When I was in high school I took a philosophy course and I have to admit that I didn’t think too highly of it. We learned about the debates over questions such as “What is truth?”, “What is beauty?” and “Does life have meaning?”
I was pretty sure I knew the answers to all the big philosophical questions and I was pretty sure that anybody who wanted to know the answers could just study the Bible a bit with a member of my religion and they could have those answers too. That is the thing about belief: it gives you the comfort of feeling that you have answers and can therefore get on with the business of living your life instead of wasting all that time in pointless debating like the philosophers.
I didn’t develop a proper appreciation for these philosophical questions until I learned that the “facts” underpinning my beliefs were not actually facts, i.e. – objectively verifiable statements derived from the observation of reality. Many of the key “facts” I had built my world view on had been derived from opinions, stories, inventions, speculations, distortions, and partial truths that didn’t stand up to scrutiny. I gotta tell ya, I developed a healthy appreciation for being skeptical about the things I believe in right fast and I have maintained my commitment to skepticism as a virtue ever since.
People in general are not skeptical enough, it seems. They believe advertisements, politicians, propaganda, religious cult leaders, and fabricated content they see on the internet. This has led to a slew of opinion pieces about how we live in a “post-truth era” and that hurts both my heart and my head. There is no such thing as a post-truth era, there are no such things as alternative facts, there is simply an information landscape that has morphed into something so fearsomely massive that the signal is lost in the noise and the average person is ill-equipped to critically examine the information they consume. This has resulted in the golden age of misinformation wherein the largest number of people can be manipulated by the largest number of bad actors the world has ever seen. It is no wonder that so many are falling under the sway of authoritarian politicians, hate groups, and high-control cults (or in the case of MAGA Trump Worship, the trifecta…).
Years ago I read an incredible book called Age of Propaganda by Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson. I firmly believe this book ought to be required reading in this day and age to help people recognize when they are being manipulated to serve the ends of a third party through propagandist techniques. Chapter 35 in this book is called “How To Become A Cult Leader” and is not intended as a How To guide any more than the recent Netflix series was, but in using this structure the authors run through the techniques that are used to create cults and, if you become familiar with the techniques, you can identify whether or not a leader or group that you follow might, in fact, be a cult. This is not the only kind of skeptical thought required in our times, the ability to recognize logical fallacies, spot doctored/false/misleading “facts”, and learn enough science and math to at least understand why certain things are true and others false, those are all important too, but without a free brain to use to evaluate information, a person is hampered. People who are under the sway of cult thinking do not, by definition, have freedom of thought, so the first step in escaping from the post-truth conceit and developing the ability to live in reality is to recognize if you are being interfered with by these techniques coming from leaders you trust.
Here’s the list. If you belong to a group that uses the following tried and true manipulation techniques, you might want to ask yourself whether or not they are entirely on the up and up:
- Create your own social reality.
Members will continue the bad habit of thinking for themselves if they are not isolated from bad influences, so you start there. You need to create boundaries between the believers and the non-believers, at least mentally if not physically. This is fairly easily accomplished by labeling everything that is not from “the group” as being from “the devil”. Once you do that, you must provide members with a set of beliefs that tell them how to interpret the world so that they come to believe that the cult teachings are the only way the world makes any sense. Another pro tip: create your own jargon or lingo. It makes it harder to see the world from a perspective other than the group, it allows members to recognize each other more easily, and when you change how people use language, you change how they think. Do this right and you will have followers who speak and think according to a set of filters you define, who think of themselves as being “in the group”, and who are intellectually and socially isolated from the larger world. - Create an in-group of followers and an out-group of “others” (aka – The Granfalloon Technique).
The obvious next step is to strengthen the social reality that you have created using language and teachings by explicitly defining an Us and a Them. If you do this right, two random members of the group should be able to run into each other on a bus in a strange city, strike up a brief conversation, immediately recognize the other as a member of the group, and immediately consider them a “brother” or “sister”, even though they don’t know each other, entirely because of shared membership in the in-group. - Create a spiral of escalating commitment to combat cognitive dissonance.
Getting people to join a group that involves the weakening or loss of connections with existing family and friends is a CHALLENGE. Most people don’t want to do this. So, how do you get that to happen? Start small. Get people to eat just a metaphorical snack. Leave them with some of the group’s more appealing teachings or invite them to a social event. Get them to make some small commitment, agreeing to a followup visit or maybe coming to another group meeting. Each small commitment, each small step towards the group, creates a sense of investment, a sense that if you don’t follow up with the next step you will be letting somebody else down. This is a powerful force but can’t be rushed. Don’t want to spook the newbie. Once a person has started to get involved in a cult group, they are likely to experience some sort of intervention from friends or family and that is the first test. Ideally, the newbie feels defensive and tries to justify their involvement because the alternative involves admitting that they might be wrong, and that feels terrible. If you can get a person to start to decide that they are doing this because it’s really what they want, not because they are being coerced, you’re 90% of the way to a new convert. - Establish the credibility and attractiveness of the leader(s).
It should go without saying that some famous cult leaders are not exactly what one would call “attractive”. Jim Jones, Kim Jong Un, Donald Trump, Marshall Herff Applewhite, these guys ain’t exactly Ryan Gosling. But that’s OK. You want to build a myth, something bigger than reality. You want tell a story about how the leader or leaders (if you are led by a committee) are chosen, special, the recipients of unique divine direction, God’s chosen mouthpiece, the purveyors of the one Truth, “Only I can fix it”, you get the picture. It helps if there is some sort of vague event in the past, a heroic backstory, a rags to riches story, something emotionally manipulative. It’s very important that the leader(s) not be seen as merely people who gathered followers using shady and manipulative techniques. They are SPECIAL. Put them on TV, hold them up for admiration, talk about how they are chosen/directed/unique. If you fail on this point, your whole cult could fizzle but if you get it right, you could get people to do all sorts of terrible things to themselves and others in the name of God or your group. - Send members out to spread the message to the “others”.
This might seem to violate #1. If you want to isolate people, why would you send them out to preach? Well, believe it or not, nothing toughens the skin of a believer (and creates a stronger commitment trap) than promoting and defending your beliefs to others. If it is at all feasible, send your converts out into the world to spread the word, go door to door, hand out flowers at airports, hold rallies and conventions, encounter resistance, repeatedly and intentionally. If you really want somebody to be willing to allow their child to die for your teachings, if you really want somebody kill themselves and others for your cause, you need this level of commitment. And, bonus, you might occasionally make a few new converts in the process. Nice. Just remember: the new converts are actually made via the commitment trap, not the preaching activity. The real point of proselytizing is to keep the in-group IN and the out-group OUT via the magic of self-selling. For examples simply look at every internet flame war ever to see how views almost universally become more entrenched when challenged. - Distract members from thinking undesirable thoughts.
You can’t have your members using their pesky brains to think undesirable thoughts such as “What if Kim Jong Un isn’t really a God?” or “What if Noah’s ark was just a story?” or “What if this group is just a bunch of people telling stories and manipulating other people????” That would be serious trouble. It’s the brain you want to control, so, how does one do that? First off, ban independent thought. Just outright ban it. Tell your followers that they can’t be trusted to think for themselves, the leader(s) know better, and if they encounter any information that appears to counter that message it is clearly from the devil and should be rejected out of hand. Make sure other members of the group will report independent thinking to others as well so if somebody DOES use their brain, they’ll know better than to say so out loud for fear of retribution by the community. Give people techniques to avoid thinking. Lots of group meetings with rote memorization of texts, songs, and repetitions of the same teachings are a good idea. Don’t allow time for thoughts to fester, keep the mind busy with other things. - Fixate member’s vision on a phantom.
We all know that you get a donkey to move using a carrot and a stick. The potential for losing the social reality, the desire to be associated with the in-group, the commitment trap created by being part of the group, those are all kind of negative incentives for a convert to stay in the group. The songs and busywork, the meetings and services and rallies and proselytizing activities, that’s all great to suppress independent thoughts, but the final piece of the puzzle is all important. You need to dangle a carrot out there. You need to make sure that your followers are constantly reminded of some future glory that always remains tantalizingly just out of reach. Make America Great Again! When? Later. Just have faith. Give more of yourself, more of your time, more of your money, more of your resources and the promised land will arrive. The new earth, the paradise, the glorious future, heaven, or personal riches (in the case of certain business cults) are there, waiting for you, SALVATION, just stay the course. I mean, of course the carrot is attached to the stick, the stick is held by the leadership, and the carrot moves ahead with the donkey but the donkey isn’t thinking, the donkey doesn’t realize that.
And that’s the list. Congratulations, you are now equipped to start a religion, a multi-level marketing business, a political movement, or whatever kind of high control group strikes your fancy.
If you are reading this and anything on that list struck uncomfortably close to home about a group you are involved in, listen to that feeling and ask yourself if maybe, just maybe, it’s time to try a little of that thinking for yourself thing. If you aren’t thinking for yourself I’d maybe find a few moments to ponder:
- Who is doing my thinking for me?
- Why do they want to influence my thinking? What’s their motive?
- If they are operating in good faith, why do they use manipulative control techniques in their group?
- What can I do to independently validate and verify the information I consume and act upon so I am less prone to misinformation and manipulation?
Everybody needs to develop skills and habits of mind to filter and assess groups, individuals, and information. Fortunately, once you know some of the things to look for, it can be done.