“Environments where we are encouraged to hide our faults are toxic.” – Donald Miller
As far as I could find in my research, no one has a good standard by which to define or measure a “cult.” The words of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart probably summed it up best:
“I shall not today attempt further to define [what] I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.”
It’s All In Your Head
For my evolving definition, a cult is [at least] what happens inside your mind when you allow a group of people to encroach on boundaries that threaten your individuality. The more they demand that you violate yourself to serve them, and the more they convince you to sincerely thank them for the privilege, the more destructive the cult.
Cults happen in workplaces and religious institutions, gyms and self-help seminars. The cult isn’t the place or the event or even the culture, but the relationship you have with it. Theranos could be a cult. Scientology could be a cult. Mary Kay could be a cult. Each of them very likely have great people with healthy boundaries and great outcomes. Those people are not in a cult. They are also not likely to make it to the top of the hierarchy.
I think an organization approaches the definition of a dangerous cult as they promote people who embrace the cult relationship. Once the top of the power structure is full of people with a largely cultish relationship to the organization, there is little point in not calling the organization a cult. It’s true that a cult happens in the individual, so it might be more accurate to say instead that the organization that successfully exalts an extremely unhealthy relationship to itself is a “cult factory” rather than a “cult” itself.
Checking In
Cults don’t allow for the individual. Apparently this is called “enmeshment”, which is a form of “co-dependence”, the need to check on something outside yourself before you can be okay inside yourself. Because the cult dictates its members’ value, no member is the authority on their own okay-ness. At any moment, the organization can trump your okay-ness with a higher level of Truth: “We just found a defect in you and you are not okay until you complete task X.” The org owns your peace.
Paranoia
When you’re in a cult, you have that constant feeling that someone is about to come get you, especially when you knowingly do something outside of what you think their will probably is. In Christian cults, we call this the “Holy Spirit” and “conviction.”
In the days, weeks, or months after breaking from the org, you may have the recognizably illogical, yet unshakeable sense that you’ve done something literally illegal and that some authority is about to come and take away your stuff or take you away. You’re probably about to go to jail once they find out that you have…um…well, that’s the part that’s hard to fill in. You realize you haven’t done anything illegal, and barely morally wrong, if at all.
You feel stupid and frustrated, realizing that this cloud hovers over you every moment you’re not staring directly at it. But look away for a moment to go back to your life, and it sweeps back in on the sides of your brain, just out of sight, but coloring your every endeavor. You may whisper things that aren’t secrets, hold your phone at a concealing angle even when what you’re doing isn’t private, or you may take weird, alternate routes to mundane errands.
Former members will often be sure that at different times they were tracked, trailed, recorded, and surveilled. The bad news is, that recording device was not installed. That car behind you wasn’t them. Your computer virus was just a virus. The extra noises you heard on that phone call were just your own breath. None of it actually existed. Except for the stuff that did. That stuff was real.
So the good news is – you’re not crazy! You’re not wrong. The paranoia you’re feeling is just as legitimate as anyone else’s PTSD. They actually did spy on their people in creepy ways, and used it against them. If you didn’t wonder if they were in your devices, following your car, and recording your conversations, you’d be ignorant. That’s exactly the kind of stuff they did all the time. Just not this time; not to you. But it’s normal to think so.
And that is the real point of it all. They would have loved to surveil you at all times, but they just didn’t have the resources to plant the GPS, transcribe the tapes, and hack the computers. But the caution with which you conduct yourself, the fear of their omniscience, the restraint with which you communicate – that was the point of it all in the first place. The more paranoid you are, the less work they have to do.
This is all proof to the people in the cult that your conscience is bothering you. After all, if you were living “in the light”, you wouldn’t feel there was anything to hide. The people at the top of the power structure will express their bafflement and mock such weird behavior. They are probably being sincere. It’s hard to relate to the paranoia when you are a rule maker and not the rule follower. The fabled version of Marie Antoinette could no doubt diagnose the problem, “Let them be less insecure!”
Powerless Leaders
In “Keep Your Love On,” Danny Silk talks about the difference between powerful people and powerless people.
| POWERFUL PEOPLE | POWERLESS PEOPLE |
| Say, “I will” | Say, “I have to” |
| Say, “I do” | Say, “I’ll try” |
| Say, “I am” | Say, “I wish” |
| Empower | Rescue |
| Encourage | Hurt/Control |
| Mean “yes” and “no” | Flail |
| Choose others for others | Choose others for self |
According to this definition, cults are led by powerless people. They are focused on a goal, not taking responsibility for their actions, trying to save others while hurting and controlling them, defending their contradictions, and looking to the collection of people they lead for their self-worth. They became leaders not because of their power, but because of opportunity, peer pressure, and/or the allure of a title. Not the title of “Leader” – most of them are humble enough to eschew that. But becoming a leader checks the more significant boxes like “Right”, “Valuable”, “Needed”, “Competent”, “Worthy” and more.
This is why losing their “ministry” is so destabilizing. They know in their hearts that they are not coveting a position, but to be “disqualified as a leader” is an invalidation of their humanity. It’s not the “leader” part they need as much as the “qualified” part. Layer on top of it, the fact that they are often being voted “unqualified” by equally un-revere-able reverends or some disrespectful separatists, and you’ve got a recipe for a whole lot of understandable bitterness.
Powerless Minions
Of course, cults are also fueled by powerless people; the minions; the coal in the furnace. And every relationship continues for a reason. That young hottie isn’t with that old man because she’s blind; she’s just not looking at the same things you are. Cults are naturally attractive to powerless people who want a place to feel safe, like someone is in control. They want someone who can show them how to win, how to be valuable; and someone who praises them for their value. This is the entry point of most cults:
“You are more valuable / knowledgeable / intuitive / important / strong than you have ever been told, but even as I’m telling you this, you can already sense the truth of what I’m saying in your heart / soul / spirit.”
And this sentiment is true. But once you rely on those people to be the source of this affirmation; once you need them – above all others – to show you the way; once they are your guru and mentor and guide, they are also the ones you’ve given power to take that affirmation away, taking with it all your value, knowledge, intuition, importance, and strength.
Replication
A cult is not a type of organization, it’s a mode of relationship between powerless people. This is why groups that leave cults often accidentally form their own mini-cults. They think they left the cult because they took the “good” people with them when they left the “bad” people, but they took the mode of relationship with them.
Because they experienced the pain of the cult (relationship), they assume the cult caused it. By failing to recognize that they could have been powerful in the relationship and stopped the abuse, they are paradoxically continuing the powerlessness that got them into the pain they are desperately trying to flee.
They become the patriarchs of the rebranded cult, and often spend many more years unaware that they never escaped. If they ever realize that the new relationships have an eerily similar twinge of pain, they may be tempted to give up on relationships altogether, “All people/churches/bosses are the same!” Well, Boo, as long as you’re the same…yeah, those are going to be the only kinds of relationships available to you :/
In Defense of the Overdog
The leaders of cults feel genuine hurt from their dissenting members too. It’s two powerless people hurting each other. They are not in equal positions of authority, so their responsibility is not the same, but their capability is; their pain is; their ignorance is. Cult leaders usually appear less wounded than their rebels, but that’s often in large part because of their familiarity with, and desensitization from that pain. They know betrayal. They know abandonment. They’ve been lonely, confused, and hurt, more times than you’ve ever seen.
“A man can get used to anything…disgust, horror, and pity are emotions that [we] could not really feel any more…the [horrors] became such commonplace sights…that they could not move [us] anymore.” – holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl
The ones that still hurt – those are the lucky ones. They still have a chance, though their fate is anything but inevitable. Be grateful, not for the pain, but the ability to feel it. Something is wrong, and you still possess a system that knows it.
Size Matters
An abusive relationship is inherently unstable, which is what makes it difficult to scale. This is why it’s hard to maintain a very cult-y cult of any great size. They either become less cult-y (…as a percentage of the whole, growing system. The inner circles can stay extremely cult-y) or they collapse of their own constraint. The cult-i-est cults are usually the smallest ones; the most easily-insulated ones. Cults thrive on powerlessness, lack of boundaries, and an absence of free communication. Fresh air kills cults.
It’s Bright at the Bottom
Most sustainable cults require the support, in every way – in finances, reputation, labor, and service – of many more people than are allowed to play the hierarchy game. The less-informed base of contributors who support the operations see mostly good things, and often admire and appreciate those “serving” at the top, so most cults only seem like cults to the people toward the top. Lots of people get mostly good things out of organizations like Scientology. Tellingly, it’s usually a big part of the program that you don’t get to know the org’s secrets until you get to the top levels. Learning how the org really operates – getting more behind-the-scenes dirt, that others “probably wouldn’t be able to handle” – is the aspiration of all your peers playing the game.
It’s Dark at the Top
Participating in a cult [relationship] is exhausting. The more frequently you show loyalty to the cult, the higher your rank. But it’s a treadmill. There is no lasting accomplishment or long-term stability.
It’s not necessarily an impossible game to win (though it is definitely rigged against some), but it’s not possible to rest. A win today does not translate into peace tomorrow. And when you ultimately lose, everything that was counted as a win will be reframed as a loss. All the praise you received while you were there will be re-colored and turned against you. You were bad all along, and in retrospect, we all kind of knew it. You never really fit in. You were never really one of us. Our only mistake was trusting you.
And every day brings this inevitability of losing everything a little bit closer. Better to never have gained the affection of the org than to have gained and lost it.
(For a more detailed description of the mindset of cult leaders and others in a position of precarious control, check out the very applicable “The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics”)
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