Latest / The You Project / #2159 The Psychology of Cults - Harps

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#2159 The Psychology of Cults - Harps · The You Project

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Speaker 1: Good to him. I hope your greats Another solo for
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Speaker 1: the people who keep sending me messages going do more
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Speaker 1: of these, which is not you know, it's not a
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Speaker 1: great percentage, but it's quite a few of you who
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Speaker 1: seem to like solo episodes. Now, it's kind of a
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Speaker 1: teaching information session more than anything. Really clearly not a conversation.
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Speaker 1: Here's my little asterisk, here's my disclaimer. I'm not a
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Speaker 1: guru or person. I'm not a guru, but I'm definitely
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Speaker 1: not a guru or an expert in everything that I
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Speaker 1: talk about, So I do some research. Of course, I
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Speaker 1: have some existing knowledge. I have some experience and stories
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Speaker 1: pasonal experience with most of the topics that I talk about.
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Speaker 1: We're talking about cults today, and it is very much
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Speaker 1: me thinking as I go, these are unscreen did I
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Speaker 1: have some dot points I have all over my screen.
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Speaker 1: I have bits and pieces of stuff everywhere. So if
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Speaker 1: it's not the smooth, beautiful, articulate, flowing, seamless podcast production
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Speaker 1: that you might otherwise get in other places or even
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Speaker 1: on here, sometimes when I'm doing a guest version, I apologize,
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Speaker 1: but I want it to be real and authentic, and
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Speaker 1: sometimes that requires me kind of thinking in the moment
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Speaker 1: and on the going. That means me taking a pause,
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Speaker 1: or that means ME trying to collect my thoughts or
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Speaker 1: figure out the best way to say something that just
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Speaker 1: slid into my prefrontal cortex, so that I might share
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Speaker 1: that thought or that idea or experience or story in
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Speaker 1: a way which is most resonant, that is makes the
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Speaker 1: most sense for you, the listener. So I kind of
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Speaker 1: sail that up front, you know, just to expect why.
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Speaker 1: I guess sometimes this might seem a little ad hoc.
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Speaker 1: So I want to talk about cults. I'm fascinated with cults.
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Speaker 1: I always have been. I'm fascinated with it quite a
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Speaker 1: few topics, but this is definitely in my top ten.
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Speaker 1: Is understanding one what cults are, how they work, how
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Speaker 1: people get involved? Are they the thing that we imagine
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Speaker 1: is a cult always a religious or a spiritual thing.
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Speaker 1: I think when, if we're being brave and honest, when
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Speaker 1: most of us think about a cult, we think about
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Speaker 1: some kind of charismatic, charming leader. We think about an
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Speaker 1: ideology or a philosophy or a theology that's non negotiable.
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Speaker 1: This is probably just me, but I tend to think
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Speaker 1: of a bunch of people sometimes isolated in some remote
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Speaker 1: rural compound. I think of control and manipulation and lies, exception,
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Speaker 1: and good stuff and bad stuff. And having been I
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Speaker 1: don't want to open the door too wide on this today,
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Speaker 1: not because I don't want to share it, but just
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Speaker 1: because I don't want to take up the whole chat
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Speaker 1: with this. But I was involved when I was younger,
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Speaker 1: as some of you know, in a church which will
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Speaker 1: remain nameless, which upon reflection, was very culty, very controlling,
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Speaker 1: very manipulative, very coercive, and very very much a big
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Speaker 1: influence on the lens through which I viewed the world
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Speaker 1: and how I saw things and how I saw truth.
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Speaker 1: I put an asterisk next to that or what was
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Speaker 1: presented to me as truth. And I think this happens
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Speaker 1: a lot. Happens in organizations, happens in social settings, happens
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Speaker 1: all over the joint. And that's why I want to
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Speaker 1: talk about it, just because I think sometimes you know,
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Speaker 1: that idea of thinking about or thinking metacognition, sometimes we
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Speaker 1: get kind of swept along in the group thing think
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Speaker 1: that that is, we tend to believe what everyone around
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Speaker 1: us believes and Also, one of the core attributes of
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Speaker 1: humans is that we want to belong to a group.
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Speaker 1: We want to feel needed, valued, scene we want to
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Speaker 1: feel part of something bigger than us. We want to
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Speaker 1: be loved and valued and important. And sometimes sometimes belonging
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Speaker 1: to a group or an organization like that, like the
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Speaker 1: one I'm describing, gives us that thing that we're looking for.
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Speaker 1: And sometimes though that comes at the cost of us
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Speaker 1: pushing back or questioning, or thinking independently, or ignoring the signs,
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Speaker 1: and because we would rather fit in that and potentially
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Speaker 1: be disconnected from the group, humans do not like separation.
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Speaker 1: So let's start with a definition. And it's interesting. You
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Speaker 1: can find a lot of different definitions, but this one
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Speaker 1: is probably reasonably accurate. I think a cult is typically
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Speaker 1: a group or movement built around Now, no, it doesn't
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Speaker 1: mention religion. A group or movement built around a highly controlling,
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Speaker 1: non negotiable belief system, ideology, leader, or set of practices,
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Speaker 1: beliefs and behaviors where members are often discouraged. I would
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Speaker 1: say in cults almost always discouraged from questioning authority, from
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Speaker 1: thinking independently, from leading the group, or from considering any
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Speaker 1: other potential reality. And this is something that I've been
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Speaker 1: in the middle of at times. It's something that I've
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Speaker 1: observed others going through. And it's hard because when you
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Speaker 1: believe something, and when that belief, when that that group
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Speaker 1: or that ideology or philosophy or theology, when that is
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Speaker 1: very much intertwined with who you are as a person,
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Speaker 1: you know that that I am statement I am a Christian,
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Speaker 1: I am a Buddhist, I am a vegetarian, I am
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Speaker 1: I am an academic. There are academic cuts, I am
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Speaker 1: the whole I am thing that kind of says, oh,
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Speaker 1: this is who I am, not this is what I believe,
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Speaker 1: or this is what I think, or this is what
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Speaker 1: I do, or this is where I hang out, but
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Speaker 1: this is who I am. And when we're coming from
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Speaker 1: the perspective of this thing that I'm talking about is me.
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Speaker 1: It's me. That it's very hard to be open mind
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Speaker 1: to any other philosophy or any other group because that
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Speaker 1: would mean literally or metaphorically experientially perhaps becoming something else because.
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Speaker 2: I am I am a believer, I am an atheist,
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Speaker 2: I am agnostic, I am a bodybuilder, I am a
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Speaker 2: whatever it is.
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Speaker 1: So here we go. I've written a few things I'm
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Speaker 1: going to work around a little bit. We tend to
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Speaker 1: think cults are something that happened somewhere else, you know, robes, bunkers, chanting, matching, sneakers,
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Speaker 1: a bloke named or a woman Keith, probably not a woman,
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Speaker 1: or moonbeam telling stories about the inevitable apocalypse next Tuesday.
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Speaker 1: That's the stereotype. But the reality is usually far more
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Speaker 1: ordinary and far more psychologically interesting, because the uncomfortable truth
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Speaker 1: is this that cult like dynamics can emerge almost anywhere
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Speaker 1: that humans get together in any kind of sense around identity, certainty, emotion, power, ideology, behavior, thinking.
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Speaker 1: You know, I always talk about thought cults, that we
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Speaker 1: all need to think the same thing, that we all
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Speaker 1: need to think the same way even when we think.
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Speaker 1: I think there are social cults where if you don't
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Speaker 1: think like me, or agree with me or us, or
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Speaker 1: live like us, or behave like us, or align with us,
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Speaker 1: then you are not welcome in this group. Which clearly
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Speaker 1: that's not a friendship group. That's not that's the opposite
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Speaker 1: of friendship. So religion, politics, wellness, fitness, self help, business,
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Speaker 1: online communities, social media tribes, conspiracy movements, and even within
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Speaker 1: the walls of some approaches to therapy or even coaching,
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Speaker 1: we can see people who are very divisive in that
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Speaker 1: they're apart from their core message, their rhetoric, their theory,
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Speaker 1: their ideology. The underlying message is if you don't do
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Speaker 1: it this way or my way, if you don't follow
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Speaker 1: this path, you won't get the results because everything else
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Speaker 1: is misleading. So also, I guess I'm saying that not
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Speaker 1: all passionate communities are cults, but I am saying that
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Speaker 1: humans are deeply tribal, and under certain condition, those tribes
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Speaker 1: can become psychologically unhealthy and manipulative and controlling. And here's
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Speaker 1: the I guess theascinating bit is that many people fail
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Speaker 1: to recognize cults precisely because they're not religious. If a
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Speaker 1: group looks modern and on trend and successful and progressive
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Speaker 1: and intelligent, even wealthy, or socially acceptable, then what we
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Speaker 1: do is we lower our psychological guard. But I guess
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Speaker 1: cults aren't necessarily or always defined by what people believe.
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Speaker 1: They're more accurately defined by how power operates within that system,
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Speaker 1: within that group, within that church, within that whatever it is,
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Speaker 1: within that organization, within that social context. So it's really
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Speaker 1: about how power works within that group. That is the key.
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Speaker 1: It's not the clothes, it's not the language. It's not
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Speaker 1: whether they meditate or sing songs or self supplements, or
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Speaker 1: talk about energy or vibration, or even historical or ancient
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Speaker 1: or religious religious texts, although it can be. But the
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Speaker 1: real question is can people question the leadership safely? Or
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Speaker 1: can they question the core tenants or ideology or philosophy
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Speaker 1: of the group. Can they disagree? Can you be in
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Speaker 1: that group and not necessarily align with everything that the
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Speaker 1: group teaches? Can they lead the group without being shamed,
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Speaker 1: without being ridiculed, without being totally isolated or punished? Can
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Speaker 1: they think independently? I've been in I've been in groups
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Speaker 1: and the church that I mentioned before where you are
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Speaker 1: strongly discouraged from thinking for yourself. If that independent thinking
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Speaker 1: doesn't reflect the group thinking. Can you maintain relationships outside
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Speaker 1: the group? Can you be critical of or can you
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Speaker 1: push back against? Or can you question ideas without being
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Speaker 1: shamed or attacked or ostracized. Because once a group starts
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Speaker 1: controlling behavior and information and relationships, which they do an
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Speaker 1: identity and thought, we're already in trouble. If we're in
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Speaker 1: that group and the thing that confuses people is this
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Speaker 1: Quite often anyway, a lot of cults don't seem at
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Speaker 1: all culty. From the outside looking in, they look awesome,
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Speaker 1: or they can they can look awesome and appealing and
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Speaker 1: attractive and helpful and supportive and inspirational and transformational and empowering.
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Speaker 1: That's how humans work. Nobody joins a culture thinking, you
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Speaker 1: know what, this is awesome. I'd love to surrender my
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Speaker 1: autonomy and become psychologically dependent on this group of weirdos.
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Speaker 1: People don't think that that's not the sales pitche the
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Speaker 1: sales pitch or the marketing or the branding or the
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Speaker 1: external idea from the outside looking in is it's something
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Speaker 1: like this. We get you, we understand you, we know you,
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Speaker 1: you belong here, we have the answers. And by the way,
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Speaker 1: you're special and we recognize that people don't get you,
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Speaker 1: but we get you because we're better, we're different where
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Speaker 1: what you need the outside world doesn't get you. And
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Speaker 1: the good news is you've finally found your people. This
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Speaker 1: is your home now, This is your spiritual, mental, emotional,
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Speaker 1: social home. This is where you belong now when you're
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Speaker 1: doing when that's happening to people who are disconnected emotionally
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Speaker 1: or socially or psychologically. People who do feel lonely, who
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Speaker 1: do feel sad, who do feel lost. Those things are
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Speaker 1: wildly appealing, or they can be, because we humans are
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Speaker 1: meaning making, connection seeking creatures like we want certainty. We
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Speaker 1: want to know. We want to know, and not knowing
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Speaker 1: living in the unknown, the unforeseen, the unpredictable, the uncomfortable,
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Speaker 1: all the uns that I talk about that doesn't work
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Speaker 1: well with us. We want certainty, we want belonging, we
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Speaker 1: want identity, community, purpose, hope, direction, especially when we're vulnerable,
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Speaker 1: in the middle of a breakup, in the middle of grief,
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Speaker 1: in the middle of loneliness or illness, or confusion, career confusion,
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Speaker 1: in the middle of an existential crisis. Who what am I?
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Speaker 1: What is life about? This is not where I thought
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Speaker 1: I would be. I'm forty, I'm fifty. I feel like
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Speaker 1: I'm fucking doing worse. I'm knowing less, I'm more disconnected,
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Speaker 1: I'm sadder, I'm lonelier, I'm unwell. In the middle of
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Speaker 1: all of that, these groups, this group think this feel
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Speaker 1: good high five. Now, it doesn't have to be like
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Speaker 1: I said, RELI. It could be in any group. It
15:09
Speaker 1: could be during addiction recurry, it could be in trauma,
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Speaker 1: it could be in major life transitions. When people feel
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Speaker 1: psychologically untethered or sociologically untethered, that is, they don't belong,
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Speaker 1: then the idea of certainty is super sexy. It's super attractive.
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Speaker 1: And so when we're in that compromise state where our
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Speaker 1: guard is down, perhaps where we're not at our psychological
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Speaker 1: or emotional or perceptual kind of best, that's when we
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Speaker 1: become way way more vulnerable, and not in a good way,
15:51
Speaker 1: not in a good way. Uncertainty is what we're buying,
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Speaker 1: or what we think we're buying. Certain is often the
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Speaker 1: product that's being sold, not truth. Certainty. There's a big difference.
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Speaker 1: And one of the reasons that's smart people, intelligent people,
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Speaker 1: which I know most of my listeners, all of my listeners,
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Speaker 1: what are you saying, ahaps, all of my listeners. One
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Speaker 1: of the reasons that people like you and me can
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Speaker 1: it happened to me, It's happened, And to lesser extent
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Speaker 1: with other things too, where I bought into a lie,
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Speaker 1: I brought into some group think I've bought and like,
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Speaker 1: for example, I'll give you a quick one. You know
16:28
Speaker 1: when I bought into the idea that the food pyramid
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Speaker 1: is great. Is that's the optimal way to eat. Research
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Speaker 1: tells us, science tells us, it's backed by this scientific
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Speaker 1: team that did this research, that wrote all these peer
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Speaker 1: reviewed papers that come up with these amazing insights and
16:44
Speaker 1: revelations in the world of nutrition. And so I bought
16:48
Speaker 1: into that because I wanted to have I wanted to
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Speaker 1: have something that I could attach to in terms of
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Speaker 1: what I did with my own nutrition and what I
16:58
Speaker 1: told others and how I coached or shared with others,
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Speaker 1: and I could just go back to this group think
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Speaker 1: around the food pyramid and go, this is what we know.
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Speaker 1: This is how it works. Anyone who says this isn't
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Speaker 1: how it works is not paying attention. They're essentially wrong.
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Speaker 1: And I guess one of the reasons that smart people
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Speaker 1: do get pulled into cult like systems is because our
17:24
Speaker 1: intelligence doesn't immunize us against emotional needs. And that's the
17:30
Speaker 1: other thing too, right, is we want to be right.
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Speaker 1: We want to be right. Nobody wants to be wrong.
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Speaker 1: Think about how hard it is for somebody who's believed
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Speaker 1: something passionately and strongly to consider that the thing that
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Speaker 1: they believe the thing that's shaped their life, the thing
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Speaker 1: that's been their path, their direction, the kind of litmus
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Speaker 1: test that they hold up all of their decisions and
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Speaker 1: behaviors and actions and interactions, that's the test that they use.
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Speaker 1: And then one day, like I did with the food pyramid.
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Speaker 1: That's a very small example, but I would have taught
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Speaker 1: that and believe that and immersed my ideas around nutrition
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Speaker 1: in that for a very long time, maybe twenty years,
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Speaker 1: and then one day you find out, oh, you're wrong.
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Speaker 1: It's much easier to go, fuck that research, fuck the
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Speaker 1: new thinking. That the whole thinking is the best thinking
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Speaker 1: because me being real and honest and vulnerable around that
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Speaker 1: comes it feels like as an experience, it comes at
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Speaker 1: the expense of my ego and my self esteem and
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Speaker 1: my credibility and my authority and all of those very
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Speaker 1: human things that can derail me. But the truth, the
18:48
Speaker 1: truth is that I'm wrong. Off, I'm wrong. Off. I
18:52
Speaker 1: don't want to belong to any group really, maybe social groups,
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Speaker 1: maybe friendship groups. But if there's a non negotiable, unavoidable,
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Speaker 1: unhealthy cost to being in any group, even if it
19:04
Speaker 1: is a social group, I'm not interested in fact, highly
19:09
Speaker 1: intelligent people can sometimes be better at rationalizing bad ideas.
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Speaker 1: Once emotionally invested. We all think we're too smart or
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Speaker 1: sometimes we think we're too smart to be manipulated. Well,
19:21
Speaker 1: that confidence alone should worry us, because manipulation rarely feels
19:26
Speaker 1: like manipulation. So when we're being coerced or controlled or manipulated,
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Speaker 1: it's usually very very subtle, and it evolves over time
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Speaker 1: and it's slow, which is that's all very strategic on
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Speaker 1: the part of the cults, because that's the way that
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Speaker 1: trust and relationship and connection and dependency and addiction develops.
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Speaker 1: Doesn't happen in a day or a week. So it
19:55
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like manipulation. It feels like connection or purpose
19:59
Speaker 1: or clarity. It feels like hope, it feels like a solution.
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Speaker 1: It feels like the light in the darkness, validation, community, identity.
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Speaker 1: And there's often with that is like I said, it's
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Speaker 1: a gradual thing. There's a gradual escalation and addiction and
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Speaker 1: attraction and involvement that happens. People aren't usually introduced to
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Speaker 1: the extreme beliefs on day one. It's incremental, step by step,
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Speaker 1: commitment by commitment, agreement by agreement, and they might not
20:35
Speaker 1: even be verbal or conscious agreements, but just the fact
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Speaker 1: that you go along, that you don't push back, that
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Speaker 1: you don't ask questions, that you respect the group, and
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Speaker 1: you respect the people. And if they believe it, now
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Speaker 1: I believe it. And what we're doing is we're robbing
20:51
Speaker 1: ourselves of an opportunity to think critically and to come
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Speaker 1: to our own truths and revelations because we've kind of
21:03
Speaker 1: outsourced that kind of thinking to someone or something else.
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Speaker 1: It's like a bit like I guess, turning out the
21:11
Speaker 1: psychological kind of melting pot, or a psychological equivalent of
21:18
Speaker 1: slowly turning up the heat in a pot we don't notice,
21:21
Speaker 1: like the story of the poor old frog that gets
21:24
Speaker 1: boiled in the pot. If the crazy stuff arrived immediately,
21:29
Speaker 1: most people would run the other way. But that really happens.
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Speaker 1: It unfolds gradually, and our thinking adapts, our brain adapts,
21:37
Speaker 1: our responses adapt and all of a sudden it's not.
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Speaker 1: But it feels like, all of a sudden, we're seeing
21:44
Speaker 1: the world differently, and we're now seeing the world like
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Speaker 1: the group, not like us. Now is that always terrible?
21:50
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's not. And we humans normalize things surprisingly quick.
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Speaker 1: And there's something that call that psychologists call cognitive dissonance,
22:03
Speaker 1: which I'm sure you've heard of, which basically means when
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Speaker 1: our behavior and our beliefs can flip, the brain somehow
22:10
Speaker 1: becomes uncomfortable and tries to reduce the tension. So we
22:15
Speaker 1: don't want to push back. We don't want a question
22:17
Speaker 1: because that creates tension and disconnection. We don't want any
22:20
Speaker 1: of those things. So we just kind of we just
22:23
Speaker 1: kind of shut it down. We just kind of shut
22:25
Speaker 1: it down, and we just go with the fly. Because
22:27
Speaker 1: going with the flow. Literally, I've had I don't know, hundreds,
22:31
Speaker 1: probably thousands of people say to me, I'd just rather
22:33
Speaker 1: go with the flow. It's less problematic, it's just easier.
22:35
Speaker 1: And you know what, in the short term maybe it
22:37
Speaker 1: is easier, but in the long term it can be
22:40
Speaker 1: a complete cluster fuck for you or your health, for
22:44
Speaker 1: your wellness, for your mental, emotional, physical health, and for
22:47
Speaker 1: the quality of your life. And so if somebody has
22:50
Speaker 1: invested years of their life and large amounts of money,
22:53
Speaker 1: which is often the case, and emotional energy and friendships
22:55
Speaker 1: and reputation or identity into a group I said before,
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Speaker 1: it becomes painfully psychologically difficult to admit that maybe I'm
23:08
Speaker 1: in the wrong group. Maybe this isn't healthy, Maybe I've
23:10
Speaker 1: been tricked or misled or manipulated. Or maybe this system
23:15
Speaker 1: or this group or this organization or this gift isn't
23:18
Speaker 1: a gift at all. Maybe the leader is flawed. Maybe
23:22
Speaker 1: he or she is a fucking sociopathic, crazy person who's
23:25
Speaker 1: got a great vocabulary and happens to be charming and
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Speaker 1: amazing and highly educated. That's possible, In fact, that's not
23:33
Speaker 1: just possible. In some groups, that's highly probable, highly likely.
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Speaker 1: And the more invested we become, the.
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Speaker 3: Harder it is to lead, the harder it is to lead,
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Speaker 3: because leading can mean losing heaps of stuff that we've
23:49
Speaker 3: built up in the middle of that cult friend's family purpose,
23:53
Speaker 3: knowing certainty, meaning identity, community status.
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Speaker 1: I remember rising through the ranks quite quickly in the
24:03
Speaker 1: church that I went to because this CULTI church, I
24:06
Speaker 1: already had quite I'd spent eighteen years in another church,
24:09
Speaker 1: so I had a pretty good understanding, definitely a good
24:13
Speaker 1: understanding of that type of environment and church. And you know,
24:18
Speaker 1: as I immersed myself more and more in the ideology
24:21
Speaker 1: and philosophy and doctrine of that church, and increasing understanding
24:26
Speaker 1: of scripture, knowledge of Bibles and quotes and verses, and
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Speaker 1: then I just felt more and more and more confident
24:34
Speaker 1: until for me cracks started to emerge, not so much
24:37
Speaker 1: in the theology or the teaching. Well, actually I won't
24:41
Speaker 1: say that that is in the teaching, I did start
24:44
Speaker 1: see some cracks, and I started to see some real
24:45
Speaker 1: different differentiation between what people were saying from the pulpit,
24:51
Speaker 1: what they were saying, and then how I saw them behaving.
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Speaker 1: And that wasn't judgmental, because I didn't want to judge them,
24:56
Speaker 1: but I was just seeing that this was just observation,
25:00
Speaker 1: this was just evidence, This was just data. That was
25:04
Speaker 1: apparent to me, is that some people in this hierarchy
25:08
Speaker 1: above me are saying and doing things, or they're saying
25:11
Speaker 1: one thing and doing another. And there's a lot of
25:14
Speaker 1: what I would call theological inconsistency or inconsistency between teaching
25:21
Speaker 1: and behaving. These days, i've probably just called it misleading,
25:24
Speaker 1: funcking bullshit. But nonetheless, for some people leaving a situation
25:31
Speaker 1: like that, especially when you are intertwined, especially when all
25:36
Speaker 1: of your relationships and friends are built or the majority
25:39
Speaker 1: are built within the walls of this cult. It can
25:43
Speaker 1: feel like a psychological death to leave. I guess another
25:50
Speaker 1: thing worth considering or discussing. As how cult like systems
26:00
Speaker 1: and often create our we call it almost like an
26:05
Speaker 1: US versus them, us against the world mentality. We're right,
26:10
Speaker 1: we're evolved, we're in enlightened, we're truthful, we're elite, we're awakened,
26:15
Speaker 1: we're chosen. And that's that's a big red flag. It's
26:21
Speaker 1: a massive, massive red flag that sometimes we don't see
26:24
Speaker 1: it because again this is really subtle, and all of
26:26
Speaker 1: a sudden, the people are used to be in our
26:29
Speaker 1: live friend's family, even at times outsiders, outsiders of the group,
26:33
Speaker 1: all of a sudden we see them as ignorant and
26:36
Speaker 1: stupid and misled and backs and dangerous and toxic and
26:41
Speaker 1: brainwashed and even inferior. And that's that's a great sales
26:49
Speaker 1: pictures that were better. We no more where the chosen was.
26:54
Speaker 1: Because once a group can convince men members that critics,
27:02
Speaker 1: anyone who pushes back, anyone who has an idea, ideology, philosophy, etc.
27:10
Speaker 1: Behaviors practice as culture that are inconsistent with their own. Well,
27:14
Speaker 1: now their enemies, now their enemies now their problems. Now
27:19
Speaker 1: it's us versus then, because disagreement is betrayed, and that's
27:24
Speaker 1: really psychologically powerful. Humans are social survival creatures. In the
27:30
Speaker 1: old days, or might say historically, being rejected by the
27:33
Speaker 1: tribe could literally kill us. And so we do have this.
27:40
Speaker 1: I think we have this genetic imperative, this evolutionary imperative
27:46
Speaker 1: that we really want to belong. But sometimes in our
27:49
Speaker 1: drive to belong almost to anything, any group that will
27:52
Speaker 1: have us, we put ourselves in harm's way. Social exclusion
28:01
Speaker 1: activates very real emotional pain systems in the brain, which
28:05
Speaker 1: means that fear of rejection can become a mechanism of control,
28:12
Speaker 1: I guess. And interestingly, some cult like groups don't even
28:17
Speaker 1: rely heavily on overt aggression. Some use love or excessive
28:21
Speaker 1: praise or validation or affection, attention or approval, and sometimes
28:29
Speaker 1: we call this she might have heard of this term
28:30
Speaker 1: love bombing. And at first people come into the group
28:34
Speaker 1: and everyone's all over them. They feel deeply seeing valued, loved, accepted, wanted, needed,
28:40
Speaker 1: Now they belong. Now there's this euphoria of oh my god,
28:44
Speaker 1: this is what I've been missing, this is what I've
28:46
Speaker 1: been looking for and then over time that acceptance, that
28:52
Speaker 1: overwhelming love bombing fades and your acceptance to the group
28:56
Speaker 1: becomes dependent on conditional too. You're loved when you can form.
29:04
Speaker 1: You're loved when you're loyal, and when you're not loyal,
29:11
Speaker 1: when you're questioning something, you're excluded, maybe not from the group,
29:16
Speaker 1: but maybe from part of the group or this conversation
29:19
Speaker 1: or this event. So we're punished when we dine in line.
29:23
Speaker 1: So who wants to be punished? Nobody? So we jump
29:26
Speaker 1: back into line and suddenly the group, the cult, the tribe,
29:32
Speaker 1: controls emotional oxygen and approval, our approval within the group,
29:37
Speaker 1: our acceptance, our want to belong, people embracing us. That
29:42
Speaker 1: becomes addictive. And this is where it kind of gets
29:46
Speaker 1: super relevant in the modern world. So social media has
29:52
Speaker 1: created a perfect ecosystem for many cults. Algorithms, reward, outrage, certainty, tribalism,
29:59
Speaker 1: and i dentity based thinking. Nuance performs terribly online. Confidence also,
30:06
Speaker 1: confidence performs brilliantly. You may not love it, I may
30:10
Speaker 1: not love it, but as a strategy within the context
30:14
Speaker 1: of social media, it works. So people are increasingly gathering
30:20
Speaker 1: into ideological tribes where the goal is not understanding, but
30:24
Speaker 1: rather just belonging. And once identity fuses with ideology, then rational, impartial,
30:33
Speaker 1: objective conversation becomes a thing of the past. It doesn't
30:40
Speaker 1: happen because now disagreement doesn't feel like you disagree with
30:45
Speaker 1: my idea. Now disagreement feels like you hate me, you're
30:49
Speaker 1: attacking me, why you want to hurt me. And when
30:51
Speaker 1: that happens, curiosity dies, critical thinking dies, your independence dies,
30:58
Speaker 1: complexity dies. Everything becomes us versus their truth versus lives,
31:05
Speaker 1: the wrong people, the right people, the good people, the
31:09
Speaker 1: bad people, which is psychologically seductive because simplicity reduces uncertainty.
31:18
Speaker 1: But that's not the world, right. We don't live in
31:21
Speaker 1: that world. The world is complicated and messy and ambiguous
31:24
Speaker 1: and unfair. But people don't want that because we love comfort,
31:29
Speaker 1: we love convenience. We don't want complexity or adversity or arguments,
31:33
Speaker 1: or we don't want to push back. We don't want
31:35
Speaker 1: to think for ourselves. Necessarily, we say we do, but
31:38
Speaker 1: in the context of the group, we often don't stand
31:41
Speaker 1: up for ourselves because for all the things I've mentioned before,
31:45
Speaker 1: people don't want complexity. They want clarity and charismatic leaders
31:49
Speaker 1: are really good at offering certainty in uncertain times. Having
31:56
Speaker 1: said all of that, boys and girls, I should say
31:59
Speaker 1: that not very passionate group is a cult, of course,
32:03
Speaker 1: and not every strong leader is manipulative. Having said that,
32:07
Speaker 1: I think every strong leader, and some people might say
32:11
Speaker 1: I'm a leader. Have I ever been manipulative? I'm sure
32:14
Speaker 1: I have. Have I ever had my own interests above
32:18
Speaker 1: those of others, I'm sure I have. Right. So this
32:23
Speaker 1: is part of the apart from teaching you about culture
32:27
Speaker 1: talking about cults today, just also bringing it back to
32:30
Speaker 1: us ourselves. Am I really like, do I really want
32:35
Speaker 1: to lead these people or do these things, or be involved?
32:38
Speaker 1: Or do I want to join the group for the
32:40
Speaker 1: right reasons? Not because to stop the loneliness? And also,
32:47
Speaker 1: you know, while not every leader or every group is
32:51
Speaker 1: manipulative or terrible, not every community with shared beliefs is dangerous.
32:56
Speaker 1: Humans need tribes, of course, and connection matter, and community matters,
33:01
Speaker 1: and shared values matter. That's not the problem. The issue
33:08
Speaker 1: isn't passion, and the issue isn't control. The issue is
33:14
Speaker 1: within the context of that group. Can people truly think
33:17
Speaker 1: independently without negative consequences? Can they ask difficult questions. Can
33:22
Speaker 1: leaders stand up in front of the group and go,
33:25
Speaker 1: guess what I was wrong? Not here's my rationale and
33:28
Speaker 1: my justification, but just I fucked up? Is there? Transparency?
33:35
Speaker 1: Is disagreement allow? Can members come and go from the
33:40
Speaker 1: group without being psychologically destroyed like they're really healthy measures?
33:45
Speaker 1: And perhaps maybe I guess the biggest irony in this
33:49
Speaker 1: is most people think that cult members are other people.
33:55
Speaker 1: I would never be a cult member, we think because
33:58
Speaker 1: cult members are weak people, gullible people, broken people. But
34:01
Speaker 1: the psychological mechanisms involved in becoming part of a cult,
34:08
Speaker 1: consciously or not intentionally or not, those mechanisms are really human.
34:13
Speaker 1: Urgo the I want to belong, what have you needed? Send, value, loved,
34:17
Speaker 1: all of that. Under the right conditions, almost any person
34:21
Speaker 1: can become susceptible to I guess, or vulnerable to that
34:27
Speaker 1: kind of influence. And that's not weakness or doesn't mean
34:31
Speaker 1: you're a bad human, doesn't mean you've broken it. That's
34:34
Speaker 1: kind of humanity. I'll be influenced and unbelieved. And I've
34:37
Speaker 1: joined and I've belonged to groups and people, or I've
34:40
Speaker 1: gone along. I guess I've kind of jumped in the
34:43
Speaker 1: river and gone with the flow, rather than swimming independently
34:48
Speaker 1: and being able to pay attention and critically think about
34:53
Speaker 1: what's being said and done. So what am I saying?
34:59
Speaker 1: So maybe the lesson is not how do I how
35:02
Speaker 1: do we identify with groups? But maybe the question is
35:06
Speaker 1: how do we protect our ability to think independently while
35:10
Speaker 1: still remaining connected to others? Because healthy communities should expand
35:16
Speaker 1: your world, not shrinking, and healthy leaders should what should
35:22
Speaker 1: they do? They should increase your autonomy, not your dependency.
35:27
Speaker 1: Healthy systems should encourage curiosity, not obedience. And perhaps one
35:33
Speaker 1: of the biggest or one of the healthiest sentences any
35:39
Speaker 1: human can say, or one of the biggest kind of
35:44
Speaker 1: things we might admit, is I could be wrong. Cult
35:48
Speaker 1: hate that sentence. Leaders some leaders hate that sentence. I
35:53
Speaker 1: could be wrong. This is what we believe. I believe
35:56
Speaker 1: lots of things, but I believe lots of things in
35:58
Speaker 1: the past and got many things wrong. I've had lots
36:01
Speaker 1: of ideas that were shipped. I've taught things at the
36:05
Speaker 1: time believing that this was the right idea or philosophy
36:09
Speaker 1: or science that I truly believed was right, But in
36:13
Speaker 1: hindsight I got heaps of things wrong, and this is
36:17
Speaker 1: you know, This is heart. Humility is heard, self awareness
36:20
Speaker 1: is heart. Saying I don't know it is hard. Saying
36:24
Speaker 1: I could be wrong is heart. Dogma hates that. Authoritarian
36:31
Speaker 1: systems hate that. But intellectual humility, well, that's where growth lives,
36:36
Speaker 1: not certainty curiosity. And I guess perhaps the challenge for
36:42
Speaker 1: all of us in a noisy, tribal, algorithm driven world
36:50
Speaker 1: is to consider whether or not we belong or we
36:56
Speaker 1: can belong without surrendering our capacity to think. Can we
37:00
Speaker 1: connect without becoming a psychological captive. Can we remain open
37:06
Speaker 1: minded without becoming empty headed? And maybe that balancing act
37:15
Speaker 1: could be one of the most important psychological skills of
37:19
Speaker 1: our life. Such a good topic. I need to go deeper,
37:24
Speaker 1: I need to learn more, I need to think more
37:26
Speaker 1: about this. But anyway, I hope you enjoyed that little genesis.
37:30
Speaker 1: We'll call that the beginning. Did I fuck up anything?
37:34
Speaker 1: And that probably did