ve recovered a bit of your sense of self, it’s best to rethink every decision before being forced to do so.

It’s the necessary tool for you to be in control of your own life.

Previously? Choke.