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Why are there so many cults? People want to feel like they belong to something, and in a world in the midst of a loneliness and isolation epidemic the market co
by api 1y ago
Why are there so many cults? People want to feel like they belong to something, and in a world in the midst of a loneliness and isolation epidemic the market conditions are ideal for cults.
- iwontberude 1y agoYour profile says that you want to keep your identity small, but you have like over 30 thousand comments spelling out exactly who you are and how you think. Why not shard accounts? Anyways. Just a random thought.
- keybored 1y ago[deleted]
- shadowgovt 1y ago"SC identity?"
- mindslight 1y agoAlso, who would want to join an "irrationalist cult" ?
- shadowgovt 1y agoHey now, the Discordians have an ancient and respectable tradition. ;)
- NoGravitas 1y agoFive tons of flax!
- FuriouslyAdrift 1y agoBecause we are currently living in an age of narcissism and tribalism / Identitarianism is the societal version of narcissism.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- khazhoux 1y ago> Because we are currently living in an age of narcissism and tribalism I've been saying this since at least 1200 BC!
- shadowgovt 1y agoThe book Imagined Communities (Benedict Anderson) touches on this, making the case that in modern times, "nation" has replaced the cultural narrative purpose previously held by "tribe," "village," "royal subject," or "religion." The shared thread among these is (in ever widening circles) a story people tell themselves to justify precisely why, for example, the actions of someone you'll never meet in Tulsa, OK have any bearing whatsoever on the fate of you, a person in Lincoln, NE. One can see how this leaves an individual in a tenuous place if one doesn't feel particularly connected to nationhood (one can also see how being too connected to nationhood, in an exclusionary way, can also have deleterious consequences, and how not unlike differing forms of Christianity, differing concepts on what the 'soul' of a nation is can foment internal strife). (To be clear: those fates are intertwined to some extent; the world we live in grows ever smaller due to the power of up-scaled influence of action granted by technology. But "nation" is a sort of fiction we tell ourselves to fit all that complexity into the slippery meat between human ears).
- ameliaquining 1y agoThe question the article is asking is "why did so many cults come out of this particular social milieu", not "why are there a lot of cults in the whole world".