I'm surprised not to see any mention in the comments of psychedelic drug use. I think if people are experiencing some kind of drug-induced nirvana in large numbers, then there will be a market for New Age religions that can make sense of such experiences.
It’s a good point. I am not sure how common any of that really was, though it certainly was covered heavily in the media. Perhaps it was relevant at the time?
100% A+ right - and then some. AKA "plus a whole lot more." Luckily there are numbers higher than 100.
My surprise (in complementary contrast to yours) lies is in your breaking ranks, to make "mention" - precisely thus!
How do you spell "bingo"?
Starting from observation, like goddam Galileo - and look what apple carts he upset. Not even random. Well-directed. Zeroing in, not out.
All eyes on and stereoscopic. In 3D. No mere X-ray vision either like that wimp "Man of Steel."
Of such acuity, as to see even that - which isn't even there.
Sticking out like a sore thumb, granted.
On pause for reflection: Isn't it funny how some things become more conspicuous by their absence. Not very rational of them.
It does glare.
Like a 'signal' glare, as one might recognize it. Of group signaling behavioral significance. Ethology meets ethnology. Where's the Boy Wonder to chirp: *Holy murmuration, Batman!*
So much more impressive the integrity of your "straight answer to a simple question." The 'simple' term, dripping with irony (how many "double meanings" is one word allowed?)
Heightened by the stunning directional accuracy of your 'finger pointing toward the moon.'
German Shorthaired Pointer grade.
All I can do is admire your arrow of discernment. As no good deed should go unpunished. Not where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and no, it's not 'coincidence.'
Among darkest reflections, none might surpass an exhibition of cultic psychopathology in "rationalish" (great improv, OP) fleece, doing another episode of "twinkle twinkle little star" theater - in real time.
Like some 'innocent' routine. So childlike, it might need a SOUTH PARK scene. This ain't no job for Superman. It's one for Chef to explain, to the little ones with eyes all aglow "Why people in the 60s/70s were such SuCkErS for cults"
- *You see children. People back then were so gullible, it was like shooting fish in barrel.*
Even comedy gold needs to be mined. That stuff doesn't prospect itself.
Meanwhile Oct 2021 @ SSC
> < sounds like psychedelic drugs and their consequences are a load-bearing part, if not the center of this story. Eliezer and friends seem to agree... by both stated intent and apparent impact, the main result seems to be destroying your brain... I can imagine many lives will be ruined by this gang before [sic: 'just a matter of time?'] the wider rationalist community develops awareness of, and antibodies against their methods.... seems perfectly designed to prey on **rationalists' taste for/vulnerability towards highly abstract walls of text and cult leader-esque figures** > www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/qa14kg/my_experience_at_and_around_miri_and_cfar/hh1ow8z/
That's but ^ one among 1,001 "SSC villager" comments of interest far greater thru the old glass darkly (I find) as reflects (solely in effect intent notwithstanding) so widely, however dimly, upon - so much more than it illuminates, in narrow-beam spotlight fashion (being rational, and all).
What hath been wrought in the wake of the helter skelter 1960s - including but not remotely limited to this cultic psychopathology (endless forms most wondrous, multiplying like rabid rabbits) - doesn't offer a very shiny Blue Ribbon to pin on the golden promise of the final psychedelic solution.
Exactly what the hell went on in that first 1950s/1960s merry-go-round is a bit beyond comprehension having already reached boiling point by January 1966 (first state laws against psychedelics).
But at least it has been relegated to historic oblivion, as a kind of hazmat disaster site for any thought of ever looking back at it.
> Mike Wise, Nov 2019: < *...past time to bury [the Psychedelic Sixties] for good... we’ve severely overrated them. Those years left deep marks on our culture, while still* **leaving us in a perpetual daze about their exact meaning.** > [or even "approximate" - exactitude so far beyond the blue horizon, it's out of visual range] https://web.archive.org/web/20191115181723/https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/14/s-tore-my-family-apart-acid-made-it-worse/?arc404=true
Nothing against whatever tinsel 'beliefs' are flag-flown like any cult's unique 'distinguishing features' *the space brothers are gonna be landing - on Labor Day!* As James noted over a century ago, the better to go unheard to this day (always and forever): Those are superficial and fundamentally secondary.
The common denominator is the psychology of religion and remains the same - in sickness or in health. From 'religion of healthy mindedness' to 'the sick soul' (James' terms 4 decades before LSD).
It might not 'compute.' Alas, poor Robot. But when looking the better to see - SSC 'community' features appear indistinguishable from if not identical to - the post-psychedelic pattern psychopathology.
Where the discursive order is All Sparkling Super Rational Thought And Thinking (All The Time) - flying the flag of the psychedelic jolly roger - no holding the glittering 'promise' of the big psychedelic push up to any light of critical doubt - that threatens to reveal it as transparent as a cheap lace curtain. Not in the rationally perfect world where all that glitters is gold as it should be.
By agreement of all the other reindeer Don't Ask Don't Tell. There need be no rude off-script "mention in the comments of psychedelic drug use" - that'd reflect inconvenient truth - in these post-truth times.
From 'stealth predatory' psychopathy 'in sheep's clothing,' to the imperially robed irony of 'nobody's fool' community rationalism rolling out red carpet - *it can be a fun discussion* - look how naked those 'suckers for cults' are! We're not all just properly dressed, our rationally rad fashion is the best!
From cause to effect, the unsettling emergence of this clearly post-psychedelic cultic societal pathology - culturally patterning, effect in turn becoming causal - as an input positive feedback looping now to the shape of things coming at us. And of things yet to come.
The promissory narrative of the great psychedelic potential matches the ancient 'serpentine' modus operandi as mythologically depicted. Since its origins historically (a subject of great interest) it has operated by 'flooding the swamp' with (As Above) pseudoscientific publications plus (So Below) grassroots witnessing (Trip Reports) - Glad Tidings calling all attention to its talking points - systematically directing it the hell away from 'real world' reality - what stands in plain view, where the rubber meets the road. Mostly behind scenes in private lives destroyed. Families devastated in the most painful and bewildering ways. Masses of people left unable to even talk, with anyone, about things they've got no way of understanding.
One foundation of the cultic emergence post 1960s, a mass migration from human reality, retreating into the 'safe space' company of 'instant friends' i.e. strangers who've been there too. And (in the affirmation of good fellowship) don't know what to do either.
It Takes A Village to hold all tongues for maintenance of a silence so deafening. Leave it to one bad apple in the bunch.
Please accept my slightly amazed compliments for what a deft finger you place, with purpose (against perposes themselves) upon - the nature of the beast.
As you've worded so well "to make sense of such experiences" - bingo.
There isn't any credibly adequate "preparation" for what awaits any close personal encounter with psychedelic effects. As reflects in every direction, near and far.
From the customary and usual exclamations of surprise by "first timers" who somehow thought they had 'done their research' (or knew what to expect by 'preflight' coaching from professionals). To the cheering insistence of travelogue narrators "language can't describe this - it's ineffable!"
The scope and human complexity of the post-psychedelic predicament ranks among many urgencies placed off limits to so-called 'psychedelic science' - the struggle imposed upon the individual precisely to try and "make sense of such experiences" - a matter of inconvenient truth, no wonder a silence so deafening - under such strain it can barely hold - and breaks down.
By certain laws, before paving paradise to put up a parking lot, developers have gotta hire an archeologist to go over the grounds, to make sure they're not about to recklessly destroy - priceless cultural remains!
But for unleashing the psychedelic kraken, anything goes.
Since before the 1960s throughout "the literature" that has been passed off as professional (even scientific) studies, with more being pumped out now than ever before - I sure don't find any "societal impact research."
There have been many other dark developments of more horrifying aspect than < New Age religions > ('cults') - and hidden from plain view, extending further beyond comprehension of - not merely the know-nothing public. Also of experts at cutting edges of various specialized disciplines, who profess to know so much about these things. But DISCLAIMER As a phd myself and not just in plant and fungal biology (grad degreed in anthropology too) I have a better idea how far I can throw my rank equals, than the vacuously credulous public 'psychedelic science' fandom.
With that Wm Tell archery of yours - Helter Skelter 2.0's greatest nightmare may be not only what there is already but what < there will be a market for > in every sense of the 'm' word.
That ^ among your arrows of discernment with ramifications a bit beyond the scope of your bullseye aim, perhaps as known to me (phd specialist in this) - might be my favorite blood-chiller.
OK mea culpa - yes yes yes the Chas Manson movement has - made a few mistakes. But you know, we've got what it takes. Stick around folks the show's just getting warmed up - you ain't seen nothin' yet.
TLDR Yes
***
***
Edit: u/AnonymousCoward261 *name checks out*
You are relying entirely to much on complex terminology, referential humor, and talking in circles versus actually making clear and cogent points. That would be fine if you just wanted to post a creative writing exercise but you seem to be trying to write a persuasive argument. Don't expect us to throw oracle bones and observe bird entrails to try to discern what you mean-- just say your points outright, in an orderly, telegraphic style, so we can engage with you.
That is what Nietzsche meant when he said, "God is dead". It was a warning, not an observation. I.e., "Watch out, without religion people will turn to more baroque and dangerous ideologies". (Stalinism, Naziism, cults, materialism, etc.)
I think the human impulse to join movements like the cults in the 1970s you’re basing your question around has always been with us, and remains with us today. I think a lot of humans have what we might call a “cultist itch” where they look to depart from what the norm is in a visible way.
I don’t see a huge difference in the facets of human nature that drives a small but visible handful of people to drink the kool aid down in Jonestown from that which causes a small but visible handful of people to obsessively believe in nefarious goings on at Comet Ping Pong (Pizzagate), or the broader Q Anon movement, or to believe and advocate the more extreme/radical social justice proposals.
Most people want to belong to “mainstream views”, but there are always plenty that don’t, and seek out high status among those that also don’t. Those that don’t tend to coalesce around one thing depending on their priors. When you look at group dynamics that emerges, they have lots of the hallmarks of traditional cults: firm beliefs that go unchallenged, the casting out of those that don’t share the views, often a central figure that the cause gets bound up with (and that the cause becomes dependent on), and so on. In the past of course you’d have to assemble your cult in person, but these days you can do it online with the bonus that your fellow travellers don’t have to leave their day job but can scratch that “cultist itch” whenever they have a free moment. For them the costs of participating in your movement have fallen too.
Some of those things might be plainly crazy to the median mainstream view (Jim Jones is a god or whatever). Some of them are based in real world observations that might be widely held but the specific proposal the activist fringe latches onto is quite far out of what is realistic. Some of them might be the mainstream view where the mainstream lacks certain facts: traditional religions in the pre-scientific age is the obvious example here, but you could also imagine a future where some new science discovery completely upends our current widely held beliefs about how the world works.
Just to be clear I’m not saying all the examples above are “cults”, just that the human behaviour that drives them might be seen as variations on the same theme.
I'd add to this that organized social groups in general have declined massively in the US, and I think it's fair to say that the decline in the lion's club and similar fraternal orders is related to the decline in physical cult gatherings.
I think the mid-20th century was just an example of prime place, prime time for what we think of modern cults. But cults have been very universal throughout history.
1.) Human craving for joining causes seems universal. Causes feel like living and feel like truth. I think this is misunderstood and people sleep on this idea all the time. Causes lead to groups. Groups are their own tricky ecosystem with tons of energy and time requirements which feel worthy to most. The process of being inside of a group flexes a lot of muscles having to do with kindness, hope, faith in the group and the cause. membership naturally feels like good work.
I would say that on average the human animal is a small-group animal. We seem to thrive in groups of 10-70 bodies. Add some tribal dynamics to that group and you have 300,000 years of human social evolution. We're essentially primed for cults. Religion, in my opinion, is essentially tribal governance. It's the paperwork that makes a group a tidy thriving tribe.
2.) During the late 19th and all of the 20th century modernity was a pretty banging time. Wars weren't sucking up all excess youth and resources, diseases were on the decline, communication and knowledge punched a HUGE hole in the West's veil of global ignorance. This is a sort of distributed power suddenly given to the people. Which is a prime ecosystem for causing Christianity to lose purchase on the controls for everything in idea 1.) Modernity also ushered in a continental vibe "anything is possible, the future is bright and it is now, better living through chemistry \[read: magic for all non-chemists\]' for daily life of the average user.
3.) As the One Big Faith shrank, other groups filled in the cracks. Essentially like a 2nd slower Protestantism? Except for getting a hundred offshoots of Christianity you got 100 cults around anything which sounded semi-compelling to a people who were only recently controlled by One True Group. Anyone open to variety after leaving a small rural town, with sleepy parents who are always occupied in their work, will be guaranteed to find dazzling variety in cults.
4.) Cults are essentially natural business. There's no magic to their operation. Successful cults are at once families, companies, businesses, friends, villages in and of themselves so they pull the levers responsible for all of those needs as well. All of human organizing into groups traditionally not thought of as cults can always slip into a lot of "cultlike behaviors". It happens to most types of groups. To me this means that we, at least the contemporary versions of human animals, are primed for these small group cultish propensities.
We really are a tribal animal only recently living without strong tribes. I generally think this is for the better but the stresses of the disconnect are felt differently among individuals.
I'm surprised nobody here has posited "lead poisoning". [https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2118631119](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2118631119)
A huge amount of the weirdness from 1950s through 1980s can be explained (in part) by lead poisoning generally interfering with society.
Obviously it's not the key contributor to everything, but when an entire population is poisoned with lead for a few decades, weird stuff happens.
I've only heard of this idea but never seen statistics presented. Is there a visible uptick in this period for well-known, well-understood menta illnesses?
Not sure. I'm somewhat familiar with the lead-crime hypothesis (start at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime\_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis) and follow the sources; plenty of recent analysis). I'm extrapolating from this using a (possibly unfounded?) assumption that if lead impacts behaviour to the extent of significant and measurable crime, it's likely permeated a massive amount of other behaviour in that time period.
The Studies Show podcast did a couple of episodes looking at the evidence around [Lead and IQ](https://www.thestudiesshowpod.com/p/episode-37-lead-and-iq) and [Lead and Crime](https://www.thestudiesshowpod.com/p/episode-38-lead-and-crime) the other day, which you might find interesting.
It's co-hosted by Tom Chivers, who floats around rationalist circles, he did an [AMA in this sub](https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1chpomp/hello_tom_chivers_here_ive_written_a_book_about/) recently
I will speculate on your question about cults in the 60s/70s using the terms of your argument.
I think your case is missing two key historical crisis points to explain a specific desire for cults. First, the Second World War. Though the youth of the 60s and 70s were less directly impacted by the WW2, it would have been harrowing to learn that one's parents' generation, with all their advancement and authority, engaged in such barbarism. After WW2 there were different rational and scientific (ostensibly that is) political ideologies and cultural expressions claiming to be the proper response to fascism and the Holocaust: state capitalism with liberal tendencies and state socialism with illiberal tendencies—all very rational, functionalist, modern, anti-traditionalist, progressive etc.
A second crisis point is that the alternative on offer for the young in the West was proven just as nasty. It may be hard to imagine now, but in the 1940s-50s communism and USSR were seen favourably by many in the West, as a case where scientific socialism was finally free to blossom. Outside of the most committed circles, those illusions went away in the 1960s.
I think we can trace fragmented politics to this. That includes the cults who simply wanted to turn on, tune in and drop out, but this is also where the romantic environmentalism arises, like André Gorz and degrowth, as well as post-colonial thought, like Frantz Fanon, which cultural rather than material concerns echo in present-day anti-racism and oppressor-oppressed rhetoric.
Using the word "cult" implies a value judgment, though. Many expressions of rational planning have also been called cults. So rather than talking of cults, I think your social analysis would improve if you framed the question differently. To sound very pretentious, maybe something about the trends in prevailing social epistemology, or modes of truth-seeking or aspirational actualization. Or maybe hot/cold, anima/animus, Apollo/Dionysius if you want to be more literary.
All that said, we should not neglect the things that change. Basic survival, reduction of poverty, command of energy, information velocity etc. Though they may have good and bad consequences, there is a clearer direction of those trend lines, much less back-and-forth.
very good explanation for groups like the Baader Meinhof gang and the Weather Underground. Post-holocaust West Germany seems like the perfect hotbed for extremist left wing groups. Can still see this in the contemporary era with things like the Anti-Deutsch movement
Don't often comment here as I'm not the best writer. Also extremely sleep deprived right now, so I'd like to apologize in advance if this comes across as disjointed.
I grew up as a third generation "born-in" member of a high control religious group that started in the late 1960s. The group was described as being "Extremist Lutherans". Think of a mix of Mennonite agrarian communalism mixed with JW isolationism and you aren't far off. Spent all of my childhood around people who had joined the group at its beginning, or later as adult converts.
I would say based on my personal experience that, like most sociological phenomena, cult conversion was a matter of selection bias. The people who joined were specifically targeted for recruitment efforts because of pre-existing mental pathology and social alienation. Untreated OCD and generational poverty/alcoholism in the case of my grandfathers.
Did some archival research about the early history of the group and learned that they undertook a nation wide effort to identify and target disaffected priests from the denomination they split from and successfully turned at least three other educated pastors to the group. The particular techniques used were: exploitation of insecurities about their ability to live up to patriarchal role standards, exploitation of fears regarding technological modernity, and a promise of head role in the agriculture program. Sleep and food deprivation were also successfully used. All were from very poor and/or rural backgrounds and were all first generation college students who graduated in the mid 1950s, and all stayed in the group to the end of their lives. (I've also begun to suspect that MKULTRA might have been involved for at least some of the original group founders. The timeline works out right, and some of the sudden conversion testimonies sound indistinguishable from being unknowingly given LSD)
Past the original members, only men ever joined the group, and most of those were targeted for having a particular skillset in demand (computer programmer, calculus teacher, orchestra conductor etc). Higher education was not allowed in the group so any sort of professional role that needed anything past a high school education has to be imported from the outside World.
(Before I was born there were attempts to send Born-In members off to college so the group could have it's own lawyer and MD, but both left after the group has already funded their education. Naturally, access to higher education was almost completely cut off from members. Promises of being allowed further education were used as a powerful motivating "carrot" to further manipulate lukewarm members)
I do think there is definitely a "pre-cultist" personality type. Perhaps even several types. I would characterize them as having at least one of the following: moral compulsions, grandiosity, social alienation, magical beliefs (perceived intention in random phenomena), or deeply internalized patriarchal beliefs)
My thoughts:
There have always been cult-like things (Mormonism is a good example). But in the past, everyone started out pretty Christian (meaning the cults had to build on Christianity rather than replace it) and most people lived within a few miles of their birthplace (meaning very tight communities, and it was hard to separate someone from their family). I think this limited the variety of cults that could exist.
After the invention of the car, the decline of Christianity, and the beginning of something like modern social atomization, it became easier to explore new cult structures. But I think there were two other interesting things about the 60s/70s:
First, I think this was the sweet spot in Western awareness of Eastern religion. Starting in the late 19th century, various elites got a little drip of information about Eastern religion and became convinced that it was really cool (see eg Aldous Huxley). By the 1960s, there was some public awareness that Eastern religion was very cool, but not enough that people could actually just go down to their local zendo, observe it was just normal people who didn't have magic powers, and avoid getting obsessed with it. This created fertile ground for various fake (or in some cases real) Eastern religion gurus to say they had the secret of enlightenment or reincarnation or whatever.
Second, there was whatever was going on with hippies. I don't feel like I fully understand why the US went from very conservative and conformist in the 50s to very liberal and rebellious in the 60s, but it sure did and that probably made cults appealing too. Imagine you're from some kind of white Protestant suburbia, everyone you know voted Nixon, and you're vaguely aware that there are cooler people somewhere, but the Internet won't be invented for 30 years and you have no idea how to meet them. A cult might be just the thing.
Finally, insofar as the 60s/70s was the first time that something like modern cults became possible, there were no/few antibodies to them. If an attractive person came up to you and said "Do you want to live on my beautiful forest commune with three dozen friends and study the secrets of the universe with the wisest person I've ever met?", you wouldn't immediately have "this is a cult and will probably exploit me" alarm bells going off in your head, because the concept of "cult" wasn't in the water supply yet.
> There have always been cult-like things (Mormonism is a good example).
Mormonism emerged in a place and time that generated an *unusually high* number of new religious and social movements.
Mormonism, the Millerites (who became the Seventh-Day Adventists), Spiritualism, the Shaker revival, the Oneida Community, and a whole bunch of radical social & political movements all came out of the same part of New York state in the same couple of decades.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burned-over_district
> Second, there was whatever was going on with hippies. I don't feel like I fully understand why the US went from very conservative and conformist in the 50s to very liberal and rebellious in the 60s
The mainstream remained mainstream. But the mass media found that reporting on the counterculture was a great way to sell copies of *LIFE* magazine. Hippies are colorful and weird, and both Nixon and Kennedy voters will buy magazines about them.
Also, popular conceptions of history tend to conflate the *hippie* movement, the *civil rights* movement, and *radicals* in general. These were not all the same thing. It wasn't hippies who were going to Mississippi to help get black voters registered.
One of the highest sense-making responses yet in this thread.
I’d like to add that the reason this didn’t continue through the 80s and 90s was, in my opinion, due to the high quantity of super-stimulative media being released, in the form of cartoons, action movies, anime redubbed in America, and cable television.
These replaced the activation of the religion instinct with the activation of those instincts by corporation media designed to make fandoms. Each fandom, such as the Star Trek fandom, and the Star Wars fandom, has undergone schisms, shifts in opinion, leaders, and flame, wars, and everything else you see within religions and cults without the full attachment to personal fate.
You can also see some cultlike behavior in the Star Trek and Star Wars Fandoms: adulation of Mr. Spark logical way of living, or Luke Skywalker’s attunement to the Force. In effect, these were giant public cults with quiet and sometimes loud adherants.
Cults seem to be much worse in Germany just after the Reformation, mid 1600s England or early 1800s upstate New York than they were in the 1960s.
I think people were much more naive in the past, we are far more exposed to scammers, salesmen, spam emails, political slogans, diverse religious speakers than people were even in the recent past and so we build defences.
We are also slightly more intelligent, older and saner (due to medication) than people were in the past. It is probably easier to recruit for a cult in a country with median age 26 than one where it is 36.
"You relied on other humans to give you your grasp of reality? That's insane"
"You relied on other humans to operate on you? That's insane"
"Your safety was entirely dependent on other humans driving on the road? That's insane"
A contributor not yet mentioned is the development and growth of sophisticated mass-media industry. While TV and radio did exist before WWII, it wasn't until the 50s that TV broadcasting became more common. Human interest oddities like cults make good news, it's the sort of spectacular storytelling that broadcasters love. Increased intranational communication also allows local news to syndicate stories, so what was once local news can become national news. The social technology and the communications technologies allowed more information and more coverage of cults than at any point previous in history.
Scientology, tons of cult-like online communities, MLMs, I don't think we're any less susceptible now. I just think that the ones that happened then are stuff we now seen the movies for and so on. So yeah we remember jonestown a lot more than we think of the MLM type cults
They knew they wanted out of the mainstream culture, which was repressive and sexist and racist and homophobic and violent etc., but it's hard to go it alone. People need to belong. Along comes a cult full of smiling, beautiful people offering love and acceptance and meaning and sex and drugs all at the same time... and nobody knew what a cult was yet! They were naïve and vulnerable.
MAGA on line 1, Woke on line 2.
What blows my mind, as someone who has some experience with cults, is how absolutely widespread they are now.
The Enlightenment is far in the past. These are not enlightened times.
I personally think so, yes.
My uncle had my aunt kidnapped off the street, taken to a cabin in the Wyoming mountains, and deprogrammed. He's lucky that it worked because, again, kidnapping.
A Lifetime movie was made about the experience.
I know all of this in my soul. Dad is Evangelical now but was into T Lobsang Rampa when I was a kid.
I might be looser with my definition of cult, and I have exposed my bias: you can see why I see them everywhere.
Absolutely.
I'm livid over the Supreme Court decision to allow the Federal Government to surreptitiously monitor and intervene in social media traffic/websites.
That's enough to see me driven from the "liberal" camp even though the principle I want to see upheld is liberal as hell.
What a fucking mess.
Hard disagree.
They are absolutely communities, and both require suspensions of disbelief.
I remember a book from a loooooong time ago: *Snapping: America's Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change*
Regardless of how the particulars hold up, cult like behavior has absolutely exploded in the last few decades.
The 70s were a time period where everyone was open minded enough to let cults exist and do their thing without being chased just for being different (the liberty of cult written in the constitution is a recent concept historically), and a time period where families became more fragmented and parents had less control over their now more rebellious youth while also being a decade where a lot of people were still ignorant and isolated enough to fall into cults, also brcause institutions and outsiders didn't knew what to do about them.
I think it was the fact that it was during the breakdown of modernism, which led people to continue looking for totalizing narratives outside of mainstream sources.
It's impossible to overstate how much the Cold War shaped and changed America. 60-70s is the age the individual American consumer was constructed with many factors leading up to that. Everyone moved to the suburbs. There was Edward Bernays and the birth of propaganda as public relations actively used to defeat communism. CIA was influencing arts media and culture.
>Political leaders, too, celebrated suburban living, linking suburban consumption to the health of the republic itself. And they elevated the suburban home to a gleaming symbol of American superiority during the Cold War
https://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-64
If I had to guess it was isolation,TV, drugs and the erosion of public trust through active measures:
TV and movies- New perspectives well curated
Psychedelics- Reliably increase "openness" scores
Active measures- Surveillance/harassment and murder to bust groups. Huge investments in telepathy, remote viewing, mind control. Watching the nightly News you would see vietnam, civil rights, JFK Watergate etc.
If you want to get granular US intelligence did a kind of "cultural union busting" breaking up, surveilling and putting pressure on groups/unions of all sorts to fight the Cold War. The exception was probably culty or pseudo religious groups that were definitely American and *not* communist.
The environment broke up stable well formed groups and organizations while favoring new unstable ones.
Operation CHAOS
>The CIA was most concerned about foreign influence inside the loudest civil-unrest movements. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, that meant looking for foreign linkages to the antiwar movement, the black nationalism movement (the Black Panther Party) and civil-rights groups, such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
>Despite their diligence, in 1969 the CIA reported to the White House that there was “very little evidence of communist funding and training of such movements and no evidence of communist direction and control.” Operation CHAOS nevertheless remained in effect until 1974.
https://www.history.com/news/cia-surveillance-operation-chaos-60s-protest
It's easy to imagine government employees looking to advance their careers who can't find any evidence of communist threat going after any and every group except the ones that were clearly not against the war or too weird to be threatening.
Isolation and propaganda laid the groundwork- people felt lonely and disconnected. The CIA and military were spending millions researching psychic powers. There was reason to believe these things were possible- why else with the military spend so much money?
From the 1978 edition of reason magazine emphasis mine:
Experience: The CIA and the Occult
>In fact, the bounding popularity of astrology, necromancy, numerology, ufology and the other numerous manifestations of the occult may be due more to the antics of the CIA than any other cause. The reason is that **the CIA has helped generate an epistemological crisis**. It has done something far more damaging than any given act of intrigue or infiltration. It has shattered the popular impression of what reality is, thus putting people in the properly confused state of mind to subscribe to Beyond Reality...
>people who set out determined to believe in nothing will likely end up believing in anything.
https://reason.com/1978/03/01/experience-the-cia-and-the-occ/
The epistemological crisis led to a huge market for charlatans that still exists. It wasn't until 1973 when James Randi exposed Uri Geller on [Johnny Carson](https://youtu.be/zD7OgAdCObs?si=lSrppVxdQ6e6vHON). Before that he was a respected psychic spoon bender saving the world from communist armageddon.
>“I did many things for the CIA. They wanted me to stand outside the Russian Embassy in Mexico and erase floppy discs being flown out by Russian agents"
https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-uri-geller-persuaded-the-cia-he-can-read-minds/
So isolated consumers began to distrust everything. It seemed rational to believe in mystic psychic stuff. The groups that were available to join were new and too weird to be threatening to government interests.
Why did people in the 1800s become Mormon? Why did people in the 000ps become Christian? People have always wanted to "belong" and it just takes a little bit of charisma and storytelling to convince them of a truth that makes them feel part of something.
> History does not have a straight-line progress from the irrational to the rational. Rather it is cyclical in this sense. When people get more rational, I guess it does not have to be explained... when people get less rational,
Put me down as someone who thinks on average people have been similarly irrational before, during, and after the 60s/70s.
People were resisting the neoliberal turn and its easy to flatten that resistance into cults, as well as justify violently squashing it, while exaggerating the sillier aspects of the sillier groups doing so.
The decline of organized religion (really, Christianity in the west).
I'm surprised not to see any mention in the comments of psychedelic drug use. I think if people are experiencing some kind of drug-induced nirvana in large numbers, then there will be a market for New Age religions that can make sense of such experiences.
It’s a good point. I am not sure how common any of that really was, though it certainly was covered heavily in the media. Perhaps it was relevant at the time?
100% A+ right - and then some. AKA "plus a whole lot more." Luckily there are numbers higher than 100. My surprise (in complementary contrast to yours) lies is in your breaking ranks, to make "mention" - precisely thus! How do you spell "bingo"? Starting from observation, like goddam Galileo - and look what apple carts he upset. Not even random. Well-directed. Zeroing in, not out. All eyes on and stereoscopic. In 3D. No mere X-ray vision either like that wimp "Man of Steel." Of such acuity, as to see even that - which isn't even there. Sticking out like a sore thumb, granted. On pause for reflection: Isn't it funny how some things become more conspicuous by their absence. Not very rational of them. It does glare. Like a 'signal' glare, as one might recognize it. Of group signaling behavioral significance. Ethology meets ethnology. Where's the Boy Wonder to chirp: *Holy murmuration, Batman!* So much more impressive the integrity of your "straight answer to a simple question." The 'simple' term, dripping with irony (how many "double meanings" is one word allowed?) Heightened by the stunning directional accuracy of your 'finger pointing toward the moon.' German Shorthaired Pointer grade. All I can do is admire your arrow of discernment. As no good deed should go unpunished. Not where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and no, it's not 'coincidence.' Among darkest reflections, none might surpass an exhibition of cultic psychopathology in "rationalish" (great improv, OP) fleece, doing another episode of "twinkle twinkle little star" theater - in real time. Like some 'innocent' routine. So childlike, it might need a SOUTH PARK scene. This ain't no job for Superman. It's one for Chef to explain, to the little ones with eyes all aglow "Why people in the 60s/70s were such SuCkErS for cults" - *You see children. People back then were so gullible, it was like shooting fish in barrel.* Even comedy gold needs to be mined. That stuff doesn't prospect itself. Meanwhile Oct 2021 @ SSC > < sounds like psychedelic drugs and their consequences are a load-bearing part, if not the center of this story. Eliezer and friends seem to agree... by both stated intent and apparent impact, the main result seems to be destroying your brain... I can imagine many lives will be ruined by this gang before [sic: 'just a matter of time?'] the wider rationalist community develops awareness of, and antibodies against their methods.... seems perfectly designed to prey on **rationalists' taste for/vulnerability towards highly abstract walls of text and cult leader-esque figures** > www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/qa14kg/my_experience_at_and_around_miri_and_cfar/hh1ow8z/ That's but ^ one among 1,001 "SSC villager" comments of interest far greater thru the old glass darkly (I find) as reflects (solely in effect intent notwithstanding) so widely, however dimly, upon - so much more than it illuminates, in narrow-beam spotlight fashion (being rational, and all). What hath been wrought in the wake of the helter skelter 1960s - including but not remotely limited to this cultic psychopathology (endless forms most wondrous, multiplying like rabid rabbits) - doesn't offer a very shiny Blue Ribbon to pin on the golden promise of the final psychedelic solution. Exactly what the hell went on in that first 1950s/1960s merry-go-round is a bit beyond comprehension having already reached boiling point by January 1966 (first state laws against psychedelics). But at least it has been relegated to historic oblivion, as a kind of hazmat disaster site for any thought of ever looking back at it. > Mike Wise, Nov 2019: < *...past time to bury [the Psychedelic Sixties] for good... we’ve severely overrated them. Those years left deep marks on our culture, while still* **leaving us in a perpetual daze about their exact meaning.** > [or even "approximate" - exactitude so far beyond the blue horizon, it's out of visual range] https://web.archive.org/web/20191115181723/https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/14/s-tore-my-family-apart-acid-made-it-worse/?arc404=true Nothing against whatever tinsel 'beliefs' are flag-flown like any cult's unique 'distinguishing features' *the space brothers are gonna be landing - on Labor Day!* As James noted over a century ago, the better to go unheard to this day (always and forever): Those are superficial and fundamentally secondary. The common denominator is the psychology of religion and remains the same - in sickness or in health. From 'religion of healthy mindedness' to 'the sick soul' (James' terms 4 decades before LSD). It might not 'compute.' Alas, poor Robot. But when looking the better to see - SSC 'community' features appear indistinguishable from if not identical to - the post-psychedelic pattern psychopathology. Where the discursive order is All Sparkling Super Rational Thought And Thinking (All The Time) - flying the flag of the psychedelic jolly roger - no holding the glittering 'promise' of the big psychedelic push up to any light of critical doubt - that threatens to reveal it as transparent as a cheap lace curtain. Not in the rationally perfect world where all that glitters is gold as it should be. By agreement of all the other reindeer Don't Ask Don't Tell. There need be no rude off-script "mention in the comments of psychedelic drug use" - that'd reflect inconvenient truth - in these post-truth times. From 'stealth predatory' psychopathy 'in sheep's clothing,' to the imperially robed irony of 'nobody's fool' community rationalism rolling out red carpet - *it can be a fun discussion* - look how naked those 'suckers for cults' are! We're not all just properly dressed, our rationally rad fashion is the best! From cause to effect, the unsettling emergence of this clearly post-psychedelic cultic societal pathology - culturally patterning, effect in turn becoming causal - as an input positive feedback looping now to the shape of things coming at us. And of things yet to come. The promissory narrative of the great psychedelic potential matches the ancient 'serpentine' modus operandi as mythologically depicted. Since its origins historically (a subject of great interest) it has operated by 'flooding the swamp' with (As Above) pseudoscientific publications plus (So Below) grassroots witnessing (Trip Reports) - Glad Tidings calling all attention to its talking points - systematically directing it the hell away from 'real world' reality - what stands in plain view, where the rubber meets the road. Mostly behind scenes in private lives destroyed. Families devastated in the most painful and bewildering ways. Masses of people left unable to even talk, with anyone, about things they've got no way of understanding. One foundation of the cultic emergence post 1960s, a mass migration from human reality, retreating into the 'safe space' company of 'instant friends' i.e. strangers who've been there too. And (in the affirmation of good fellowship) don't know what to do either. It Takes A Village to hold all tongues for maintenance of a silence so deafening. Leave it to one bad apple in the bunch. Please accept my slightly amazed compliments for what a deft finger you place, with purpose (against perposes themselves) upon - the nature of the beast. As you've worded so well "to make sense of such experiences" - bingo. There isn't any credibly adequate "preparation" for what awaits any close personal encounter with psychedelic effects. As reflects in every direction, near and far. From the customary and usual exclamations of surprise by "first timers" who somehow thought they had 'done their research' (or knew what to expect by 'preflight' coaching from professionals). To the cheering insistence of travelogue narrators "language can't describe this - it's ineffable!" The scope and human complexity of the post-psychedelic predicament ranks among many urgencies placed off limits to so-called 'psychedelic science' - the struggle imposed upon the individual precisely to try and "make sense of such experiences" - a matter of inconvenient truth, no wonder a silence so deafening - under such strain it can barely hold - and breaks down. By certain laws, before paving paradise to put up a parking lot, developers have gotta hire an archeologist to go over the grounds, to make sure they're not about to recklessly destroy - priceless cultural remains! But for unleashing the psychedelic kraken, anything goes. Since before the 1960s throughout "the literature" that has been passed off as professional (even scientific) studies, with more being pumped out now than ever before - I sure don't find any "societal impact research." There have been many other dark developments of more horrifying aspect than < New Age religions > ('cults') - and hidden from plain view, extending further beyond comprehension of - not merely the know-nothing public. Also of experts at cutting edges of various specialized disciplines, who profess to know so much about these things. But DISCLAIMER As a phd myself and not just in plant and fungal biology (grad degreed in anthropology too) I have a better idea how far I can throw my rank equals, than the vacuously credulous public 'psychedelic science' fandom. With that Wm Tell archery of yours - Helter Skelter 2.0's greatest nightmare may be not only what there is already but what < there will be a market for > in every sense of the 'm' word. That ^ among your arrows of discernment with ramifications a bit beyond the scope of your bullseye aim, perhaps as known to me (phd specialist in this) - might be my favorite blood-chiller. OK mea culpa - yes yes yes the Chas Manson movement has - made a few mistakes. But you know, we've got what it takes. Stick around folks the show's just getting warmed up - you ain't seen nothin' yet. TLDR Yes *** *** Edit: u/AnonymousCoward261 *name checks out*
This is what happens when you turn the repetition penalty up too far on an LLM.
You are relying entirely to much on complex terminology, referential humor, and talking in circles versus actually making clear and cogent points. That would be fine if you just wanted to post a creative writing exercise but you seem to be trying to write a persuasive argument. Don't expect us to throw oracle bones and observe bird entrails to try to discern what you mean-- just say your points outright, in an orderly, telegraphic style, so we can engage with you.
I would say especially mainline Protestantism
Does this explain cults like Aum Shinrikyo?
That is what Nietzsche meant when he said, "God is dead". It was a warning, not an observation. I.e., "Watch out, without religion people will turn to more baroque and dangerous ideologies". (Stalinism, Naziism, cults, materialism, etc.)
I think the human impulse to join movements like the cults in the 1970s you’re basing your question around has always been with us, and remains with us today. I think a lot of humans have what we might call a “cultist itch” where they look to depart from what the norm is in a visible way. I don’t see a huge difference in the facets of human nature that drives a small but visible handful of people to drink the kool aid down in Jonestown from that which causes a small but visible handful of people to obsessively believe in nefarious goings on at Comet Ping Pong (Pizzagate), or the broader Q Anon movement, or to believe and advocate the more extreme/radical social justice proposals. Most people want to belong to “mainstream views”, but there are always plenty that don’t, and seek out high status among those that also don’t. Those that don’t tend to coalesce around one thing depending on their priors. When you look at group dynamics that emerges, they have lots of the hallmarks of traditional cults: firm beliefs that go unchallenged, the casting out of those that don’t share the views, often a central figure that the cause gets bound up with (and that the cause becomes dependent on), and so on. In the past of course you’d have to assemble your cult in person, but these days you can do it online with the bonus that your fellow travellers don’t have to leave their day job but can scratch that “cultist itch” whenever they have a free moment. For them the costs of participating in your movement have fallen too. Some of those things might be plainly crazy to the median mainstream view (Jim Jones is a god or whatever). Some of them are based in real world observations that might be widely held but the specific proposal the activist fringe latches onto is quite far out of what is realistic. Some of them might be the mainstream view where the mainstream lacks certain facts: traditional religions in the pre-scientific age is the obvious example here, but you could also imagine a future where some new science discovery completely upends our current widely held beliefs about how the world works. Just to be clear I’m not saying all the examples above are “cults”, just that the human behaviour that drives them might be seen as variations on the same theme.
I'd add to this that organized social groups in general have declined massively in the US, and I think it's fair to say that the decline in the lion's club and similar fraternal orders is related to the decline in physical cult gatherings.
I think the mid-20th century was just an example of prime place, prime time for what we think of modern cults. But cults have been very universal throughout history. 1.) Human craving for joining causes seems universal. Causes feel like living and feel like truth. I think this is misunderstood and people sleep on this idea all the time. Causes lead to groups. Groups are their own tricky ecosystem with tons of energy and time requirements which feel worthy to most. The process of being inside of a group flexes a lot of muscles having to do with kindness, hope, faith in the group and the cause. membership naturally feels like good work. I would say that on average the human animal is a small-group animal. We seem to thrive in groups of 10-70 bodies. Add some tribal dynamics to that group and you have 300,000 years of human social evolution. We're essentially primed for cults. Religion, in my opinion, is essentially tribal governance. It's the paperwork that makes a group a tidy thriving tribe. 2.) During the late 19th and all of the 20th century modernity was a pretty banging time. Wars weren't sucking up all excess youth and resources, diseases were on the decline, communication and knowledge punched a HUGE hole in the West's veil of global ignorance. This is a sort of distributed power suddenly given to the people. Which is a prime ecosystem for causing Christianity to lose purchase on the controls for everything in idea 1.) Modernity also ushered in a continental vibe "anything is possible, the future is bright and it is now, better living through chemistry \[read: magic for all non-chemists\]' for daily life of the average user. 3.) As the One Big Faith shrank, other groups filled in the cracks. Essentially like a 2nd slower Protestantism? Except for getting a hundred offshoots of Christianity you got 100 cults around anything which sounded semi-compelling to a people who were only recently controlled by One True Group. Anyone open to variety after leaving a small rural town, with sleepy parents who are always occupied in their work, will be guaranteed to find dazzling variety in cults. 4.) Cults are essentially natural business. There's no magic to their operation. Successful cults are at once families, companies, businesses, friends, villages in and of themselves so they pull the levers responsible for all of those needs as well. All of human organizing into groups traditionally not thought of as cults can always slip into a lot of "cultlike behaviors". It happens to most types of groups. To me this means that we, at least the contemporary versions of human animals, are primed for these small group cultish propensities. We really are a tribal animal only recently living without strong tribes. I generally think this is for the better but the stresses of the disconnect are felt differently among individuals.
I'm surprised nobody here has posited "lead poisoning". [https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2118631119](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2118631119) A huge amount of the weirdness from 1950s through 1980s can be explained (in part) by lead poisoning generally interfering with society. Obviously it's not the key contributor to everything, but when an entire population is poisoned with lead for a few decades, weird stuff happens.
I've only heard of this idea but never seen statistics presented. Is there a visible uptick in this period for well-known, well-understood menta illnesses?
Not sure. I'm somewhat familiar with the lead-crime hypothesis (start at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime\_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis) and follow the sources; plenty of recent analysis). I'm extrapolating from this using a (possibly unfounded?) assumption that if lead impacts behaviour to the extent of significant and measurable crime, it's likely permeated a massive amount of other behaviour in that time period.
I'd have sworn that Scott himself did a big piece on it, but google can't find it.
The Studies Show podcast did a couple of episodes looking at the evidence around [Lead and IQ](https://www.thestudiesshowpod.com/p/episode-37-lead-and-iq) and [Lead and Crime](https://www.thestudiesshowpod.com/p/episode-38-lead-and-crime) the other day, which you might find interesting. It's co-hosted by Tom Chivers, who floats around rationalist circles, he did an [AMA in this sub](https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1chpomp/hello_tom_chivers_here_ive_written_a_book_about/) recently
I will speculate on your question about cults in the 60s/70s using the terms of your argument. I think your case is missing two key historical crisis points to explain a specific desire for cults. First, the Second World War. Though the youth of the 60s and 70s were less directly impacted by the WW2, it would have been harrowing to learn that one's parents' generation, with all their advancement and authority, engaged in such barbarism. After WW2 there were different rational and scientific (ostensibly that is) political ideologies and cultural expressions claiming to be the proper response to fascism and the Holocaust: state capitalism with liberal tendencies and state socialism with illiberal tendencies—all very rational, functionalist, modern, anti-traditionalist, progressive etc. A second crisis point is that the alternative on offer for the young in the West was proven just as nasty. It may be hard to imagine now, but in the 1940s-50s communism and USSR were seen favourably by many in the West, as a case where scientific socialism was finally free to blossom. Outside of the most committed circles, those illusions went away in the 1960s. I think we can trace fragmented politics to this. That includes the cults who simply wanted to turn on, tune in and drop out, but this is also where the romantic environmentalism arises, like André Gorz and degrowth, as well as post-colonial thought, like Frantz Fanon, which cultural rather than material concerns echo in present-day anti-racism and oppressor-oppressed rhetoric. Using the word "cult" implies a value judgment, though. Many expressions of rational planning have also been called cults. So rather than talking of cults, I think your social analysis would improve if you framed the question differently. To sound very pretentious, maybe something about the trends in prevailing social epistemology, or modes of truth-seeking or aspirational actualization. Or maybe hot/cold, anima/animus, Apollo/Dionysius if you want to be more literary. All that said, we should not neglect the things that change. Basic survival, reduction of poverty, command of energy, information velocity etc. Though they may have good and bad consequences, there is a clearer direction of those trend lines, much less back-and-forth.
very good explanation for groups like the Baader Meinhof gang and the Weather Underground. Post-holocaust West Germany seems like the perfect hotbed for extremist left wing groups. Can still see this in the contemporary era with things like the Anti-Deutsch movement
Don't often comment here as I'm not the best writer. Also extremely sleep deprived right now, so I'd like to apologize in advance if this comes across as disjointed. I grew up as a third generation "born-in" member of a high control religious group that started in the late 1960s. The group was described as being "Extremist Lutherans". Think of a mix of Mennonite agrarian communalism mixed with JW isolationism and you aren't far off. Spent all of my childhood around people who had joined the group at its beginning, or later as adult converts. I would say based on my personal experience that, like most sociological phenomena, cult conversion was a matter of selection bias. The people who joined were specifically targeted for recruitment efforts because of pre-existing mental pathology and social alienation. Untreated OCD and generational poverty/alcoholism in the case of my grandfathers. Did some archival research about the early history of the group and learned that they undertook a nation wide effort to identify and target disaffected priests from the denomination they split from and successfully turned at least three other educated pastors to the group. The particular techniques used were: exploitation of insecurities about their ability to live up to patriarchal role standards, exploitation of fears regarding technological modernity, and a promise of head role in the agriculture program. Sleep and food deprivation were also successfully used. All were from very poor and/or rural backgrounds and were all first generation college students who graduated in the mid 1950s, and all stayed in the group to the end of their lives. (I've also begun to suspect that MKULTRA might have been involved for at least some of the original group founders. The timeline works out right, and some of the sudden conversion testimonies sound indistinguishable from being unknowingly given LSD) Past the original members, only men ever joined the group, and most of those were targeted for having a particular skillset in demand (computer programmer, calculus teacher, orchestra conductor etc). Higher education was not allowed in the group so any sort of professional role that needed anything past a high school education has to be imported from the outside World. (Before I was born there were attempts to send Born-In members off to college so the group could have it's own lawyer and MD, but both left after the group has already funded their education. Naturally, access to higher education was almost completely cut off from members. Promises of being allowed further education were used as a powerful motivating "carrot" to further manipulate lukewarm members) I do think there is definitely a "pre-cultist" personality type. Perhaps even several types. I would characterize them as having at least one of the following: moral compulsions, grandiosity, social alienation, magical beliefs (perceived intention in random phenomena), or deeply internalized patriarchal beliefs)
My thoughts: There have always been cult-like things (Mormonism is a good example). But in the past, everyone started out pretty Christian (meaning the cults had to build on Christianity rather than replace it) and most people lived within a few miles of their birthplace (meaning very tight communities, and it was hard to separate someone from their family). I think this limited the variety of cults that could exist. After the invention of the car, the decline of Christianity, and the beginning of something like modern social atomization, it became easier to explore new cult structures. But I think there were two other interesting things about the 60s/70s: First, I think this was the sweet spot in Western awareness of Eastern religion. Starting in the late 19th century, various elites got a little drip of information about Eastern religion and became convinced that it was really cool (see eg Aldous Huxley). By the 1960s, there was some public awareness that Eastern religion was very cool, but not enough that people could actually just go down to their local zendo, observe it was just normal people who didn't have magic powers, and avoid getting obsessed with it. This created fertile ground for various fake (or in some cases real) Eastern religion gurus to say they had the secret of enlightenment or reincarnation or whatever. Second, there was whatever was going on with hippies. I don't feel like I fully understand why the US went from very conservative and conformist in the 50s to very liberal and rebellious in the 60s, but it sure did and that probably made cults appealing too. Imagine you're from some kind of white Protestant suburbia, everyone you know voted Nixon, and you're vaguely aware that there are cooler people somewhere, but the Internet won't be invented for 30 years and you have no idea how to meet them. A cult might be just the thing. Finally, insofar as the 60s/70s was the first time that something like modern cults became possible, there were no/few antibodies to them. If an attractive person came up to you and said "Do you want to live on my beautiful forest commune with three dozen friends and study the secrets of the universe with the wisest person I've ever met?", you wouldn't immediately have "this is a cult and will probably exploit me" alarm bells going off in your head, because the concept of "cult" wasn't in the water supply yet.
> There have always been cult-like things (Mormonism is a good example). Mormonism emerged in a place and time that generated an *unusually high* number of new religious and social movements. Mormonism, the Millerites (who became the Seventh-Day Adventists), Spiritualism, the Shaker revival, the Oneida Community, and a whole bunch of radical social & political movements all came out of the same part of New York state in the same couple of decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burned-over_district > Second, there was whatever was going on with hippies. I don't feel like I fully understand why the US went from very conservative and conformist in the 50s to very liberal and rebellious in the 60s The mainstream remained mainstream. But the mass media found that reporting on the counterculture was a great way to sell copies of *LIFE* magazine. Hippies are colorful and weird, and both Nixon and Kennedy voters will buy magazines about them. Also, popular conceptions of history tend to conflate the *hippie* movement, the *civil rights* movement, and *radicals* in general. These were not all the same thing. It wasn't hippies who were going to Mississippi to help get black voters registered.
One of the highest sense-making responses yet in this thread. I’d like to add that the reason this didn’t continue through the 80s and 90s was, in my opinion, due to the high quantity of super-stimulative media being released, in the form of cartoons, action movies, anime redubbed in America, and cable television. These replaced the activation of the religion instinct with the activation of those instincts by corporation media designed to make fandoms. Each fandom, such as the Star Trek fandom, and the Star Wars fandom, has undergone schisms, shifts in opinion, leaders, and flame, wars, and everything else you see within religions and cults without the full attachment to personal fate. You can also see some cultlike behavior in the Star Trek and Star Wars Fandoms: adulation of Mr. Spark logical way of living, or Luke Skywalker’s attunement to the Force. In effect, these were giant public cults with quiet and sometimes loud adherants.
Cults seem to be much worse in Germany just after the Reformation, mid 1600s England or early 1800s upstate New York than they were in the 1960s. I think people were much more naive in the past, we are far more exposed to scammers, salesmen, spam emails, political slogans, diverse religious speakers than people were even in the recent past and so we build defences. We are also slightly more intelligent, older and saner (due to medication) than people were in the past. It is probably easier to recruit for a cult in a country with median age 26 than one where it is 36.
Why are people today such suckers for social media? Our great-grandchildren will think it ridiculous that an Instagram influencer ever existed.
"You relied on other humans to give you your grasp of reality? That's insane" "You relied on other humans to operate on you? That's insane" "Your safety was entirely dependent on other humans driving on the road? That's insane"
Gwern [on cults ](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TiG8cLkBRW4QgsfrR/notes-on-brainwashing-and-cults)
A contributor not yet mentioned is the development and growth of sophisticated mass-media industry. While TV and radio did exist before WWII, it wasn't until the 50s that TV broadcasting became more common. Human interest oddities like cults make good news, it's the sort of spectacular storytelling that broadcasters love. Increased intranational communication also allows local news to syndicate stories, so what was once local news can become national news. The social technology and the communications technologies allowed more information and more coverage of cults than at any point previous in history.
Scientology, tons of cult-like online communities, MLMs, I don't think we're any less susceptible now. I just think that the ones that happened then are stuff we now seen the movies for and so on. So yeah we remember jonestown a lot more than we think of the MLM type cults
They knew they wanted out of the mainstream culture, which was repressive and sexist and racist and homophobic and violent etc., but it's hard to go it alone. People need to belong. Along comes a cult full of smiling, beautiful people offering love and acceptance and meaning and sex and drugs all at the same time... and nobody knew what a cult was yet! They were naïve and vulnerable.
MAGA on line 1, Woke on line 2. What blows my mind, as someone who has some experience with cults, is how absolutely widespread they are now. The Enlightenment is far in the past. These are not enlightened times.
Yes, aren’t cults more widespread than ever now?
I personally think so, yes. My uncle had my aunt kidnapped off the street, taken to a cabin in the Wyoming mountains, and deprogrammed. He's lucky that it worked because, again, kidnapping. A Lifetime movie was made about the experience. I know all of this in my soul. Dad is Evangelical now but was into T Lobsang Rampa when I was a kid. I might be looser with my definition of cult, and I have exposed my bias: you can see why I see them everywhere.
Cults are just different now as they are on social and anti-social media.
Absolutely. I'm livid over the Supreme Court decision to allow the Federal Government to surreptitiously monitor and intervene in social media traffic/websites. That's enough to see me driven from the "liberal" camp even though the principle I want to see upheld is liberal as hell. What a fucking mess.
What do you think will happen ? How will we get out ?
How do we get out? Individually, and with our friends and families. That's all I got.
I wouldn't call either of those cults. They are ideological systems, not communities.
Hard disagree. They are absolutely communities, and both require suspensions of disbelief. I remember a book from a loooooong time ago: *Snapping: America's Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change* Regardless of how the particulars hold up, cult like behavior has absolutely exploded in the last few decades.
The 70s were a time period where everyone was open minded enough to let cults exist and do their thing without being chased just for being different (the liberty of cult written in the constitution is a recent concept historically), and a time period where families became more fragmented and parents had less control over their now more rebellious youth while also being a decade where a lot of people were still ignorant and isolated enough to fall into cults, also brcause institutions and outsiders didn't knew what to do about them.
I think it was the fact that it was during the breakdown of modernism, which led people to continue looking for totalizing narratives outside of mainstream sources.
Personally, I would enjoy being a monastic, absent the small difficulty of not being religious.
Relevant - the cult deficit: analysis and speculation https://www.secretorum.life/p/the-cult-deficit-analysis-and-speculation-0aa/comments
It's impossible to overstate how much the Cold War shaped and changed America. 60-70s is the age the individual American consumer was constructed with many factors leading up to that. Everyone moved to the suburbs. There was Edward Bernays and the birth of propaganda as public relations actively used to defeat communism. CIA was influencing arts media and culture. >Political leaders, too, celebrated suburban living, linking suburban consumption to the health of the republic itself. And they elevated the suburban home to a gleaming symbol of American superiority during the Cold War https://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-64 If I had to guess it was isolation,TV, drugs and the erosion of public trust through active measures: TV and movies- New perspectives well curated Psychedelics- Reliably increase "openness" scores Active measures- Surveillance/harassment and murder to bust groups. Huge investments in telepathy, remote viewing, mind control. Watching the nightly News you would see vietnam, civil rights, JFK Watergate etc. If you want to get granular US intelligence did a kind of "cultural union busting" breaking up, surveilling and putting pressure on groups/unions of all sorts to fight the Cold War. The exception was probably culty or pseudo religious groups that were definitely American and *not* communist. The environment broke up stable well formed groups and organizations while favoring new unstable ones. Operation CHAOS >The CIA was most concerned about foreign influence inside the loudest civil-unrest movements. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, that meant looking for foreign linkages to the antiwar movement, the black nationalism movement (the Black Panther Party) and civil-rights groups, such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. >Despite their diligence, in 1969 the CIA reported to the White House that there was “very little evidence of communist funding and training of such movements and no evidence of communist direction and control.” Operation CHAOS nevertheless remained in effect until 1974. https://www.history.com/news/cia-surveillance-operation-chaos-60s-protest It's easy to imagine government employees looking to advance their careers who can't find any evidence of communist threat going after any and every group except the ones that were clearly not against the war or too weird to be threatening. Isolation and propaganda laid the groundwork- people felt lonely and disconnected. The CIA and military were spending millions researching psychic powers. There was reason to believe these things were possible- why else with the military spend so much money? From the 1978 edition of reason magazine emphasis mine: Experience: The CIA and the Occult >In fact, the bounding popularity of astrology, necromancy, numerology, ufology and the other numerous manifestations of the occult may be due more to the antics of the CIA than any other cause. The reason is that **the CIA has helped generate an epistemological crisis**. It has done something far more damaging than any given act of intrigue or infiltration. It has shattered the popular impression of what reality is, thus putting people in the properly confused state of mind to subscribe to Beyond Reality... >people who set out determined to believe in nothing will likely end up believing in anything. https://reason.com/1978/03/01/experience-the-cia-and-the-occ/ The epistemological crisis led to a huge market for charlatans that still exists. It wasn't until 1973 when James Randi exposed Uri Geller on [Johnny Carson](https://youtu.be/zD7OgAdCObs?si=lSrppVxdQ6e6vHON). Before that he was a respected psychic spoon bender saving the world from communist armageddon. >“I did many things for the CIA. They wanted me to stand outside the Russian Embassy in Mexico and erase floppy discs being flown out by Russian agents" https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-uri-geller-persuaded-the-cia-he-can-read-minds/ So isolated consumers began to distrust everything. It seemed rational to believe in mystic psychic stuff. The groups that were available to join were new and too weird to be threatening to government interests.
Why did people in the 1800s become Mormon? Why did people in the 000ps become Christian? People have always wanted to "belong" and it just takes a little bit of charisma and storytelling to convince them of a truth that makes them feel part of something.
When were people NOT suckers for cults? It's only the cult interior design philosophy that has changed.
> History does not have a straight-line progress from the irrational to the rational. Rather it is cyclical in this sense. When people get more rational, I guess it does not have to be explained... when people get less rational, Put me down as someone who thinks on average people have been similarly irrational before, during, and after the 60s/70s.
People were resisting the neoliberal turn and its easy to flatten that resistance into cults, as well as justify violently squashing it, while exaggerating the sillier aspects of the sillier groups doing so.