5 ms·

Quite depressing, but well worth the read. Is this problem getting worse? I know cults are nothing new. Plenty horror stories from the 70s/80s. Perhaps because

Quite depressing, but well worth the read. Is this problem getting worse? I know cults are nothing new. Plenty horror stories from the 70s/80s. Perhaps because it's happening right now it seems more prevalent. But it's incredible to me that people with access to information (even phd candidates like Shukree Abdul-Rashed) can fall so far into these cults. This story in particular is incredible, because when the group shows up in Hawaii, they find yet another likeminded individual willing to accompany them on a (relatively) dangerous trip. While the captain seemed to have slightly more self preservation instincts than the crew, it is amazing he was willing to jeopardize his life for this cause (zigzagging to avoid covid testing, charting courses that would leave them without supplies).

satvikpendem 4y ago
Previously if you had an extreme opinion, you had to moderate it because others around in the real world most likely don't share the same opinion. This causes extreme opinions to stay at the fringes of society. Now with the internet, you can find any community willing to share your extreme opinion, geographic closeness is no longer needed. Echo chambers then form and you feel like you're part of a community, and so no one moderates your opinions. If anything, opinions get even more extreme.
- TrainedMonkey 4y ago
  To add to that, internet also ensures all the extreme things are amplified because attention economy. So if previously you would read a local newspaper about worst cult in your city, now you read NYT about worst cult in the country.
ramesh31 4y ago
>But it's incredible to me that people with access to information (even phd candidates like Shukree Abdul-Rashed) can fall so far into these cults. Mental illness doesn't discriminate. Intelligence before the fact has nothing to do with it (and has often been shown to make someone even more prone to it). People get sick, and are subsequently preyed upon and victimized because of it. Works the same every time, from Jonestown to QAnon.
StrictDabbler 4y ago
Throughout history weird cults have occasionally formed. The eastern mystery cults of the late B.C. era, the Muenster rebellion, Quakers, Shakers, dozens of cults in the Great Awakening, the Oneida, the pre-scientology UFO cults of the mid-20th century, Scientology, Jonestown, The Family, Unification Church, Rajneeshpuram, Children of God, Heaven's Gate... the juggalos? Who knows. It happens all the time and each time the cult grows very quickly until it becomes an organism large enough that people hear of and reject it before they can be exposed to the infectious hook. Every cult has a few things to say where any reasonable person will say "huh, you have a point." The speed of that growth phase is critical. By the mid-70s the American public knew to not listen to the guys in orange robes at the airport and the Hare Krishna plateaued. We are still in the growth phase on the new internet meta-cult. The population as a whole is not ready to say "oh, I know there are kooks on the internet who will lie to me and I know how to recognize them." A memetic infection is inevitably going to be worse with an internet to spread it. It's not clear when this one might fizzle because the available set of hosts is billions instead of thousands for the first time ever. So yes. It's worse. It will probably be the most infectious cult spread since the origins of Christianity and Islam, and unlike those two it has nothing positive to offer. Without the internet it would just be a few hundred people in a compound, but now? We won't know how far it can get until it's over. And a few decades later we'll have another, and another. It's enough to make you wonder if we've found the Great Filter.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- violiner 4y ago
  > The eastern mystery cults of the late B.C. era I'd hesitate to categorically lump all of the ancient mystery religions in with the rest of your list. Some of them were pretty strange, even for the ancient world, but e.g. the Eleusinian Mysteries and Mithraism were very mainstream for hundreds of years.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    Mithraism, in particular, is arguably very tightly linked to Christianity in early Christian history. By one theory, before Constantine's reforms that merged the two religions, Christianity was popular among the plebians while Mithraism was very popular among the patrician class, and the modern form of Christianity is arguably more similar to the old religion of the patricians.
michaelbuckbee 4y ago
While cults have always been around I feel like the "infection rate" of them has become higher. Instead of a small group of individuals that separate from society (as in the article) it feels like large portions of the population have all taken on somewhat cultlike behaviors of beliefs.
bigDinosaur 4y ago
Getting worse with a zoomed out view of history? Probably not. One of the deadliest conflicts in history was started essentially by a (likely schizophrenic) individual who believed he was the brother of Jesus over 150 years ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion). Getting worse than say, 2010 or something? Perhaps.
ShredKazoo 4y ago
Worth remembering that there are about 330 million people in the United States. The very fact that this is newsworthy is evidence that it's not that common on a percentage-of-population basis.
sacnoradhq 4y ago
It's nothing new. Cults, populist demagogues, and other forms of magical thinking spread more during bad times. Unreason, unreasonableness, and substituted realities take hold and waste the lives and time of many people if they can't see any alternate, tangible, positive conclusion from reason, reasonableness, and the status quo.

satvikpendem 4y ago

Previously if you had an extreme opinion, you had to moderate it because others around in the real world most likely don't share the same opinion. This causes extreme opinions to stay at the fringes of society. Now with the internet, you can find any community willing to share your extreme opinion, geographic closeness is no longer needed. Echo chambers then form and you feel like you're part of a community, and so no one moderates your opinions. If anything, opinions get even more extreme.

TrainedMonkey 4y ago
To add to that, internet also ensures all the extreme things are amplified because attention economy. So if previously you would read a local newspaper about worst cult in your city, now you read NYT about worst cult in the country.

ramesh31 4y ago

>But it's incredible to me that people with access to information (even phd candidates like Shukree Abdul-Rashed) can fall so far into these cults. Mental illness doesn't discriminate. Intelligence before the fact has nothing to do with it (and has often been shown to make someone even more prone to it). People get sick, and are subsequently preyed upon and victimized because of it. Works the same every time, from Jonestown to QAnon.

StrictDabbler 4y ago

Throughout history weird cults have occasionally formed. The eastern mystery cults of the late B.C. era, the Muenster rebellion, Quakers, Shakers, dozens of cults in the Great Awakening, the Oneida, the pre-scientology UFO cults of the mid-20th century, Scientology, Jonestown, The Family, Unification Church, Rajneeshpuram, Children of God, Heaven's Gate... the juggalos? Who knows. It happens all the time and each time the cult grows very quickly until it becomes an organism large enough that people hear of and reject it before they can be exposed to the infectious hook. Every cult has a few things to say where any reasonable person will say "huh, you have a point." The speed of that growth phase is critical. By the mid-70s the American public knew to not listen to the guys in orange robes at the airport and the Hare Krishna plateaued. We are still in the growth phase on the new internet meta-cult. The population as a whole is not ready to say "oh, I know there are kooks on the internet who will lie to me and I know how to recognize them." A memetic infection is inevitably going to be worse with an internet to spread it. It's not clear when this one might fizzle because the available set of hosts is billions instead of thousands for the first time ever. So yes. It's worse. It will probably be the most infectious cult spread since the origins of Christianity and Islam, and unlike those two it has nothing positive to offer. Without the internet it would just be a few hundred people in a compound, but now? We won't know how far it can get until it's over. And a few decades later we'll have another, and another. It's enough to make you wonder if we've found the Great Filter.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
violiner 4y ago
> The eastern mystery cults of the late B.C. era I'd hesitate to categorically lump all of the ancient mystery religions in with the rest of your list. Some of them were pretty strange, even for the ancient world, but e.g. the Eleusinian Mysteries and Mithraism were very mainstream for hundreds of years.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  Mithraism, in particular, is arguably very tightly linked to Christianity in early Christian history. By one theory, before Constantine's reforms that merged the two religions, Christianity was popular among the plebians while Mithraism was very popular among the patrician class, and the modern form of Christianity is arguably more similar to the old religion of the patricians.

michaelbuckbee 4y ago

While cults have always been around I feel like the "infection rate" of them has become higher. Instead of a small group of individuals that separate from society (as in the article) it feels like large portions of the population have all taken on somewhat cultlike behaviors of beliefs.

bigDinosaur 4y ago

Getting worse with a zoomed out view of history? Probably not. One of the deadliest conflicts in history was started essentially by a (likely schizophrenic) individual who believed he was the brother of Jesus over 150 years ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion). Getting worse than say, 2010 or something? Perhaps.

ShredKazoo 4y ago

Worth remembering that there are about 330 million people in the United States. The very fact that this is newsworthy is evidence that it's not that common on a percentage-of-population basis.

sacnoradhq 4y ago

It's nothing new. Cults, populist demagogues, and other forms of magical thinking spread more during bad times. Unreason, unreasonableness, and substituted realities take hold and waste the lives and time of many people if they can't see any alternate, tangible, positive conclusion from reason, reasonableness, and the status quo.