This might sound like a question inspired by current events, but I’ve actually been thinking of this for a while and can give pointers to a few times I had asked this or talked about it.
The people who the masses look up to seem to have a strange way of dishing out their opinions/approval/disapproval of the groups of the world. Some groups can get away with being considered good no matter how negative their actions are while other groups are stuck with a high disapproval rating no matter how much good they might do, and a discussion on whether “culture” or a “cult” is involved almost always comes up.
An example of this is the relationship between Islam and Scientology, in fact this is the most infamous one I can link to having spoken about. People on a certain side of the thinktank spectrum (the same side Lemmy seems to lean towards at times) are quick to criticize Scientology even though they consider “classic Islamic philosophy”, for a lack of a better way to put it without generalizing, as not inspiring a call for critique to see how one may change it. And I’ve always wondered, why? One at times leads people to trying to exterminate innocent groups, the other one is just “Space Gnosticism” that has a few toxic aspects but hasn’t actually eliminated anyone. Of course, I’m not defending either one, but certainly I’d rather live in a stressful environment than one that actively targets me.
This question has been asked a few times, sometimes without me but sometimes when I’m around to be involved, and they always say (and it’s in my dumb voice that I quote them) “well Scientology is a cult, of course we can criticize them” and then a bit about how whatever other thing is being talked about is a part of culture. This doesn’t sit well with my way of thinking. I was taught to judge people by the content of their character, in other words their virtues, so in my mind, a good X is better than a bad Y, in this case a good cult should be better than a good culture, right? Right?
In fact, as what many might call a mild misanthrope, I’d flip it around and point out how, over the course of human history, alongside seemingly objectively questionable quirks people just brush off (like Japan for a while has been genociding dolphins for their meat value just above extinction “because it’s culture” or how there are people in China who still think dinosaur bones are a form of medicine waiting to be ground up), no group/culture has kept their innocence intact, every country having had genocides or unnecessary wars or something of the like, things they ALLOW to happen by design. Then they turn around and tell so-called “cults”, even the ones that have their priorities on straight compared to cultures, that they are pariahs and shouldn’t count on thriving, even though their status is one that doesn’t necessitate gaining any kind of guilt. I was a pariah growing up, almost everyone else revolved around a select few people that seemed in-tune to the culture, and they would say anyone who revolved around people outside the group (me for example) was “following a cult”, and this hurt at the time, but now seeing all the wars going on right now, I might consider this a compliment.
My question, even though it by definition might make affirming answerers question whether they are pariahs or a part of the cultural arena, is why does nobody agree? Why are cultures “always precious” while cults are “always suspicious”?
Cults tend to be defined by how they control their members. Cultures tend to form around similarities.
Succinct, and accurate 😘👌chef’s kiss
I missed this answer before I gave mine. I basically said the same thing.
It’s not that all cultures are good. But it is true that all cults are bad.
If a cult isn’t engaging in the cult-like activities you mention, then it’s not really a cult
It confuses me then when I look and see good and bad of each. Many cultures have intolerance hardwired into them, so that even years after their worst atrocities, they still stand by them. Like in the UK, one of the “similarities” is that people still believe the conquests were “good”. Every time I hear about how many extra large palaces the royal family has, it makes me wonder if we’re going about our cult criteria correctly. Meanwhile I can list a number of cults that are pretty tame, like the Raelians, and even the worst cults have a better track record than the worst cultures.
It seems like you’re looking for a prescriptive definition of cult and culture that would cover every cult and every culture, and I don’t think you’re going to find one. Humans organize in complex ways that rarely align with strict definitions.
You might be able to learn more about what you are thinking about by looking into memes (in the Dawkins sense of the word).
Cults are defined by cult-like activity. Cult-like activity is bad because it abuses people.
If there’s a “cult” that doesn’t actually have cult-like activity, then it’s not really a cult.
The more popular something is, the less effective it is to criticize it harshly. For example, I think eating meat regularly is, by the amount of suffering it causes, worse than murdering one human. But if I went around calling everyone who ate meat “murderers” and refused to befriend or do business with them, it would just make people think I was crazy and not want to listen to me, because eating meat is seen as normal. On the other hand, when something is seen as abnormal, like being openly racist, shunning people who do it makes others less likely to do it too.
This is probably my pariah side talking, but I wouldn’t consider you crazy. At most I would discuss under which circumstances it would be forgivable. This thread about vegetarianism (me being one, just not a vegan) is one of my favorite threads of all time.
Cults exercise very direct and personal control from the deified leadership to the followers. It tends to mean abuse between central leadership and the followers. Cult practices have similarities to religions and draw from religious and spiritual claims (and can become religions), but are distinguished by certain patterns of how they control members:
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Isolate from those around you, especially family and friends that don’t agree with what you’re doing.
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Recruit others to the cult.
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Demonstrate value to the cult through humiliation and serving the petty needs of the leader. The petty needs will be described as being much more important than they really are.
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Harsh punishment and violence for stepping out of line.
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A culture of blaming followers for their sins, including things for which they are not in any way responsible or at fault.
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A hierarchy of power that is mostly about who gets to mete out abuse.
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A specialized set of terminology for common things so that they become an in-reference that offers will not understand.
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Isolation of “troublemakers” or people that fight back. Keeping them separate from one another.
The small size of the cult makes these things have a qualitatively different impact when it comes to social control. It’s not about some established mysticism or conservatism that you carry out some action or feel some guilt, it’s a distinct practice where every person around you forces conformity based on the whims of a very personal power structure and just a couple people who get to decide everything, and you usually live with them.
Anyways, the main issue with Westerners criticizing Islam or Muslims is that the discourse is absolutely saturated with racism and Western chauvinism that is just a more veiled version of what white supremacists say. It’s not particularly informed and, as part of the dominant hegemonic mindset of the oppressor class and oppressor nations, it gladly ignores that the most extreme, voluminous, and unnecessary violence is carried out by the power structures they implicitly or explicitly support, secular or not.
Some Western criticisms of Islam tend to present themselves as academic or at least thoughtful and informed examinations of theology and cultural practices. Sometimes they even take a critical look at other religions and cultural practices. But they very often lead to lazy and bigoted policy and advocacy positions because it’s less about understanding in order to improve the world and more about identifying an enemy and it turns out that the global movers and shakers would absolutely love to use those “principled” stances to justify the domination and destruction of entire countries and peoples with your consent.
You’ll notice that Sam Harris has become a full-blown islamophobe and neocon. He is not improving the world through knowledge or action, but justifying oppression by the global hegemonic powers that want to pillage for profit by playing on stereotypical racist fears. He’s also gone down the self-help grifter path. He’s really just laundering reactionary views through a distinct language of “skepticism”, views that would fit right in at a “race science” consortium in 1912 and a bloodthirsty US State Department meeting on how to justify the genocide of brown people in the Middle East.
I’m not someone who has mastered the information/misinformation part, but I do know it’s not lying to say that, if I was over in that part of the world where Islam thrives, I would be killed or put into a lower class for things such as gender and maybe even my national background if it was years ago (so a defense criticism argument could be made), and I also know it’s not lying to say those people are trying to come to where I live and “change” us. It’s definitely not their race/ethnicity I’m critical of.
My first reaction when some people identify as “a cultural Muslim” (as peaceful as they are; I’m not trying to imply they should all be put in one basket) is therefore to think “aww shit, there’s a whole piece of the fabric of the world (i.e. a culture) out there that has their vigilance set against my existence”. Then I think of cults (which I visualize as outside the fabric, that playing into the definition embedded in my question) and how (comparatively) accepting they might be, and I think “wait, why exactly is the classification supposed to mean anything again?”
What is the relevance of what you think would happen to you in an Islamic country? I’d also point out that Islam is not a monolith and Muslims are not a monolith, despite your implications, so which Islamic countries are you thinking of? Are you sure you didn’t have a particular idea in mind when you conflated “islamic country” with the scenario you are thinking of? What do the people there look like? What do they believe? What would they do to you?
Where is “here”? Why are “they” going to where you are? Almost certainly, uou will find that the point of xenophobia is to distract you from what was done in your name to the people forced to immigrate to your area. To excuse the much greater violence and turn your fears and frustrations against a population that you and your culture stripped of their homes and safety - and then justifies through dehumanization and a focus on Islam as the problem.
You will indeed find some immigrants that are reactionary. Imagine a world in which social developments could occur within countries through legitimate struggles rather than forcing deprivation and murder on people from different cultures and then whinging about how they don’t think how you do.
In short, you’re doing the exact problematic thing that Sam Harris serves a function for. You’re identifying an enemy to fear and degrade and it’s blinding you to the much greater dangers and violences that are directly involved but where blame lies in your country and your culture. Centuries of colonialism premised on ethnic cleansing and extraction, now neocolonialism doing the same. Go look at where Wahhabism and the other forms of Islam you are scared of came from. They are recent inventions arising from occupations, not intrinsic aspects of Islam.
And review the reactionary aspects of your own culture, as you are fearing hypothetical harms by people coming from countries that your country and culture actively participates in destroying. The only question would be whether that country is a very active player in imperialism or a hanger-on.
Hence the way I phrased it when I said “classic Islamic philosophy” and then clarified it wasn’t going to be my intention to generalize. Literally in my wording.
I’m well aware of my own culture’s faults and not using this as a distraction to that, in fact that’s the very point of this, to ask why “cults”, which one could (and they have called them these) call “pseudocultures” or “quasicultures” or “paracultures”, are seen as wrong while “actual” cultures are protected by the view that relativism is supposed to tolerate cultures “just because” they’re cultures. Not that you actually know what my culture is just by reading what I’m saying right now.
I used the umbrella of Islam as an example, partially because of current events, but it’s by no means the only one and I wasn’t trying to imply this; I mentioned more groups down below, in reply to other people. The thought process behind the question is there are “wannabe cultures” that haven’t done anything wrong, yet which get criticized, but here we (“we” as in onlookers of current events) are wondering what kind of cultures would be better in the place of the destructive ones, and so I think “what about these ‘wannabe cultures’ that have done nothing wrong or have done comparatively little wrong”.
To answer the other question, I am an LGBT woman with interracial ancestry with a highly frustrating medical condition and what one might call a spiritual tradition that would come off as iconoclastic in any part of the world, but especially in the nations closest to the middle of Eurasia. To use a metaphor, seeing that an immovable piece of the world, in this case a world culture, would kill me on sight makes me feel as if Earth’s immune system sees me as a bad cell. So naturally I wonder, one, does it really have to be this way, and two, would a “cult” as I mention be more worthy to exist as its very own “culture” than one that decided it wanted people like me gone first, even though there will always be people like me (meaning they too are against something immovable in the world)?
I invite you to answer the questions I asked and consider much greater violences at hand. I didn’t make you cite Sam Harris or conflate Islamic countries or buy into right wing xenophobic fear narratives, but I did respond to them.
Then it’s a good thing I didn’t do any of that, now isn’t it?
For every question you say hasn’t been answered, I can point to (or quote) a part of what I said that does exactly that.
You did all of the things I listed and ignored most of my questions. If you honestly believe otherwise, I invite you to revisit what was said and asked and ask yourself whether you acknowledged it at all, let alone actually addressed what was said.
Though I’m not stupid, I know what defensive behavior and fibbing looks like by someone that is uncomfortable. I’m not going to be polite if you try this again.
Suppose for a moment I sincerely believe I addressed everything (and I do). Saying out of disagreement “review it yourself” would thus be a request I cannot humor, that’s why I invited you to give examples. I also don’t know who this Sam Harris guy is, so I’m not sure why you say I cited him, but I even did a CTRL+F trick to make sure. I still don’t see it.
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Scientology is really bad. They have absolutely killed people, either through more direct methods or through neglect. They convince cancer patients to not get treatment, and I’ve recently been watching some stuff about their treatment of the elderly, who are often starved to death. They see them as spirits that need to go onto the next life so make no attempt at caring for them once they can no longer care for themselves.
That’s ignoring the false imprisonment, physical abuse, and all round mistreatment of them.
I mean murder and manslaughter are a part of a large spectrum, so they could be said to have done some damage, but this is in far better taste than, say, the crusades or the cultural revolution. What you’re saying is kind of what I’m asking about, as most people would then turn around and speak about the groups currently in the middle east in a kind of “well at least they’re not Scientologists” kind of way. I personally would apply that statement in the exact reverse.
Look at percentages, if there’s 100,000 scientologists worldwide with 70,000 suffering some kind of abuse directly by the religion that’s a massive percentage, whereas christianity there’s 2 billion, and the numbers suffering abuse directly by the religion if they’re exactly the same number, it’s much less of an issue.
Beyond that, a christian can leave whenever they like with no real consequences. It doesn’t have the elements of control. Nobody is helping people escape from christianity. You don’t have volunteers picking up nuns by the side of the road at 2am wearing only the clothes on their back.
You’re comparing the worst possible statistics/interpretation of one group with the best possible statistics/interpretation of another group that has had a history that was far, far worse. Or to put it another way, if the first group lived a few hundred years ago, who do you think would’ve killed who? It was for this reason “Christians” weren’t in my original comparison, it was a group with an arguably higher rate of suffering. That inspired the main question, why “cults” are considered outcasts for the sake of it.
What does history have to do with it? You’re asking about the view today.
I’d say at no point in history was christianity as bad as Scientology but today it’s fairly innocuous.
I brought up history because of their ages, but it doesn’t even have to be history, you still have human rights abuses across the world carried out in the name of several cultures, ones intertwined with Christian activity as well as ones by other groups which one might call cultural. If I told you there lived a group that went on conquests, killing everyone who disagreed with their flawed interpretations of their book, burning ancient books en masse, causing mass starvations among whole nations, inciting warfare, and creating a network of chattel slavery that spanned dozens of countries, what would you think of? Scientology? No, that’s the one group in all these conversations on this thread that didn’t do those things.
A network of slavery spanning dozens of countries is the main thing scientology does.
Look, you seem to have started a debate which you don’t have any background knowledge on. Maybe look into it first?
I said chattel slavery. That’s objectively different.
As others have said, there’s never going to be a clear cut line between the two. I think it’s more useful to take a functional perspective. Something isn’t problematic because it’s a cult; it’s a cult because it’s problematic. I like Hassan’s BITE model of authoritarian control here. We look for social systems that are purposefully organized to enforce different kinds of control over individuals within the system - Behavioral, Information, Thought, and Information control in the BITE model. We see where systems rely on mechanisms of control to the clear detriment of those within the system.
You mention in another comment the idea that many “cults” are going to be relatively more accepting of you than many “cultures.” That’s undoubtedly true. But the distinction is in what happens next. The border around a cult system is only permeable in one direction. You may be accepted with open arms, but that acceptance is a tool to get you into a place where you can’t leave because you won’t (or feel like you won’t) ever be accepted again outside the cult.
The control mechanisms also create an all-in system. I’m not generally a fan of religion TBH, but you can decide how much you want the culture of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, or whatever to affect your life day to day and in what ways. If you’re in a Christian cult though, like the IFB or IBLP (the one the Duggars are in), the system decides your level of involvement. Scientology is a great example of this because it looks like there is a wide range of involvement level. You see a lot of celebrities who don’t seems crazy, who talk about how wholesome it is, who say they’ve never seen any of the abuses people talk about. It’s not that these celebrities are opting for a chiller version of Scientology, it’s that Scientology opted them into a less obviously, outwardly repressive day-to-day for the benefit of the system.
All this to come back to my first point - this is a functional distinction, not a formal/semantic one. Is some social system manipulating its members in an organized and harmful way? Then let’s call it a cult so we can talk about that concept more easily. THEN the question of is this or that group a cult based on whether it functionally presents as one.
The terms cult and culture have the same problem(s) as sect and religion. There is no one clear-cut definition, but many competing definitions, most of which are kind of vague or ambiguous. Both sect and cult are usually used in us versus them narratives. If you pick a random person and try to discuss if and why something is a cult/sect or culture/religion you are almost guaranteed to run into unresolvable conflict because you’ll likely have different definitions in mind. The obvious solution is to settle on a common definition beforehand, but that will just cause the next conflict because there are so many and there is no obviously correct one.
People often bring up an aspect of control as the defining characteristic of cults/sects. Does that make all states cults? Does that mean every major Christian denomination was a sect 200 years ago?
Another common definition is that of a new group splitting off from the established group. Does that mean the entirety of Christianity is just a jewish sect?
Most definitions, when applied rigorously, imply that every culture/religion has been a cult/sect at least for some time in the past. And here comes the trouble: Most people from some culture/religion will provide you with a definition for cult/sect, when arguing about it, but will not accept when you apply it to theirs and point out that by that definition it either is a cult/sect, or was 200/500/1000 years ago. Because most people use those terms to denote otherness possibly even in a pejorative way.
In an academic context (for example anthropology or history) the distinction between cult and culture or sect and religion can be useful when a definition is given in the context and it is applied consistently. Outside of academia those terms aren’t very useful beyond instigating people against each other or minorities, solidifying circle jerks, or starting flame wars.
My nonprofessional take on it:
Every culture started out as a cult and all cultures are or have been horrid given the opportunity.
Every religion started out as a sect and all the sects’ and religions’ fairy tales are equally ridiculous when observed from the outside.
The distinction between cult and culture, and sect and religion, has no net positive benefit outside of academia and should be avoided outside of fiction.
Interesting ideas. The popular interpretation of a cult revolves around a leader or leadership who use dogma to influence the members into behaviour that they wouldn’t ordinarily engage in e.g. donations, alliegence to a cause. The goal is usually money, power and sexual exploitation of adherents by the leadership.
A culture is a milder form of a cult. They tend to be more permissive and less exploitative. And yet, in many ways we don’t get to choose how we live. If we make choices that go against the prevailing sentiment, we can be punished even if our behaviour is ethically sound. That is a cultish outcome.
The definition of a cult is also contextual. I met someone who told me that they escaped from a cult in Italy. I imagined something Mafia-based or Communistic but I was surprised to learn it was Jehovah’s Witness. In the UK we don’t think of JW as a cult but this guy was insistent and gave examples.
You might like to read an example of the techniques in The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice
Because the two things aren’t actually the same and because of what it means in context to oppose a culture vs. a cult. You might oppose scientology in a variety of ways, they have a leader, buildings, staff, bank accounts, a documented history of infiltrating the government and harassing people, a curated list of members etc.
A cult may or may not have all of those but they’re a different kind of thing than a culture. Cultures are social categories that encompass a much wider range of human behaviors for one, they include things like sport and art and language. Festivals and practices and food and manners. They’re things a human can’t really help having even if you can choose to adopt parts and change others. Religion, which is a thing you seem to be conflating with culture, is just a part of culture. Egyptian Copts have Christianity like many Americans. They are also very different culturally.
But the bigger reason people should be very careful when people start criticizing culture is because we know what that means. What does one do about “cultural Bolshevism?”
What do conservatives actually want done about “Black culture?” What did bringing “culture” to the “savages” mean? How does someone stop being from a culture?
We know how those questions get answered. And that tells us something about why those questions might be asked in the first place.
Just shooting from the hip here, but I think maybe you can see cults as a subset of cultures.
A cult is a small group defined by an authority figure, how it treats its members and its relationship with the rest of the world. They are often small groups, but can be large like Jehova’s Witnesses.
Cults are usually a subset of a religious faction, like baptists or Lutherans, which in turn is a subset of for example Protestantism. (There are non-religious cults as well of course).
And confusingly religions exist within cultures and can be a core part of their identity, but one religion can also exist in a totally different culture.
So I think you’re trying to compare all apples with a specific type of oranges here.
If cults are a subset of cultures (not asking out of disagreement), why do we consider one inferior to the other? Same question with nations and micronations (“real” nations have done a lot of harm).
Most likely it’s perception. If you’re not part of a cult, then likely the only time you hear about a cult is when something bad happens, so we associate cults with bad. In contrast, culture is often talked about in both good & bad terms (e.g. positive & negative work cultures), but generally you will hear more about the good sides of culture, especially in regards to travel.
If anyone is being harmed, member or non-member, then I think it should be stopped. That applies to both cult activities and cultural activities.
I’ve got a really unscientific answer that feels good in my head.
culture is so deeply ingrained and large that only two things could change it:
1: slow change from within
2: war/genocide
cults on the other hand are small enough and new enough and not deeply enough ingrained. it feels possible to defeat them in the “marketplace of ideas” as it were.
even if that’s not quite true, even if it’s not actually easier to argue can against scientology. it feels like it should be.
that’s why there’s such a difference in criticism too. because it comes down to “well what do you think should be done about it then?” it’s pretty clear that you can’t argue a person out of such a deeply rooted cultural belief.
also, it’s about who you’re criticizing in relation to yourself. a white person living in America has way more ground to stand on calling another white American out for having bad beliefs and practices. this is because you can understand where they come from and the culture around them
ultimately there is no concrete “good” and “bad”. for you to enforce your idea of that onto a people who universally agree that your “good” is actually bad then you’re the bad guy no matter how right you think you are. no matter how much your people think you’re right for what you do that’s cultural imperialism/plain old regular imperialism.
Well, I don’t. I’m not too conservative, so I don’t view cultures as “always precious”. I get that categories and terms are sometimes a good thing to have and they should be well-defined. But at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter to me how you call something.
Scientology is very bad. Their main objective is to brainwash people and rob them of their money by selling them their courses. In exchange people get this strange sci-fi story (and their mental health wrecked). It is just abuse of vulnerable people and we, as a society should outlaw that in my opinion.
Islam, christianity and you-name-it are also bad. They wanna teach lies to little kids and get them under their influence. They promote reactionary and outdated world-views and want people to hate women, fun, life and people in general. I myself would like to do away with this, too.
I really don’t care. If it’s promoting hate, preying on kids or taking advantage of people in need to push it’s own agenda, it’s bad. There are different kinds of brainwashing and different levels of it, but it’s all on the dark side.
Teach the kids to program those little robots instead, show the world, mountains, how other people in different societies live. Make them embrace what we have and what they are. Treat each other with respect. Not have them cling to old ideas.
If you don’t agree with my premise, look at what it’s doing to people. These lies implanted get them to mistreat other human beings to straight out killing people and starting wars over and over again.
Space gnosticism? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Scientology
Someone who has read texts that fall under the “gnostic” umbrella would see their influence on Scientology, from the thetans (which matches “gnostic” conclusions of how souls work) to Xenu (who resembles the King of Darkness in Manichaeism).
Cool! Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, I thought gnosticism was some sort of shortened version of agnosticism.
There is a baggage associated with the word “cult” now.
It used to mean pretty much a specific practice of a religion. For example, in a polytheistic religion, you can choose a favorite god and perhaps even worship that figure exclusively, even while believing in all the others eg. later Hindu ishtadevata practices
This kind of cult evolved into those around mysteries or mysterious figures (eg. Eleusinia, Mithraism) and real-world figures like monarchs like the Roman emperor. Eventually you have the death cults of the last few decades which cemented the pejorative sense of “cult” and also inspired the sociology around the same. I should also mention, there is a chauvinism in this as well eg. cargo cults
To answer your question, there is this historical context to it. But also the perspective: one can look back through history or across the world to identify “cults” but not recognize that one lives in a culture or participates in cultish behavior themselves
