"Cult" carries a ton of baggage. You say "hey, that MLM you want to join satisfies 4/10 properties of a cult -- it's a cult!" and the baggage is "Jonestown was a cult and they all died. Heaven's gate was a cult and they all died. Branch Davidian was a cult and they all died." It's a rhetorical sleight of hand, nothing more, and it will not convince anyone or create an interesting discussion; it'll just come down to some argument about whether Catholicism is a cult.
In order to actually get anything useful, you have to show how the cult-like properties either inevitably lead to the negative consequences (which is nigh impossible; some of these definitions apply to little league teams) or talk about the specific negative or questionable behaviors of the organization itself.
The list of signs of a cult above is a useful rubric for determining if an organizational is harmful. And as others have noted the technical term “high-demand organization” has grown specifically to leave behind the religious implications of “cult”, though language moves slow and many will still use that term day to day.
Are there any organizations you’ve been involved in that have been called a cult?
I do not agree about the list. That list is there to win semantic arguments about whether something is a cult or not. Nothing to do with harm; you can argue that some of the criteria, like "shame cycles" are prima facie harmful, but most are harmless attributes. Apply it to a kid's soccer team to see this.
I have never been involved in a cult. But sure, calling things a cult is cheap. I'm Jewish, I have been a Ron Paul supporter, card-carrying ACLU member. All of those things have been called cults.
I agree that people use "cult" too quickly. But that doesn't mean that a list like that isn't helpful.
Plus if your kids soccer team "delegitimizes former members", "is paranoid about the outside world" and "relies on shame cycles" then … big oof! These are not typical behaviors.
(Part of your argument I think is that these ideas are subjective. If you're in a jewish group that has a meeting about rising anti-semitism are you "paranoid". Hell no. But could someone call you "paranoid"? Sure. Working through that subjectiveness is actually where the meat of this issue is.)
The real question someone is asking when they ask "am I in a cult" is not about whether you can mark your religion as "cult" on your taxes. The question is "am I in danger of harm", and it is better to ask yourself that question directly -- is there sexual or physical abuse among the members; is there a financial obligation; does the group engage in abusive punishments or penalties. If it does those things who cares if it's a cult or not; get the hell out!
For the soccer team analogy a simple colloquial reading is fine -- "delegitimizes former members" : "quitters" -- "paranoid about the outside world" : "refs are crooked" -- "shame cycles" : well, that one is pretty bad, but it is not unusual for people to get significant personal gratification and the respect of your teammates for excellent performance, and to feel shame for failures.
Sure, subjectivity is part of it too. But if you're looking for diagnostic criteria in that list, you have to implicitly add "in a cult-like manner" to all of the criteria, and rely on the common subjective understanding of what a "cult" is to determine if they apply.
Definitions when applied prescriptively have to be looked at from an operational perspective -- _why_ does it matter that this instance belongs to that category?
NXIVM was absolutely a cult, despite a focus on self-improvement/ philosophy rather than religion. They had a supreme leader, they cut off the members from the outside, there was a clean ingroup/outgroup and they freaking branded their members. Sure, in most ways it was "just" an MLM but it was also absolutely a cult and it absolutely ruined people's lives in an identical way.
Scientology was a cult even before the point it took on the trappings of religion for tax purposes. It was originally NOT a religion - it was just more pseudo-scientific MLM nonsense. It was still a cult.
Sex cults are also definitely cults, even though the focus is on sex and the leader in general rather than religion.
Sure, it did bad things. If a member were a Christian, did it force them to denounce God or renounce their hope of salvation, or to otherwise accept heretical beliefs? I am not Christian; these are not things important to me, but they are part of the operational definition of a classical cult, which NXIVM is not, in that sense.
Why use the label cult? As a rhetorical device, that's fine, but don't present it to me as an absolute. Even the wikipedia article on NXIVM, for example, calls it a "personality cult", a term specifically invented to refer to a cult-like organization organized around a persona rather than a religious precept.
Language is free -- what I think subjectively is a cult and what you do are different, and usage will evolve as time goes on, and that's fine. I'm in general in favor of holding to a narrower definition because otherwise the semantic mismatch in discussing cults can get very broad, to the point where we're just talking about two different things and the connection from cult -> occult -> hidden knowledge has been completely lost. EDIT: And not stated here, but my main thrust, is that expanding the meaning because of poorly scoped definitions is the worst possible way to go about it because it's motivated by pseudo-logic rather than by organic usage.
Could you possibly link to this singular, authoritative (and non-contested) "operational definition of a classical cult"?
> Why use the label cult? As a rhetorical device, that's fine, but don't present it to me as an absolute.
Only your absolute definition is allowed? Is there a governing body for such things?
> Language is free -- what I think subjectively is a cult and what you do are different, and usage will evolve as time goes on, and that's fine.
This is a bit inconsistent with the rest of your comment - what constitutes a cult is now subjective?
> I'm in general in favor of holding to a narrower definition because otherwise the semantic mismatch in discussing cults can get very broad, to the point where we're just talking about two different things and the connection from cult -> occult -> hidden knowledge has been completely lost.
Is it possible that this could be happening right here in this thread?
> EDIT: And not stated here, but my main thrust, is that expanding the meaning because of poorly scoped definitions is the worst possible way to go about it because it's motivated by pseudo-logic rather than by organic usage.
Now we're back to "the (singular) meaning"?
Sir: do you recall where you acquired your facts? Did those who provided them to you include any supporting proofs?
I do not have an absolute definition! That's my whole point! Nor do I deny yours, but only point out that the label, by itself, adds no value to the discussion, unless there's a common framework. Surely you can acknowledge that a significant number of people would require a religious belief; that's what makes the accusation against NIXVM particularly outre, because they are cult-like without a religious element, and saying they are a cult is a way to associate them with something generally found distateful.
> This is a bit inconsistent with the rest of your comment - what constitutes a cult is now subjective?
YES! A MILLION TIMES YES! On the border of the taxonomy, things get very wishy-washy -- but finding someone who says that Heaven's Gate or Jonestown are not cults would be enormously difficult. The usage of "cult" only works because we have a shared cultural experience with the notion of cult. and invoking that when referring to things like NXIVM is a rhetorical device, nothing more.
I don't get to "decide" the meaning of "cult" and neither do you! It's a word in a living language in the milieu of a society with a shared cultural heritage that carries history and connotation stretching back to before we were born. It is ultimately uninteresting to debate whether NIVMX is a cult or not because it does not make more acceptable or condemnatory their practices.
If you could make a strong statement; "they exhibited the following cult-like attributes, and in consequence, like every organization with those attributes, they also exhibited these behaviors" then you're on to something; you're doing observational sociology. But here all you're really saying is "they are super double bad", which is, okay, fine, but you can just call them fascists or communists or something else that people hate and it has the same impact.
Unless you're being deliberately ironic for effect and it's going over my head, are you not saying religion is an absolute requirement for a cult?
> The usage of "cult" only works because we have a shared cultural experience with the notion of cult. and invoking that when referring to things like NXIVM is a rhetorical device, nothing more.
Another shared cultural experience is delusions of omniscience.
> If you could make a strong statement; "they exhibited the following cult-like attributes, and in consequence, like every organization with those attributes, they also exhibited these behaviors" then you're on to something; you're doing observational sociology.
Until our culture can take the distinction between reality and perception of it seriously, such observational sociology will operate on a platform of delusion.
That said, starting with this and dealing with the psychological issues later seems like a very reasonable strategy.
> But here all you're really saying is "they are super double bad", which is, okay, fine, but you can just call them fascists or communists or something else that people hate and it has the same impact.
A problem: this did not actually occur (this is an extremely common behavior that ideally would be persuaded out of people somehow....but I suspect you are averse to even discussing it).
Its was probably written by an adult.
Feel free to disagree and engage in the discussion rather than using reductive cheap shots.
Now we're well into the map vs territory. In the attempt to define a cult (something which we intuit) we end up fixated on the boundary between what is a cult and what is not a cult, and try to create a taxonomic rule-based classification.
The mistake is then to assume that that rule-based classification defines what a cult is (rather than attempts to describe what is a cult) and you end up saying that something (like MLMs) are a "cult" even though they are not! I mean, you can make an analogy to a cult, or show cult-like properties, but absent a religious motivation (where "religious" itself is a similarly nebulous concept) it's not a cult.
If your rule-based model defines something which is not a cult (subjectively) as a cult (objectively), then your definitions are bad, period, and you should stop using them. Instead, embrace fuzziness and subjectivity and look for the interesting properties of "cult", and learn what it teaches us about language and society.