Cult Knowhow

• Handling Leaders Well
• Fascism

Handling Leaders

Organizational relations is a vast topic.

There are many leader styles. Democratic, authoritarian, and laissez-faire leadership are three of the most commonly referred to. A leader and his group form a network. The leader is usually the most influential person in a group.

Participative management. The management theorist Douglas McGregor (1960) discerns between two functions of management - to control and motivate. The form of management where motivation has a relatively greater preponderance, may be termed participative management. In it, it is assumed that members or workers are highly motivated and can be trusted to contribute to the organisation's objectives if given the opportunity to participate in organisational decision making. Participative managers consult with and involve employees at all levels of the organization in organisational problem solving and decision making. One aim is to accommodate the physical and social needs of workers/members. There is still debate over the feasibility, wisdom, and even the legal consequences of involving workers in organisational decision making.

Paternalism does not depend on exploitation of workers/members, and can stimulate cultural and educational programs, even community constructions.

In laissez-faire leadership enlightened self-interest dominates. However, individual members or workers function as isolated individuals.

There is also management through bureaucracy of fixed rules governing the organisation.

A closer look at how SRF (Self-Realization Fellowship) is organised, reveals it has paternalism at its core (maternalism is found too), and there is monastic-bureaucratic managing of members: There is at best only secondary participative management when it comes to dispensing kriya yoga methods, regulating the amount of kriyas to be performed by each member. The core control is paternalistic. SRF has a long way to go before it fulfils all the possibilities of a paternalistic web, though.

Lately SRF has been labeled a cult by some Christian organisations. According to Merriam-Webster, the Latin roots of 'cult' involve "care, adoration, cultivate". A cult deals with:

• formal religious veneration, worship;
• a system of religious beliefs and ritual; also its body of adherents;
• a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious; also its body of adherents;
• a system for the cure of disease based on dogma set forth by its promulgator;
• (a) great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (as a film or book), and especially such devotion regarded as a literary or intellectual fad. (b) usually a small group of people marked by such devotion.

Further

The sociologist Thomas Robbins divides cults into:

1. cults as dangerous, authoritarian groups;
2. cults as culturally innovative or transcultural groups;
3. cults as loosely structured protoreligions;
4. Also, one may distinguish among "audience cults" (members seek to receive information, e.g., through a lecture or tape series) "client cults" (members seek some specific benefit, e.g., psychotherapy, spiritual guidance), and "cult movements" (organizations that demand a high level of commitment from members). It would appear that cult membership increases as church membership decreases. [Tro]

Sociologists often distinguish "cult" from "church," "sect," and "denomination." Cults are fervent groups. If they become accepted into the mainstream, cults, in his view, lose their fervour and become more organized and integrated into the community; they become churches. When people within churches become dissatisfied and break off into fervent splinter groups, the new groups are called sects. As sects become more stolid and integrated into the community, they become denominations.

Benjamin Zablocki defines a cult as "an ideological organization held together by charismatic relationships and demanding total commitment." He says cults are at high risk of becoming abusive to members under charismatic leaders by contributing to the leaders becoming corrupted by the power they seek and are allotted.

Cult definitions tend to emphasize elements of authoritarian structure, deception, and manipulation. A totalist type of cult can be understood as "a group or movement exhibiting a great or excessive devotion or dedication to some person, idea, or thing and employing unethically manipulative techniques of persuasion and control (e.g. isolation from former friends and family, debilitation, use of special methods to heighten suggestibility and subservience, powerful group pressures, information management, suspension of individuality or critical judgment, promotion of total dependency on the group and fear of leaving it, etc.). Means are designed to advance the goals of the group's leaders, to the actual or possible detriment of members, their families, or the community.

The term "cult" really refers to a continuum: there is a large grey area that separates "cult" from "noncult." And one may add qualifiers to the term "cult," such as "destructive." Further, it can be presumed that different people will respond differently to the same group environment, and besides, cults are not all alike. Nor are all cult members affected in the same way, even within the same group. However, some groups harm some members sometimes, and some groups may be more likely to harm members than other groups.

It is vital that each cult be evaluated individually with regard to the group environment and the person(s) interacting within and with that environment. At present there are no straightforward scientific "tests" to establish whether or not a group is indeed a "cult." However, there are useful and promising tools for assessing groups, such as ICSA's Group Psychological Abuse Scale, which is based on self-report. As for groups studied, inquirers need to make informed judgments and decisions based on the group's potentially harmful practices. ICSA says: "These are practices that have been associated with harmful effects in some people. To what, if any extent, are these practices found in the group in question? And how might you or your loved one be affected by these practices?"

It is needed to base an approach on good evidence and careful analyses of structure and behaviour within a specific context. Further, appearances can deceive, especially in cults. Data must be subject to reevaluation, and terms, like "cult", must at least points us in a meaningful direction. It is fit to strive to use it judiciously.

[Source: Herbert L. Rosedale and Michael D. Langone. On Using the Term "Cult" ICSA. Nd. On-line. [▾Link]]

You don't have to be stupid to link up to a cult. It is how you do it that is the crucial thing. Maybe some get hoodwinked by play on belongingness. Anyway, one may handle main cult factors by training and getting aware of what is at play in the field of the mind and in the open.

It could pay to check or probe into how much control leaders have, and whether they regularly cheat.

Pompous Leaders Bring Complications

You can watch your steps, as bad cults have some hallmarks. Here are some of them:

• Strong leader dominance.
• Bad social network most often.
• Up to notorious isolation from family and relatives, if it serves pompous, arrogant, cliché-ridden or grave leadership with control and many complications for tender hearts and minds and nerves.

You could thrive better and accomplish things on your own, eventually.

Silly initial networks may breed pompous leaders.

Don't expect a hard-hearted cult to be honest and unbiased about all their central issues, if getting members to profit from, matters. It usually does. You have to calculate well. So as not to get outsmarted, watch out for:

1. Unsound conformity striving.
2. Persuasion or framing.
3. Great obedience to the leader and following quite arbitrary rules and regulations.
4. Insincere argumentation of recruiting.
5. Emotional manipulation, play on unfulfilled instincts, or neuroses.
6. Consistent efforts to block quitting.
7. High exit costs include phobias of harm, failure, and personal isolation.
8. Cult mind control is often of great intensity, persistence, duration, and scope.
9. Among serious dangers are deception, mindless devotion, and failure to deliver on the recruiting promises.
10. Bad cults create total dependence on the group for self identity, recognition, social reinforcement.

Literature  

Ebu: Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2009 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD. London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2009.

Hio: Palmer, R., and Joel Colton. A History of the Modern World. 7th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992.

Tro: Robbins, T. Cults, converts, and charisma (London: Sage, 1988), in Herbert L. Rosedale and Michael D. Langone. On Using the Term "Cult". Internet article. Isca. Nd. On-line. [▾Link]



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