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cult (noun): A religion or religious sect generally considered to be extremist or false, with its followers often living in an unconventional manner under the g

cult (noun): A religion or religious sect generally considered to be extremist or false, with its followers often living in an unconventional manner under the guidance of an authoritarian, charismatic leader -- American Heritage Dictionary Without the "generally considered to be extremist or false" it would be quite hard to even identify a cult. It's mostly used as way to slur a disfavored group. It's an element of a Russell conjugation, like I am part of a spiritual awakening, you belong to a religious sect, they are in a mind-control cult. I was raised as a Jew. I consider that to be a cult, if one of the milder religious ones. My peewee football team was a cult. I belonged to a cultic political party, and worked for a startup that closely met the definition. So getting someone to leave a cult is going to be the same as getting them to forsake any other community, just with the added coercion of social acceptability. There's no magic, no brain unwashing, it's the same kind of persuasion used to sell a vacuum cleaner.

nkrisc 1y ago
> Without the "generally considered to be extremist or false" it would be quite hard to even identify a cult. Well, yes, if you remove the thing that distinguishes a cult from those other things, then it is hard to distinguish them.
- exasperaited 1y ago
  To my mind that definition lacks any accuracy because it doesn't speak about control. It's difficult to leave cults, and not because of belief (apostasy). It's difficult to leave cults because they destroy your outward connections, as a principle of operation.
simonw 1y ago
I quite like the term "high-control group", though interestingly it doesn't have a Wikipedia page.
swiftcoder 1y ago
> Without the "generally considered to be extremist or false" it would be quite hard to even identify a cult. The extremism is an integral part of what makes folks regard something a cult. Would anyone have cared that NXIVM was running dodgy self-improvement seminars upstate, if they hadn't also been coercing and branding women? > I consider that to be a cult, if one of the milder religious ones Various sects within the various organised religions certainly qualify as cults. I think a fair case could be made for many of the milder ones as well, on the basis of how they tend to treat women/children/etc (restrictive rules about clothing/education/personal-freedom/etc)
- exasperaited 1y ago
  Extremism is separate from coercion. It's entirely possible to have a coercive cult that has non-extreme beliefs. Jonestown was, in several ways, a cult with non-extreme beliefs. They did have a charismatic and dangerously mentally ill leader (who did not start out by any means as an awful person). But they collectively isolated themselves, rather than cutting off ties. And they did initially because of quite radical small-L liberal beliefs as well as politically socialist beliefs. Things that non-cult people think now. It did not become truly coercive as a power structure until quite late on, mostly when they had isolated themselves and in many cases become physically ill, and in part it was still a collective delusion. Even then, in many ways, Jonestown beliefs were not particularly extreme in a broad evangelical sense (rather than a US white evangelical sense, which is now a culture that could be defined largely non-religiously) if you specifically put aside their individually extreme devotion to Jones.
toasterlovin 1y ago
> I belonged to a cultic political party Minor thing, but I prefer ‘cultish’ to ‘cultic’ for your usage. In academia, ‘cultic’ means anything to do with worship and lacks the association with cults as discussed in this thread, whereas ‘cultish’ is how I usually see people adjectivize ‘cult’ in the way you are doing.
pton_xd 1y ago
> It's mostly used as way to slur a disfavored group. I generally agree. The divide between religion and cult is just a distinction between what's deemed acceptable behavior by society. Obsessing over a person who died thousands of years ago? Totally "normal." Obsessing over a single living person? Totally a cult.
- exasperaited 1y ago
  > The divide between religion and cult is just a distinction between what's deemed acceptable behavior by society. This is misconception. It's not about the extremism of the belief. It's about the mechanism of control. Take the "cults" of the moment: Qanon/MAGA, for example, operate like a personality cult in many identifiable ways, but are not actually cults, because you can leave without much difficulty if you set your mind to it. On the fringes US politics encourages ostracising family members who do not agree, but these movements do not have a mechanism of control (financial control combined with a commitment to cutting off family members). There may be cult sects within MAGA/QAnon that get close, perhaps (just as there are at the fringes of all strange and mainstream religious beliefs)
  - pton_xd 1y ago
    > It's not about the extremism of the belief. It's about the mechanism of control. > but are not actually cults, because you can leave without much difficulty if you set your mind to it. By that definition Islam should be considered a cult as it calls for severe consequences for apostasy, ranging from social ostracism to the death penalty. However it's not a cult, it's a mainstream religion. Same with Judaism; interfaith marriages are highly discouraged (re: prohibited) by Orthodox Jews, which is another mechanism of control. But again, not a cult. Why is that? My argument is it has nothing to do with the beliefs or mechanisms of control or anything, really. It's purely what's normalized by society vs what is considered aberrant behavior.
    - exasperaited 11mo ago
      > By that definition Islam should be considered a cult as it calls for severe consequences for apostasy, ranging from social ostracism to the death penalty. However it's not a cult, it's a mainstream religion. I make the distinction elsewhere that it is not the belief structure (e.g. apostasy) that I am talking about. I am talking about how a cult cuts you off from non-believers entirely, and that is combined with financial control. Islam, Judaism, they do neither of these things, at an individual level. And Islam really lacks "cult control" mechanisms because it has such a limited concept of hierarchy of faith or obedience to any non-family authority. Cults work at the deeply personal, individual level.
exasperaited 1y ago
This is not a useful definition of a cult, though it is a short one. The primary characteristic of a cult is that adherents find it difficult to leave, not because of the specific beliefs of the religion (e.g. Islam) but because of the mechanism of control. "Unconventional manner" doesn't really cut it. The key definition of a contemporary cult from the perspective of someone who has seen people join one is that the cult turns people inward to the cult and encourages them to cut off not just friends who question their belief but ultimately all non-cult friends and family. In fact you could argue that the primary quality of a mainstream religion is that it points itself outwards towards non-believers and does not condition receiving its care on belief itself. For example, the Unification Church is on a slow trajectory towards mainstream religion. The University Bible Fellowship, absolutely a cult and quite a scary one, is not on that trajectory.
komali2 11mo ago
I think most definitions of cults are too brief. To truly be a cult I reflect on the cults I've read about. For example, cults have a tendency to make members feel safer as members of the cult, which can be done by making "outsiders" seem hostile and "insiders" seem safe: see for example Mormons and Jehovah's witnesses sending people out to bother people door to door, which results in them getting yelled at by non Mormons. Cults often require one's entire social circle to be cult members. This comes with the threat of total social isolation from friends and loved ones if you fall out of the cult and are made incommunicado. Thus while I like to cheekily refer to religions as cults, most major religions these days don't fall into this category in this highly diversified world.

nkrisc 1y ago

> Without the "generally considered to be extremist or false" it would be quite hard to even identify a cult. Well, yes, if you remove the thing that distinguishes a cult from those other things, then it is hard to distinguish them.

exasperaited 1y ago
To my mind that definition lacks any accuracy because it doesn't speak about control. It's difficult to leave cults, and not because of belief (apostasy). It's difficult to leave cults because they destroy your outward connections, as a principle of operation.

simonw 1y ago

I quite like the term "high-control group", though interestingly it doesn't have a Wikipedia page.

swiftcoder 1y ago

> Without the "generally considered to be extremist or false" it would be quite hard to even identify a cult. The extremism is an integral part of what makes folks regard something a cult. Would anyone have cared that NXIVM was running dodgy self-improvement seminars upstate, if they hadn't also been coercing and branding women? > I consider that to be a cult, if one of the milder religious ones Various sects within the various organised religions certainly qualify as cults. I think a fair case could be made for many of the milder ones as well, on the basis of how they tend to treat women/children/etc (restrictive rules about clothing/education/personal-freedom/etc)

exasperaited 1y ago
Extremism is separate from coercion. It's entirely possible to have a coercive cult that has non-extreme beliefs. Jonestown was, in several ways, a cult with non-extreme beliefs. They did have a charismatic and dangerously mentally ill leader (who did not start out by any means as an awful person). But they collectively isolated themselves, rather than cutting off ties. And they did initially because of quite radical small-L liberal beliefs as well as politically socialist beliefs. Things that non-cult people think now. It did not become truly coercive as a power structure until quite late on, mostly when they had isolated themselves and in many cases become physically ill, and in part it was still a collective delusion. Even then, in many ways, Jonestown beliefs were not particularly extreme in a broad evangelical sense (rather than a US white evangelical sense, which is now a culture that could be defined largely non-religiously) if you specifically put aside their individually extreme devotion to Jones.

toasterlovin 1y ago

> I belonged to a cultic political party Minor thing, but I prefer ‘cultish’ to ‘cultic’ for your usage. In academia, ‘cultic’ means anything to do with worship and lacks the association with cults as discussed in this thread, whereas ‘cultish’ is how I usually see people adjectivize ‘cult’ in the way you are doing.

pton_xd 1y ago

> It's mostly used as way to slur a disfavored group. I generally agree. The divide between religion and cult is just a distinction between what's deemed acceptable behavior by society. Obsessing over a person who died thousands of years ago? Totally "normal." Obsessing over a single living person? Totally a cult.

exasperaited 1y ago
> The divide between religion and cult is just a distinction between what's deemed acceptable behavior by society. This is misconception. It's not about the extremism of the belief. It's about the mechanism of control. Take the "cults" of the moment: Qanon/MAGA, for example, operate like a personality cult in many identifiable ways, but are not actually cults, because you can leave without much difficulty if you set your mind to it. On the fringes US politics encourages ostracising family members who do not agree, but these movements do not have a mechanism of control (financial control combined with a commitment to cutting off family members). There may be cult sects within MAGA/QAnon that get close, perhaps (just as there are at the fringes of all strange and mainstream religious beliefs)
- pton_xd 1y ago
  > It's not about the extremism of the belief. It's about the mechanism of control. > but are not actually cults, because you can leave without much difficulty if you set your mind to it. By that definition Islam should be considered a cult as it calls for severe consequences for apostasy, ranging from social ostracism to the death penalty. However it's not a cult, it's a mainstream religion. Same with Judaism; interfaith marriages are highly discouraged (re: prohibited) by Orthodox Jews, which is another mechanism of control. But again, not a cult. Why is that? My argument is it has nothing to do with the beliefs or mechanisms of control or anything, really. It's purely what's normalized by society vs what is considered aberrant behavior.
  - exasperaited 11mo ago
    > By that definition Islam should be considered a cult as it calls for severe consequences for apostasy, ranging from social ostracism to the death penalty. However it's not a cult, it's a mainstream religion. I make the distinction elsewhere that it is not the belief structure (e.g. apostasy) that I am talking about. I am talking about how a cult cuts you off from non-believers entirely, and that is combined with financial control. Islam, Judaism, they do neither of these things, at an individual level. And Islam really lacks "cult control" mechanisms because it has such a limited concept of hierarchy of faith or obedience to any non-family authority. Cults work at the deeply personal, individual level.

exasperaited 1y ago

This is not a useful definition of a cult, though it is a short one. The primary characteristic of a cult is that adherents find it difficult to leave, not because of the specific beliefs of the religion (e.g. Islam) but because of the mechanism of control. "Unconventional manner" doesn't really cut it. The key definition of a contemporary cult from the perspective of someone who has seen people join one is that the cult turns people inward to the cult and encourages them to cut off not just friends who question their belief but ultimately all non-cult friends and family. In fact you could argue that the primary quality of a mainstream religion is that it points itself outwards towards non-believers and does not condition receiving its care on belief itself. For example, the Unification Church is on a slow trajectory towards mainstream religion. The University Bible Fellowship, absolutely a cult and quite a scary one, is not on that trajectory.

komali2 11mo ago

I think most definitions of cults are too brief. To truly be a cult I reflect on the cults I've read about. For example, cults have a tendency to make members feel safer as members of the cult, which can be done by making "outsiders" seem hostile and "insiders" seem safe: see for example Mormons and Jehovah's witnesses sending people out to bother people door to door, which results in them getting yelled at by non Mormons. Cults often require one's entire social circle to be cult members. This comes with the threat of total social isolation from friends and loved ones if you fall out of the cult and are made incommunicado. Thus while I like to cheekily refer to religions as cults, most major religions these days don't fall into this category in this highly diversified world.