Cult Bashing for Journalists—Part III
Diversity
The Circularity of Diversity
I first encountered the topics of pluralism and diversity when I attended classes of educator’s curriculum in college. My silent thought then was that it was superficial and wordy—typical circular educationist rhetoric. I was not yet alert to the inconsistencies and hypocrisy of the cult bashing.
It seems we push diversity to create cults so that we can then slam them. Ha! Is education running a factory to manufacture groups to prejudice? If so, it is more circular than I had at first appreciated.
And I am not against pluralism and diversity. But I don’t have to be for it. It takes care of itself as a natural consequence. It’s somewhat unstoppable. Without strictly enforced social mores, humans are all deviants by nature of our creative intellect. We yearn to break out of our self-imposed and externally imposed social cages. Only fear keeps us prisoner to conformity.
Consider the following words: cult, diversity, pluralism, deviant, conservative, liberal, conformist, rebel, trend.
Note that a conservative person is one who aligns with the prevailing philosophy. And a liberal person is one who is misaligned with the prevailing philosophy. And when a liberal viewpoint becomes the prevalent viewpoint, that original liberal person is no longer liberal, but it now conservative.
Just such a switch occurred during and immediately after the American Civil War. The Republicans were the liberals and the Democrats—wanting to preserve slavery and control of their economy—were the conservatives. The war swapped out the prevailing philosophy of the country and the Democrats became the liberals as the Republicans strove to preserve the newly accepted standards of equal treatment under the law.
Jesus from Nazareth was a deviant. He broke away from the Jews and is still disrespected by many Jews for his teachings. But he grouped with many other like-minded deviants to lay the foundations for Christianity. Some of these groupies formed the Catholic Church which eventually exerted great control for many centuries on many peoples’ lives and thought. The Church squelched creativity thus diversity—for a long while. Then Martin Luther (along with those around Calvin and King Henry VIII)—another deviant within his milieu—broke out of his proverbial cage to form his own cult. Then others diversified their thoughts to break out into protestant sects.
So, deviants of cults naturally diversify into new sects and cults which compete with other cults for prevalence. And bigotry and chauvinism are natural consequences of cult formation and existence. And the cults were generated by the diversity of the deviant individuals and groups of former cults. The process is a loop that incessantly throws off new entities. This is both enriching to society as well as destabilizing. How much governments and religions can or should damp the intensity of the loop is forever controversial.
I see pluralism as the incorporation of differing, smaller cults (sects) into larger cults. Again, this is enriching as well as destabilizing. How to balance this in a healthy way is synonymous with the damping mentioned in the previous paragraph.
Eric Hoffer
In 1951, Eric Hoffer wrote The True Believer—Thoughts On the Nature of Mass Movements. This approximate 165-page book remains a seminal treatise on mass movements. It is a disturbing little book.
I do not remember Hoffer using cult, but movement and cause are pretty much interchangeable terms that involve a following or cult.
On many of its editions, the rear jackets includes a phrase:
Reporting on the true believer, Mr. Hoffer examines with Machiavellian detachment mass movements, from Christianity in its infancy to the national uprising of our own day. His analysis of the psychology of mass movements is a brilliant and frightening study of the mind of the fanatic, the individual whose personal failings lead him to join a cause, any cause, even at peril to his life—or yours.
With no judgmentalism for their appropriateness, Hoffer analyzes Christianity, Socialism, Marxism, Nationalism, and several other movements. At the front of many published editions of the book is the quote from Pascal (Pensées):
Man would fain be great and sees that he is little; would fain be happy and sees that he is miserable; would fain be perfect and sees that he is full of imperfections; would fain be the object of the love and esteem of men, and sees that his faults merit only their aversion and contempt.
The embarrassment wherein he finds himself produces in him the most unjust and criminal passions imaginable, for he conceives a mortal hatred against that truth which blames him and convinces him of his faults.
Anyone visiting the Eisenhower White House received a copy of this book.
I first learned of The True Believer from Nautilus founder and owner, Arthur Jones. One day, the general manager was away on vacation, and I was sitting at the manager’s desk reading the marketing book by Al Reis and Jack Trout entitled, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind.
Arthur silently entered the office, noted what I was reading, more or less ripped it from my hands, studied it for about half a minute, then handed it back while asserting, “If you really want to understand marketing, read The True Believer by Hoffer. He then turned and bolted out of the room. Our relationship was like that.
During the following several months, Arthur would ask if I had yet read The True Believer. For a long time, I disappointed him.
Then one rainy day that I remember very well, I followed Arthur out the front door of an office building onto a covered stoop. As I was walking just a few feet behind him I said, “Arthur, I finally read True Believer.”
Arthur instantly spun around with his finger in my face and asked, “How do you like yourself?”
A few weeks later I was at dinner with Nautilus long-time and loyal general manager for Arthur, Ed Farnham. I told him of this story wherein Arthur spun around pointing at me to be introspective. Ed, shaking his head in his hands with disappointment and dismay, said, “I really wish Arthur would not do that.”
Ken: “Do what?”
Ed: “Arthur devotes his time and money writing and advertising and language to cultivate a loyal devotee and employee like you, Ken, and then rubs your face in it. For what purpose does this serve? Certainly, you and I find it amusing, even humorous, but this is counterproductive.’
Ironically, all the inner circle of the cult that surrounded Arthur Jones had read The True Believer and when privately discussed with me almost all denied that Hoffer’s insights applied to them… Hilarious!
I have read The True Believer many times. The first exposure was a struggle for me.
In an issue of my now-defunct newsletter twenty years ago, I excerpted passages of The True Believer. One or two members of our professional organization (200 members) protested having such “anti-Christian” observations in a public journal. I replied that Hoffer’s work was not judgmental and that Hoffer only sought to explain how the following was assembled and held together. I’m fairly certain that they did not accept my explanation.
Later, I shared the protest with another member of our organization (our cult) who was an ordained Baptist minister. He chuckled and then explained to me that The True Believer and other of Hoffer’s writings (The Ordeal of Change, The Passionate State of Mind) are required reading in graduate social studies as well as in many seminaries.
Several points stand out in my memory of The True Believer. One is that passion is an important, if not indispensable, ingredient to evoke a following. And people want something to believe in, something to be passionate about, something to cling to, something give their life meaning. Life is empty without passion.
Another point is the value of hatred. As Hoffer underscores, a cause might be created and sustained without a god, but never without a devil.
My takeaway from this is that slamming a competitor as a cult, is extremely useful only if it includes the pejorative. What’s the point of using this term in today’s social and political milieu unless it can cast dispersions and passion—however prejudicial and empty—against the accused. Without the implied pejorative cult is really as indistinctive and useless as I have belabored in this treatise. Calling the competition a cult with intentional pejorative overtones is hate mongering.
The Plumed Serpent
Earlier, I deferred expansion on the Google definition of Cult regarding, “relatively small group” or “strange” or “sinister?”
If I started a religion and I called it the Religion of the Plumed Serpent and included virgin sacrifices, I’m sure I would be labeled a cult leader, a deviant, and a criminal. But if I could build my following to include enough members to rank as a proper religion what would that number be? 100 is probably too few. Even 1,000 is probably too few.
What if it covered the whole state of Texas with a membership of 29 million? What if it covered an area that exceeded the land mass covered by Judiasm, Shintoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, or Islam? Would it be considered mainstream and not be maligned as a cult of deviant behavior?
800 years ago, the Religion of the Plumed Serpent was the largest religion on earth and its sacred temples (Place of the Seven Grottos) were in Trinity County, Texas. 1200 years before this, the area where part of Lake Livingston now sits, was home to the Aztecs, the Toltecs, and the Mayans.
[It is this exact area that La Raza (a cult, of course) and others reference in their demands for open borders, except that their fabled sacred homeland (Aztlán) is not a fable and not the entirety of North America as they seem to claim. Apparently, they are unaware of the finiteness of Aztlán.]
For hundreds of years before this, these three tribes cohabited. And although the Mayans are revered today as those of the Yucatan who had technological superiority in astronomy, metallurgy, stone hewing, and time-keeping (calendar) technology, they actually acquired this knowledge from the Aztecs and Toltecs many centuries earlier in what would centuries later would be known as a county in Texas.
You see, the Mayans were actually the last kid on the block, so to speak, to get the information. They were the Johnny-come-lately. They had migrated from the east to join the other two tribes, because they desired the technological enlightenment, but were simultaneously hesitant about the human sacrifices that were demanded by the Plumed Serpent. So they took the trade-off of bad and deviant behavior of the other two tribes for the benefit of the technology.
About 400 BC, the lake which enabled the tribes to navigate to their temples and other holy sites partially drained due to drought. The Mayan, then, checked out and moved to the Yucatan. With successive droughts at 400 AD and 1100 AD the Toltecs, then the Aztecs, migrated to the Central Valley of Mexico.