Naaju Breaking News, Live Updates, Latest Headlines, Viral News, Top Stories, Trending Topics, Videos
[ad_1]
How do cults sell their ideologies to attract people and then convince skeptical members to stay? And to what extent have your strategies infiltrated everyday life?
One of their most powerful tools is the word, and they use it in such a seductive way that it has penetrated other unexpected realms, from business to fitness.
But the word, as we know, depends on the context.
The “sect”, precisely, is a living example.
It began as a term to name communities of members who shared ideologies or beliefs that differentiated them from other larger groups, perhaps new or unorthodox, but not necessarily harmful.
It wasn’t until the middle of the 20th century that the word began to gain its darker reputation. The rise of so many alternative religions has scared conservatives and sects they have teamed up with charlatans, heretics and sinners.
Then, with the murders of the Manson family in 1969 and the Jonestown massacre in 1978, the “sect” became a social threat and caused fear.
In order to differentiate certain minorities from specific religious or ideological doctrines and to avoid their persecution, in the 1980s the concept of “new religious movements” emerged and, conversely, that of “destructive sects”.
Key words
While the language used by cults is the key to attracting members, it does not by itself work to “brainwash” a person to join, says language expert Amanda Montell, author of the book “Cultish: the language of fanaticism“(Of worship: the language of fanaticism).
The term “brainwashing,” he explains, is only a metaphor, not a real or verifiable phenomenon.
You can’t convince someone to believe in something without there being a hint of will in the person.
But once the will is there, language becomes key, the expert told BBC Radio 4’s “Word of Mouth” series.
“Language is needed to obscure truths, to build solidarity, to instill ideology, to divide people into an ‘we’ and a ‘them’, to instill the philosophy of ‘the end justifies the means’, and to do whatever it takes to gain and maintain power.
Feel special
First of all, a sect must convert the person.
They do this by making their goal special and understood.
Many specialists in the phenomenon use the term “love bombardment“to describe the process of giving someone personalized attention and compliments so that they feel really seen.
The target of this care may have long sought the answers to their own problems, to the problems of the world, and they are led to believe that Joining the cult will give you access to these valuable solutions.
Another method of “conversion, conditioning and coercion” is the use of an “inclusive code language,” Montell explains.
“A cult leader slowly introduces these emotionally charged words and special terminology that separates members of this group from those outside,” he says.
In addition, they can use a glossary of “us, them” labels “to encourage those in the group and criticize those in it”.
Downloaded and co-opted terms
In 1978, a total of 918 people died in a colony in Guyana, an event known as the Jonestown Massacre. The media described it as a mass suicide, where the communicants drank cyanide and intentionally committed suicide.
The truth was, cult leader Jim Jones had left his followers no option: they were surrounded by armed guards. If they did not take the poison themselves, they were injected or shot.
Jones used loaded terms and metaphors to convince people of what they were going to do.
One of the terms he used repeatedly was “revolutionary suicide“.
On the day of the massacre, he presented “revolutionary suicide” as a political declaration against “hidden leaders”, which was his term for what we might now call “the deep state”.
Jones had adopted the term “revolutionary suicide” from the Black Panthers (radical African-American groups).
“That’s what a lot of cult leaders do,” Montell says. “They adopt the language of the ideologies they respectJim Jones borrowed many of these political terms to indicate that his ideology was politically radical.
Likewise, Scientology has taken scientific words like “engram” (a stable neural interconnecting structure) and given them new meanings specific to its system of religious beliefs and practices.
Euphemisms for death
Marshall Applewhite, whose group was an apocalyptic ’90s sci-fi UFO cult called Heaven’s Gate, had a slightly different linguistic repertoire.
He used “long strings of esoteric spatial discourse and syntax derived from Latin make his small group of pseudo-intellectual supporters feel elitist“, describes the expert.
Like Jones, he used euphemisms to refer to death (Herff Applewhite sect also tragically committed suicide), but with a combination of Old Testament and sci-fi language styles to say things like that his followers had to “overcome their genetic vibrations as a way out of their vehicles so that their minds could resurface to board a spaceship and find the next evolutionary level above the human.
He called our earthly bodies “containers” that could be thrown away for a higher existence.
“In the 1990s, when people turned to digital technology for answers to the world’s oldest questions, this language really resonated, at least with some people,” says Montell.
Clichés versus reasoning
But a cult leader is not able to be a 24/7 “enlightened genius”, so he must be able to eliminate independent thinking and questioning quick.
One of the ways they do this is through “thinking clichés.” The term, coined in the early 1960s by psychologist Robert Jay Lifton, “describes a common phrase that is easily memorized and repeated and is intended to end questioning or independent thinking or analysis,” notes Montell.
The leader of the Nxivm group, a New Age “metaphysical self-improvement group”, for example, said things like “don’t let yourself be ruled by fear“To dismiss any valid concerns about what was going on.” Or he undermined the issues by describing them as “limiting beliefs”.
“These types of expressions are really compelling because they deal with cognitive dissonance, or at least alleviate that uncomfortable discord that you feel when you have two conflicting ideas in your mind at the same time.”
This common style of expression manifests itself in our daily lives, Montell points out, in the form of expressions such as “everything is in God’s plan” or “things happen for a reason.”
In large companies
In his research, Montell detected a cult type of language in companies as large as Amazon.
The company has its own version of the Ten Commandments which it calls the “leadership principles” that new employees must memorize. They are titled with trivia like “Think big” and “Have a temper”.
“In the current transitioning and very skeptical market, where there is so little brand loyalty, companies need what are called organizational ideologies,” explains the expert.
These are ideologies that involve consumers and employees not just signing up for a job or product or service, but to gain an identity.
And as we move further and further away from traditional sites of community and connection like churches, “we look to brands and businesses, almost to play a spiritual and religious role in our lives,” he explains. he.
In the world of fitness
A modern, secular place that can serve a spiritual purpose is the gym.
“Aspire to inspire”, “we inhale intention and exhale expectation” and “change your body, go on a journey” these are just a few fragments of the statement written on the wall of any branch of the SoulCycle fitness company as you walk in.
Several studies have shown that when asked how and where they realize their spirituality, young people only answer in the places where they practice.
That makes sense when you consider how much we love progress, productivity and attractiveness, says Montell.
“Self-improvement is our supreme religion.”
* This article is based in the episode “Cultish Language” of the BBC Radio 4 series “Word of Mouth”.
.
[ad_2]
Source link
