I’ve seen so much quibbling at what criteria actually makes something a cult. Some religions get labeled as cults, when others don’t, and the without much diffe

I’ve seen so much quibbling at what criteria actually makes something a cult. Some religions get labeled as cults, when others don’t, and the without much differentiation between them. Some atheistic communities have just as many cult-like attributes as religious ones, but don’t get labeled as a cult. The same goes for political groups, companies, philosophies, and online communities. It seems like most human communities have cult-like characteristics. I’ve come to the conclusion that the word “cult” isn’t very useful as a descriptor, at least in terms of the thing it’s describing. Rather, it’s far more useful as a descriptor of the person using the word to describe something. As the post indicates, we all belong to a cult of some kind, or engage in some level of cultish behavior. If I label something a cult, it doesn’t tell you much about that thing itself, or ways in which it is more of a cult than anything else, but it does signify my disapproval of that thing, which probably, at a base level is due to reasons unrelated to the cult-like behavior of that group. In short, the labeling of something as a cult doesn’t actually do anything to describe that thing. Rather it’s a Rorschach test for the person doing the labeling.