Beware the Cult Mentality

Over the last few years the Team shared messages of how we should be aware of elitism, separation, segregation and the repeated message to be careful of “us vs them”. They also worked to remind us to think for ourselves and not blindly follow anyone.

Today they bring the message again, only this time they’ve added, “Beware the cult mentality”. Cult mentality isn’t only found in religion or religious beliefs. Tina Rodia for Penn Today wrote, “Cult is a term that doesn’t refer to religion at all, but is applied to a social movement.” https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/it-cult-or-new-religious-movement

Some cult characteristics are (partial quoting – religious components removed for this article– source — Checklist of Cult Characteristics):

• The group is focused on a living leader to whom members seem to display excessively zealous, unquestioning commitment.
• The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.
• The group is preoccupied with making money.
• Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.
• Mind-numbing techniques …are used to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).
• The leadership dictates sometimes in great detail how members should think, act, and feel…
• The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s), and members…
• The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which causes conflict with the wider society.
• The group’s leader is not accountable to any authorities …
• The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify means that members would have considered unethical before joining the group …
• The leadership induces guilt feelings in members in order to control them.
• Members’ subservience to the group causes them to cut ties with family and friends, and to give up personal goals and activities that were of interest before joining the group.
• Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.

Do these look familiar? They should because we (generalized) are living it right now. The cult mentality is alive and thriving.

I ask you to take a step back – away from the fear mongering and manipulations – take a slow deep breath, and remove any blinders you may have accepted. Take a look – a real, detached, objective look. What do you see in play?

Please go within; think for yourself and seek the real truths. Listen to you.

By Jan Toomer