7 ms·

My Childhood in a Cult

153 points by kurmouk 7y ago

theobeers 7y ago
"The community founded by the late Mel Lyman is still around today and runs a flourishing home-renovation business in the Los Angeles area." In case anyone else was curious, the company is called Fort Hill Construction. Here's their website, where you can get a sense of just how well they've done: http://www.forthill.com/ http://www.forthill.com/
- caublestone 7y ago
  This is the best real estate site experience I’ve ever had on mobile.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    It’s almost like they want my money. A very unusual model for restaurant/real estate websites.
  - 0_gravitas 7y ago
    I wonder if they're hiring
- matthall15 7y ago
  The title says "Fort Hill | Just Another WordPress Site" haha.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    "Just Another WordPress Site" is the default sub-title for any new WP site.
0_gravitas 7y ago
> What I tell them is that, if you haven’t heard of a cult, it’s because it didn’t go down in flames. Its members are just quietly doing what they do, which means that there are many more active cults today than we are aware of. 100%, I personally have a story titled "how my grandmother got me involved with a Brazilian cult for a week", if you do a quick search for "John of God" you will probably immediately find it. It wasn't a doomsday cult or a massive incestuous orgy, but it was clearly one if these "oh this is actually a massive scam" with extremely loyal followers. My grandmother and her husband actually went to something he hosted in New York a year or so ago iirc. EDIT: Holy shit just looked now and apparently he was arrested in January for having a BUNCH of child sex slaves and other stuff
- thanatropism 7y ago
  All kinds of celebrities and politicians went to John of God too.
  - 0_gravitas 7y ago
    Y'know, this is a story that I would always tell my friends in a lighthearted way cause its just a pretty absurd story... boy does this add some punch to it now
empath75 7y ago
Someone I knew was raised in a similar UFO cult. Her mother died when she was young, her dad was a neglectful drug addict. There were times where she and her brother were abandoned for days, and she’d literally survive by eating dog food. At some point, her dad met and married a woman, who happened to be in a UFO cult like this, where they thought many of them had been abducted or had had close encounters of various kinds. This woman, who I met many years later, was funny and kind and took care of my friend and gave her unconditional love in a way that she had never experienced and treated her like a daughter. Her real dad disappeared again and went off to Canada permanently, leaving her with the cult as her only family. It was a distinct step up as a family situation from how she was raised. In 2000, when my friend was 17 or 18, the whole cult went off into a compound in the mountains waiting for the world to end and go off into space. My friend, who was super intelligent and curious, at that point was skeptical, but she went because it was the only family she had. The world didn’t end, and she turned 18 and moved out on her own. I met her a few years later, and we started dating, not knowing any of this back story — she was remarkably normal, all considering — and at some point, she told me the story of going off into the woods, and I laughed and just sort of assumed she was as cynical about that as she was about everything else — but her eyes flashed with anger and I realized I had stepped on a land mine. It wasn’t that she really believed in aliens, or that she had been abducted by aliens as her foster mother had convinced her of, when she was younger. She just wanted to believe that this woman who loved her and had saved her wasn’t crazy, so she held open the possibility in her mind. Cults are complicated, and so are families.
- sequoia 7y ago
  How true. If one's parents skinned puppies and sold their pelts for a living and one grew up to be a vegetarian who hated them for it, one would likely still have a hard time tolerating other people later in life ridiculing or criticizing them. I think it's because we see our parents (usually) as ultimately good people, and when people criticize or ridicule our parents it feels like they are suggesting the parents are not good people, even if that's not what they mean.
- marktangotango 7y ago
  Nice perspective, thanks for sharing.
01100011 7y ago
It's easy to dismiss cults until you realize how easily an intelligent person can fall under their spell. Many cults have very logical belief systems predicated on a few twisted axioms. If you convince an intelligent, rational person that those axioms are true, you have them. Often the smartest folks are drawn in because they are used to having beliefs and convictions far outside the mainstream which are rooted in reason(general relativity, for example). I grew up atheist, but ended up spending about 6 years in a cult-like, nameless, christian denomination. It wasn't until the results of their belief system became absurd that I started to question the entire system.
- hutzlibu 7y ago
  "Many cults have very logical belief systems predicated on a few twisted axioms. " Yeah well, I was once also part of such a weird cult which might be the oldest and powerful one - the catholic church.
  - studentrob 7y ago
    > I was once also part of such a weird cult which might be the oldest and powerful one - the catholic church. I have a hard time vilifying any whole religion. At the same time, the more successful a doctrine, the larger and more attractive it becomes to people seeking power. Does this mean we should stop trying? Certainly not. I like Adler's "Individual Psychology" which I discovered from the book "The Courage to Be Disliked". He boils it down to three things, 1) Accept yourself 2) Have confidence in others 3) Contribute to others There is some nuance in the book, like for #2 you should not allow yourself to be easily duped.
    - hutzlibu 7y ago
      "I have a hard time vilifying any whole religion." I don't do that. At least not the individiual (catholic) religious people and what they understand by beeing catholic (or muslim, or...) And I understand very well, what it gives to them, so why smart people choose to bend logic to make it a coherent view and todays church is a lot nicer than it used to be. But the whole dogmatic base of the bible (or qoran or talmud, etc.) I do vilify very much, yes. Because it just is plain evil by my standards. Racial superiorty, genocid, total obedience, killing and torturing of nonbelievers and heretics. The great Moses for example was great in this: Exodus 2/32 "And he said unto them: 'Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel: Put ye every man his sword upon his thigh, and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour. And the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses; and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men. And Moses said: 'Consecrate yourselves to-day to the LORD, for every man hath been against his son and against his brother; that He may also bestow upon you a blessing this day.' " Ask any christian about Moses and they tell you what a great guy he was ... but yes, most do not (want to) know about what the bible actually says about him.
eternalban 7y ago
https://www.trussel.com/f_mel.htm https://www.trussel.com/f_mel.htm
duxup 7y ago
>See, now the whole story has taken a turn. You’ve maybe forgotten everything I wrote before. You’re horrified; you want to know more. I’ve told you these things because I didn’t want you to think I was weak or timid, or apologetic about some of the uncomfortable truths. Now I can’t take them back. That is a pretty hard turn but maybe a good lesson too about how in this day and age there is so little room for understanding that we struggle to think of anything else once we hear things that are objectionable.
mirimir 7y ago
Back in the mid 80s, I attended a Heaven's Gate presentation. The ideology was preposterous, but they were interesting people. And very into computers and stuff. One of our friends joined, notwithstanding our advice. We remained off-and-on in touch, and he seemed happy, and up to cool stuff. But then he was one of the 1997 suicides.
- studentrob 7y ago
  Sorry to hear that. I think we all think of cults as something distant and weird, but the reality is if you're in one or close to one, you are not aware of it, almost by definition.
mschuster91 7y ago
For those who ask us Germans why we're so adamantly opposed to homeschooling and why we have mandatory medical checkups for children/infants ("Vorsorgeuntersuchungen"): this is why. Having kids end up immersed in cults and brainwashed is a real risk, and the costs that society has to bear once these kids "wake up" is immense. Not to mention kids ending up totally uneducated and unfit for adult life due to plainly incompetent parents and the follow-up costs of that.
- philwelch 7y ago
  Assuming that the government itself doesn’t get taken over by a cult, as has happened in some countries.
  - mschuster91 7y ago
    Yeah but not even Scientology managed to do this in the US...
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      Southern Baptist's getting close.
    - philwelch 7y ago
      If you interpret “cult” slightly less literally, I’m sure you can think of some fairly vivid examples of cults that have seized control of the governments of even developed countries, and used that power to indoctrinate children via the official school system. In a situation like that, some homeschooling might have even been beneficial, compared to the alternative.
      - hycaria 7y ago
        What's on the back of your mind exactly ? Why the shroud of mystery ?
        7y ago
pc2g4d 7y ago
Cults fill important human needs for human connection, structure, seemingly-legitimate authority, existential meaning and a driving purpose for life. To the degree these aren't provided by healthier structures in our society, individuals will be drawn to these organizations. And many things which we do not often think of as cults in many ways fit into the broader conception thereof: militaries, political parties, yoga studios, etc. have all been known to fall into that classification. Steve Hasan's BITE model is a great framework for thinking about these things. In many ways, control of behavior, information, thoughts, and emotions is what all human organizations do, so it's more of a cost/benefit analysis than an either/or analysis that's called for. There are varying degrees of "cultiness". Recommended reading: "Combating Cult Mind Control". An evolutionary analysis of these sorts of social structures is also fascinating. If you treat a cult like a superorganism that must compete for resources with other organizations in the culture, you can understand many of the pressures driving them. Jonathan Haidt has shown how "morality binds and blinds", and this is nowhere stronger than in cults whose distinct moral code both binds people together into a unit, and blinds them to the true nature of the group.
- solipsism 7y ago
  In many ways, control of behavior, information, thoughts, and emotions is what all human organizations do I'm pretty cynical, and I recognize how pervasive and successful these manipulation techniques are (so pervasive that it seems silly to talk about them as if they're particular to cults at all), but it seems wrong to say "all human organizations" seek to control. Unless you consider things like the following examples of control: disseminating information, saving lives or healing people, having fun, etc. I think it would be much more accurate to say there's the potential for manipulation to seep into any human organization. But a weekend softball league isn't manipulating anyone. Give humanity a little credit.
  - cobbzilla 7y ago
    Exertion of control does not always imply manipulation; compliance can be enthusiastic and voluntary. A weekend softball league might schedule games, which to a (yes, very minor) degree, is all about controlling who goes where and when for those who want to play softball. Really, if an organization cannot expect voluntary compliance from its members on anything at all, is it even an organization? A single shared common belief is all it takes.
vishvananda 7y ago
Prior to my life in technology I had similar experiences to the author. I was involved with multiple spiritual groups that could be classified as cults. One mistake that I have seen people without first-hand experience make is assuming that the people are in it to deceive or take advantage of others. On the contrary, I have seen that people in these groups often have the best intentions. For a long time, it was a mystery to me how these groups could end up going so wrong, often devolving into gun battles, suicides, or sexual deviance. A few years ago I found a book called "The Guru Papers"[0] which does a fantastic job of explaining how these things occur, even in well-intentioned groups. If you have been involved in a group like this, or are just curious about the psychology involved, I highly recommend it. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007WL0JHE/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007WL0JHE/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...
- wpietri 7y ago
  Another resource I like is the ABCDEF framework: http://www.neopagan.net/ABCDEF.html http://www.neopagan.net/ABCDEF.html It's a nice way of scoring some group to see how cult-like it is.
forkandwait 7y ago
One of the best low budget cult/ sci fi movies ever made: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Endless_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Endless_(film)

153 points by kurmouk 7y ago

"The community founded by the late Mel Lyman is still around today and runs a flourishing home-renovation business in the Los Angeles area." In case anyone else was curious, the company is called Fort Hill Construction. Here's their website, where you can get a sense of just how well they've done: http://www.forthill.com/ http://www.forthill.com/

caublestone 7y ago
This is the best real estate site experience I’ve ever had on mobile.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  It’s almost like they want my money. A very unusual model for restaurant/real estate websites.
- 0_gravitas 7y ago
  I wonder if they're hiring
matthall15 7y ago
The title says "Fort Hill | Just Another WordPress Site" haha.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  "Just Another WordPress Site" is the default sub-title for any new WP site.

0_gravitas 7y ago

> What I tell them is that, if you haven’t heard of a cult, it’s because it didn’t go down in flames. Its members are just quietly doing what they do, which means that there are many more active cults today than we are aware of. 100%, I personally have a story titled "how my grandmother got me involved with a Brazilian cult for a week", if you do a quick search for "John of God" you will probably immediately find it. It wasn't a doomsday cult or a massive incestuous orgy, but it was clearly one if these "oh this is actually a massive scam" with extremely loyal followers. My grandmother and her husband actually went to something he hosted in New York a year or so ago iirc. EDIT: Holy shit just looked now and apparently he was arrested in January for having a BUNCH of child sex slaves and other stuff

thanatropism 7y ago
All kinds of celebrities and politicians went to John of God too.
- 0_gravitas 7y ago
  Y'know, this is a story that I would always tell my friends in a lighthearted way cause its just a pretty absurd story... boy does this add some punch to it now

empath75 7y ago

Someone I knew was raised in a similar UFO cult. Her mother died when she was young, her dad was a neglectful drug addict. There were times where she and her brother were abandoned for days, and she’d literally survive by eating dog food. At some point, her dad met and married a woman, who happened to be in a UFO cult like this, where they thought many of them had been abducted or had had close encounters of various kinds. This woman, who I met many years later, was funny and kind and took care of my friend and gave her unconditional love in a way that she had never experienced and treated her like a daughter. Her real dad disappeared again and went off to Canada permanently, leaving her with the cult as her only family. It was a distinct step up as a family situation from how she was raised. In 2000, when my friend was 17 or 18, the whole cult went off into a compound in the mountains waiting for the world to end and go off into space. My friend, who was super intelligent and curious, at that point was skeptical, but she went because it was the only family she had. The world didn’t end, and she turned 18 and moved out on her own. I met her a few years later, and we started dating, not knowing any of this back story — she was remarkably normal, all considering — and at some point, she told me the story of going off into the woods, and I laughed and just sort of assumed she was as cynical about that as she was about everything else — but her eyes flashed with anger and I realized I had stepped on a land mine. It wasn’t that she really believed in aliens, or that she had been abducted by aliens as her foster mother had convinced her of, when she was younger. She just wanted to believe that this woman who loved her and had saved her wasn’t crazy, so she held open the possibility in her mind. Cults are complicated, and so are families.

sequoia 7y ago
How true. If one's parents skinned puppies and sold their pelts for a living and one grew up to be a vegetarian who hated them for it, one would likely still have a hard time tolerating other people later in life ridiculing or criticizing them. I think it's because we see our parents (usually) as ultimately good people, and when people criticize or ridicule our parents it feels like they are suggesting the parents are not good people, even if that's not what they mean.
marktangotango 7y ago
Nice perspective, thanks for sharing.

01100011 7y ago

It's easy to dismiss cults until you realize how easily an intelligent person can fall under their spell. Many cults have very logical belief systems predicated on a few twisted axioms. If you convince an intelligent, rational person that those axioms are true, you have them. Often the smartest folks are drawn in because they are used to having beliefs and convictions far outside the mainstream which are rooted in reason(general relativity, for example). I grew up atheist, but ended up spending about 6 years in a cult-like, nameless, christian denomination. It wasn't until the results of their belief system became absurd that I started to question the entire system.

hutzlibu 7y ago
"Many cults have very logical belief systems predicated on a few twisted axioms. " Yeah well, I was once also part of such a weird cult which might be the oldest and powerful one - the catholic church.
- studentrob 7y ago
  > I was once also part of such a weird cult which might be the oldest and powerful one - the catholic church. I have a hard time vilifying any whole religion. At the same time, the more successful a doctrine, the larger and more attractive it becomes to people seeking power. Does this mean we should stop trying? Certainly not. I like Adler's "Individual Psychology" which I discovered from the book "The Courage to Be Disliked". He boils it down to three things, 1) Accept yourself 2) Have confidence in others 3) Contribute to others There is some nuance in the book, like for #2 you should not allow yourself to be easily duped.
  - hutzlibu 7y ago
    "I have a hard time vilifying any whole religion." I don't do that. At least not the individiual (catholic) religious people and what they understand by beeing catholic (or muslim, or...) And I understand very well, what it gives to them, so why smart people choose to bend logic to make it a coherent view and todays church is a lot nicer than it used to be. But the whole dogmatic base of the bible (or qoran or talmud, etc.) I do vilify very much, yes. Because it just is plain evil by my standards. Racial superiorty, genocid, total obedience, killing and torturing of nonbelievers and heretics. The great Moses for example was great in this: Exodus 2/32 "And he said unto them: 'Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel: Put ye every man his sword upon his thigh, and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour. And the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses; and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men. And Moses said: 'Consecrate yourselves to-day to the LORD, for every man hath been against his son and against his brother; that He may also bestow upon you a blessing this day.' " Ask any christian about Moses and they tell you what a great guy he was ... but yes, most do not (want to) know about what the bible actually says about him.

eternalban 7y ago

https://www.trussel.com/f_mel.htm https://www.trussel.com/f_mel.htm

duxup 7y ago

>See, now the whole story has taken a turn. You’ve maybe forgotten everything I wrote before. You’re horrified; you want to know more. I’ve told you these things because I didn’t want you to think I was weak or timid, or apologetic about some of the uncomfortable truths. Now I can’t take them back. That is a pretty hard turn but maybe a good lesson too about how in this day and age there is so little room for understanding that we struggle to think of anything else once we hear things that are objectionable.

mirimir 7y ago

Back in the mid 80s, I attended a Heaven's Gate presentation. The ideology was preposterous, but they were interesting people. And very into computers and stuff. One of our friends joined, notwithstanding our advice. We remained off-and-on in touch, and he seemed happy, and up to cool stuff. But then he was one of the 1997 suicides.

studentrob 7y ago
Sorry to hear that. I think we all think of cults as something distant and weird, but the reality is if you're in one or close to one, you are not aware of it, almost by definition.

mschuster91 7y ago

For those who ask us Germans why we're so adamantly opposed to homeschooling and why we have mandatory medical checkups for children/infants ("Vorsorgeuntersuchungen"): this is why. Having kids end up immersed in cults and brainwashed is a real risk, and the costs that society has to bear once these kids "wake up" is immense. Not to mention kids ending up totally uneducated and unfit for adult life due to plainly incompetent parents and the follow-up costs of that.

philwelch 7y ago
Assuming that the government itself doesn’t get taken over by a cult, as has happened in some countries.
- mschuster91 7y ago
  Yeah but not even Scientology managed to do this in the US...
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    Southern Baptist's getting close.
  - philwelch 7y ago
    If you interpret “cult” slightly less literally, I’m sure you can think of some fairly vivid examples of cults that have seized control of the governments of even developed countries, and used that power to indoctrinate children via the official school system. In a situation like that, some homeschooling might have even been beneficial, compared to the alternative.
    - hycaria 7y ago
      What's on the back of your mind exactly ? Why the shroud of mystery ?
      - 7y ago

pc2g4d 7y ago

Cults fill important human needs for human connection, structure, seemingly-legitimate authority, existential meaning and a driving purpose for life. To the degree these aren't provided by healthier structures in our society, individuals will be drawn to these organizations. And many things which we do not often think of as cults in many ways fit into the broader conception thereof: militaries, political parties, yoga studios, etc. have all been known to fall into that classification. Steve Hasan's BITE model is a great framework for thinking about these things. In many ways, control of behavior, information, thoughts, and emotions is what all human organizations do, so it's more of a cost/benefit analysis than an either/or analysis that's called for. There are varying degrees of "cultiness". Recommended reading: "Combating Cult Mind Control". An evolutionary analysis of these sorts of social structures is also fascinating. If you treat a cult like a superorganism that must compete for resources with other organizations in the culture, you can understand many of the pressures driving them. Jonathan Haidt has shown how "morality binds and blinds", and this is nowhere stronger than in cults whose distinct moral code both binds people together into a unit, and blinds them to the true nature of the group.

solipsism 7y ago
In many ways, control of behavior, information, thoughts, and emotions is what all human organizations do I'm pretty cynical, and I recognize how pervasive and successful these manipulation techniques are (so pervasive that it seems silly to talk about them as if they're particular to cults at all), but it seems wrong to say "all human organizations" seek to control. Unless you consider things like the following examples of control: disseminating information, saving lives or healing people, having fun, etc. I think it would be much more accurate to say there's the potential for manipulation to seep into any human organization. But a weekend softball league isn't manipulating anyone. Give humanity a little credit.
- cobbzilla 7y ago
  Exertion of control does not always imply manipulation; compliance can be enthusiastic and voluntary. A weekend softball league might schedule games, which to a (yes, very minor) degree, is all about controlling who goes where and when for those who want to play softball. Really, if an organization cannot expect voluntary compliance from its members on anything at all, is it even an organization? A single shared common belief is all it takes.

vishvananda 7y ago

Prior to my life in technology I had similar experiences to the author. I was involved with multiple spiritual groups that could be classified as cults. One mistake that I have seen people without first-hand experience make is assuming that the people are in it to deceive or take advantage of others. On the contrary, I have seen that people in these groups often have the best intentions. For a long time, it was a mystery to me how these groups could end up going so wrong, often devolving into gun battles, suicides, or sexual deviance. A few years ago I found a book called "The Guru Papers"[0] which does a fantastic job of explaining how these things occur, even in well-intentioned groups. If you have been involved in a group like this, or are just curious about the psychology involved, I highly recommend it. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007WL0JHE/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007WL0JHE/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

wpietri 7y ago
Another resource I like is the ABCDEF framework: http://www.neopagan.net/ABCDEF.html http://www.neopagan.net/ABCDEF.html It's a nice way of scoring some group to see how cult-like it is.

forkandwait 7y ago

One of the best low budget cult/ sci fi movies ever made: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Endless_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Endless_(film)