I have a lot of experience with cults, and there are all kinds of data that you can research, but the truth is that I’ve been researching cults since I was a child.
I used to watch documentaries on various cults growing up because I was fascinated with the idea that people were obsessed with God, but not with the same God that I was being taught about. Their Gods came in space ships, from all over the universe, they came from different countries, and spoke different languages. This is precisely why the Roman Catholic Church wasn’t able to condition and hypnotize me with their bullshit in the ways that others got sucked in.
For me, I had the Church that I had to go to on Sundays, but then I had movies, WWE, and other amazing fantasy worlds like the MCU and the DCEU on Saturday mornings, that helped expand my mind and taught me how to believe that literally any kind of God or Goddess COULD exist, if they wanted to exist.
This is the mantra that saved my life from the belief that I had to get married, have children, and procreate, just so that the church had the ability to suck more people dry and destroy the lives of more children.
So I thought after a long long LONG ass month of thinking about cults and how they affected my life, in particular, and the lives of so many people across Canada, because we don’t talk about what cults are capable of, I would share some common practices that ALL religious organizations, groups, and cults have in common.
- Isolation
Isolation is number one. They draw you in by welcoming you to events and parties, telling you how special you are and how much they need you, they make you feel like you belong, and they do this on purpose just so they can tear you down later. Isolating you from friends and family members who don’t believe in their cause is rule number 1. If they don’t believe they can pull you away from the bad ones, and the moment that happens the bad ones lose control. Once they lose control over you, you’re of no use to them, so follow the rules if you want access to the higher levels of any group or organization!
- Control
Control comes after isolation because isolation is all about drawing you in, but keeping control over you is another thing entirely. If one is the carrot and the other is the stick, then the stick will be used far more often than the carrot because the carrot is special and must be protected. You only get the carrot when you’ve proven you are worthy.
- Dependency
Dependency comes after control but ONLY because once you’ve realized that you’ve become dependent on the church or organization telling you how to feel and what to think it’s completely ridiculously difficult to escape the need to be controlled. Emotional masochism I said yesterday is a trauma response, and being dependent on the same people abusing your time, person, or life, is another trauma response that works hand in hand with emotional masochism.
Maybe you aren’t being smashed in the face with a ring the size of a fucking golf ball, but MAYBE you are being told what to do over and over again and maybe that starts to feel comfortable because you come to a place where you don’t know how to live without being told what to do.
These are just some of the ways that the cults, organizations, and groups, that we join willingly take control over our lives. This list didn’t include financial thievery, which comes in the way of “dues” or “community funding,” and while many groups will use these funds gathered correctly, others will not.
When we talk about cult leaders let’s talk about Joel Osteen, he’s a multi-millionaire who says repeatedly that he works to “spread the word of God.”
From his website I screen capped these two photos:
From Scientology:
Developed by L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology is a religion that offers a precise path leading to a complete and certain understanding of one’s true spiritual nature and one’s relationship to self, family, groups, Mankind, all life forms, the material universe, the spiritual universe and the Supreme Being.
Both of these sound incredibly inspiring until you dig deeper into what the people who follow these two particular “religious” organizations have had to say.
Over the period of nearly 10 years, Leah Remini and Mike Rinder collected data and stories about what happened when people tried to leave Scientology as a religion, and about the harrowing escapes that it took. There were stories of cameras being planted in people’s yards and homes, stories of car chases that lasted days in some cases, actual “we had to escape Mission Impossible style,” kinds of escapes from this organization.
Meanwhile, while Texas faced one of the worst drownings of land in the history of time, Joel Osteen refused to open the megachurch he built with billions of dollars of funds given from the same community that needed help as their homes flooded and they lost everything from clothing to lives.
The Roman Catholic Church will let you leave without incident but of course, after you leave they’ll say all kinds of horrid things about you behind your back and ensure that no one in the community wants to speak to you again and no matter how badly you act out it’s your fault even though you’re probably acting out because you’re a) apart of the Roman Catholic Church and b) you’ve more than likely been abused by the same Priest telling you how to make sure you don’t end up in Hell for bad behaviour.
Cults have existed as long as there have been humans on this earth. There is always someone telling someone else they know the path to God, or to the Universe, or to the Goddess. There have been billions of stories written, played out on stage, or that have made it to Hollywood about what happens when you challenge God, and the people who are warning you to not challenge the universe are ALWAYS people who swear up and down they are the only person who has all the fucking answers.
This is how a cult starts, and this will not end. When you break it down to a larger range of folks, you delve into how politicians, actors, doctors, teachers, and lawyers, will all use the same practices as cult leaders to ensure that you keep funding their way of life.
We talk about how much teachers need to get paid more and they do, but we don’t talk about the bad teachers who hit kids, starve them throughout the entire day, force feed them when they are anorexic, or abuse them in other horrid and awful ways because they are the ones in the position of power.
During a school day, a child goes through at least 5-6 different teachers, and each teacher will tell that 1 child to behave a different way, and then we wonder why it is that children are leaning into hatred and violence and anger, and it’s yes because they are confused but it’s also because those who have the power to change a child’s life, are often acting out a sense of domination because they have so little control in other areas of their lives.
This is why religious and cult leaders exist. It’s not just that we allow them to exist, it’s also the fact that we allow them to exist because we as humans are desperate to be told what to do so that we can feel normal, and the moment that we decide that we don’t want to be told what to do, is the moment that the entire system around us comes crashing down.
Divergent is a perfect word for those of us who do not want to fit inside a box, and if you don’t believe me, please look at this photo and tell me which box you fit into.
Before you get pissed off, PLEASE remember that many of the people that I LOVE, are Cis gender, and if we’re going to start talking about how religion doesn’t make room for us, then we need to actually talk about how we’re refusing to make room for our cis allies, who absolutely deserve to be celebrated too…just like we do.
If we don’t celebrate our allies, if we keep trash-talking them and telling them that they need to “Try harder” when they are LITERALLY trying with all they have (yes this is a Fembat I love you post,), then what the fuck are we doing?
It’s great that there are so many different labels and groups, but if we’re going to be a community of folk that doesn’t welcome everyone, then I’m not interested. Peace out folks.
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall
Loud Mouth Brown Girl 