Bashing a group by labeling them as a cult or as cultish or bashing a person—merely because you disagree with his beliefs—a cultist is a rather new pejorative convenience and convention. [I plan to expand on how this is convenient later.] This convention seems to have arisen only since the advent of Google et al. and its expansion of language in various ways—some useful, some destructive—but I cannot be exactly sure when and where it arose. I hope to convince you that this practice is malicious bigotry although it is loosely and innocently employed by many of my favorite journalists.
Cults have been with us a long time, perhaps from the beginning of whatever we might define as being human. Perhaps I should have stressed that bashing cults is nonhuman, as humanism subsumes Americanism. [And note that we’re getting deep in the weeds with defining humanism and Americanism, each. Later on these.]
In one of his last public speeches Louis Leakey expounded on the advent of man’s control of fire. Granted, our control of fire is long and widely heralded for its genesis of many technical advances, but Leakey soared into the minds of his audience with the epiphany that the campfire was the beginning of night life. And night life was the vehicle whereby we no longer shuttered in the dark cold, frozen in fear of the surrounding natural world. Moreover, it released our bondage of fear to the degree that we talked freely about the world in a somewhat less constrained way to accelerate a word-of-mouth history, stories, philosophy, and the concept of us versus them. [We might even suggest that fire control led to writing prose, the real foundation of reasoning.] We were then aware by virtue of the fire-lit encampment that we could see others miles away in the dark marked by the others’ campfires.
Would the acknowledgement of others by their encampment of fire strike fear in us or consolation? We had commonly encountered others in our daily foragings and had experienced friendly cooperation from some others and ghastly competition from some other others. Which were these of the distant campfires that we see on any given night? They are noted by their distant campfire, but whose composure is masked by that distance and darkness and silence. [Please note that I’m hinting at possession and law and boundaries, and language chauvinism.]
I doubt Leakey mentioned cults in that speech, but this word would have been appropriate, for a group with a common cause is all that it legitimately means, even if it merely indicates two people in a foxhole trying to survive a battle. Cult and cultism DO NOT indicate right or wrong and/or incorrect or correct.
Of course, such night life did not invent the group with a common cause nor did it spawn story telling and education, but it did hyper-boost its acceleration.
The point of my argument is not when cults originated, but only to acknowledge that they are natural to all humanity. And, mind you, cults are not special to humans!! I’m sure that Leakey, Goodall, and many others can attest to this. And animals have their own language—often without the misunderstandings of ours as Robert Ardrey argued.
Nevertheless, cultism is loosely synonymous with tribalism. And many other expressions can be overlaid with cult. My father aggravated me with calling my friends “your public.” Eric Hoffer, in his seminal work, True Believer, explained mass movements and causes. Donald Trump’s detractors employed deplorables. My following in exercise philosophy were slurred with Hutchees. My college friend annoyed me by referring to all of us around Nautilus between 1970 and 1986 as Nautilyes.
I believe that the Branch Davidians were a bunch of kooks, certainly not my cup of tea. And I believe that those of the Jonestown disaster were part of a similar mass hypnotism. They were certainly cults that I don’t respect. But they had a right to their beliefs as long as they were not acted out in a destructive way to others.
Up to a destructive point (however that is defined by law), cults reflect a belief system or a group policy. Cultism is THE major cornerstone of our great country!! And it is a dangerous undertoe to ignore or to deny this by our rhetorical convenience to take swipes at our philosophical competitors. When we slam a group as a cult we are treading on their freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and freedom of religion in a sense.
How many cults can you name that were persecuted in the other parts of the planet (not just from Europe) who came here to form enclaves and underpinned the fabric of a society that became the United States. Without much reflection and resourcing I can name: Quakers, Catholics, Shakers, Pilgrims, Mennonites, Amish, some sects of Jews. And let’s not ignore the many cults of the natives that were here already, many of which the incoming cults displaced as inferior cults (more bigotry).
More: Methodists, Baptists, etc.
And then there are our created cults within: Rotary International, Daughters of the American Revolution, MAGA, every sorority and fraternity, Lions, FaceBook, the American Medical Society, the CDC, the FDA, the U.S. Marine Corps. the Democrat Party (NOT the Democratic Party), the Republican Party, the American Academy of Science. It’s endless.
Cultism is highly American !!!
Cultism is highly patriotic !!!
Bashing Cults is unpatriotic !!!
For years, I have tried my best to share these points with many pod casters and journalists and radio broadcasters. I have failed to breech their screening walls. Please spread the word of my treatise on this and look forward to Part II.
Ken