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How do the pros get someone to leave a cult?

theguardian.com

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Re: How do the pros get someone to leave a cult?

#111

Post by 47282847 »

lazyeye wrote: post #110
lawn wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steven Hassan also wrote "The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control", which is very relevant today.

Either that or you lack the life experience, maturity and wisdom to accept that people can disagree with you without there being a conspiracy involved.

Are you saying that after reading the book? Isn’t it pretty straightforward to review which methods are used, and discriminate based on these methods, without taking a position on the content/beliefs/political goals? My understanding is that cults share methods of manipulation and coercion.

Re: How do the pros get someone to leave a cult?

#112

Post by ljm »

bossyTeacher wrote: post #94
ljm wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew one person--shared a flat with them--who was heavily into that sort of spiritual-esque alternative health, the sort you'd connect to the so-called Woo-to-Q pipeline these days, who would subject themselves to that kind of thing. It was all about the 'cleanse': 1. Fast on water for a week 2. Drink a cup of olive oil, straight 3. Multiple enemas several times a week 4. Maintain a raw vegan diet in between Throw…

> Throw in the occasional ayahuasca weekend (another cleaning ritual involving a rather extreme amount of, uh, purging). Ayahuasca is a psychdelic substance. sure, there is vomiting, but that isn't the main part of it just like drinking alcohol isn't centered around getting a hangover or destroying your brain cells

I misrepresented it, yes, but learning from my then-time friend, the purging aspect was a key aspect of it for them. More or less a way of getting ‘all that shit’ out of your system.

That is obviously a perversion of the social act of taking ayahuasca in the context of a cult-like situation, when you also combine it with the ritual of deep and frequent cleansing.

I think a good characterisation of it is Vera in Mr Robot, who basically does this and comes back as if he’s fully enlightened.

Re: How do the pros get someone to leave a cult?

#113

Post by Refreeze5224 »

lazyeye wrote: post #110
lawn wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steven Hassan also wrote "The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control", which is very relevant today.

Either that or you lack the life experience, maturity and wisdom to accept that people can disagree with you without there being a conspiracy involved.

You specifically may not be in the Trump/MAGA cult, and there are others who simply do disagree, as you say. But there is undoubtedly a cult wing of MAGA. My mother is a member, and it checks every single box of cult behavior.

Re: How do the pros get someone to leave a cult?

#114

Post by hexaga »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #109
chinathrow wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> should I be worried? No, you can (ok, I admit: try) to leave any time. /etc/hosts 127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com

What if there's a forward proxy listening on 127.0.0.1 I don't run mine on 127.0.0.1 but that address is a very popular default

127.0.0.2

Re: How do the pros get someone to leave a cult?

#115

Post by dhhdjjd »

chinathrow wrote: post #79
rboyd wrote: post #67

wait a minute here.. HN: - asks you to self-assign a new name upon joining - has a leader - has a hierarchy (rating system) - esteemed texts which promise by adopting a strange method (Lisp) that you can achieve higher levels of wealth and self actualization should I be worried?

> should I be worried? No, you can (ok, I admit: try) to leave any time. /etc/hosts 127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com

[dead]

Re: How do the pros get someone to leave a cult?

#116

Post by Thorrez »

stevemadere wrote: post #78

Why did the original post for which these are the discussions disappear from HN? I cannot even find it with a word search and it should not have been displaced from the top 30 yet.

It's #36 right now. That's on page 2.

https://news.ycombinator.com/news?p=2

This search also shows it:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=last24h&page=0&prefix=fals...

Re: How do the pros get someone to leave a cult?

#117

Post by 1970-01-01 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #109
chinathrow wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> should I be worried? No, you can (ok, I admit: try) to leave any time. /etc/hosts 127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com

What if there's a forward proxy listening on 127.0.0.1 I don't run mine on 127.0.0.1 but that address is a very popular default

You're supposed to use 0.0.0.0 for site blocks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0.0.0.0

Re: How do the pros get someone to leave a cult?

#118

Post by lawn »

skeezyjefferson wrote: post #85

i stopped after reading these two were taken in by promises of levitation. i dont care how attractive the cult is, youre an idiot to believe it

Even the most intelligent people in the world are susceptible to the mind control techniques that eventually make you believe the unbelievable.

You're simply uninformed if you believe otherwise.

Re: How do the pros get someone to leave a cult?

#119

Post by lawn »

lazyeye wrote: post #110
lawn wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steven Hassan also wrote "The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control", which is very relevant today.

Either that or you lack the life experience, maturity and wisdom to accept that people can disagree with you without there being a conspiracy involved.

The author correctly asserts that you don't have to be in the cult to support Trump.

Re: How do the pros get someone to leave a cult?

#120

Post by exasperaited »

pton_xd wrote: post #93
exasperaited wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The divide between religion and cult is just a distinction between what's deemed acceptable behavior by society. This is misconception. It's not about the extremism of the belief. It's about the mechanism of control. Take the "cults" of the moment: Qanon/MAGA, for example, operate like a personality cult in many identifiable ways, but are not actually cults, because you can leave without much difficulty if you set…

> It's not about the extremism of the belief. It's about the mechanism of control. > but are not actually cults, because you can leave without much difficulty if you set your mind to it. By that definition Islam should be considered a cult as it calls for severe consequences for apostasy, ranging from social ostracism to the death penalty. However it's not a cult, it's a mainstream religion. Same with Judaism; interf…

> By that definition Islam should be considered a cult as it calls for severe consequences for apostasy, ranging from social ostracism to the death penalty. However it's not a cult, it's a mainstream religion.

I make the distinction elsewhere that it is not the belief structure (e.g. apostasy) that I am talking about.

I am talking about how a cult cuts you off from non-believers entirely, and that is combined with financial control.

Islam, Judaism, they do neither of these things, at an individual level. And Islam really lacks "cult control" mechanisms because it has such a limited concept of hierarchy of faith or obedience to any non-family authority.

Cults work at the deeply personal, individual level.

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