Thread by @TimClarePoet

Cults are a critique of society. We ogle & mock folks who fall for them, but the classic profile of people who join is someone who is lost, traumatised, struggling for identity. Nothing in the emptiness of late capitalism speaks to them. Cults thrive because we're bad at meaning.

'Wow, how could so many people put their faith in such an obvious con artist?' Well, maybe because they were pretending to offer a bunch of stuff contemporary society utterly fails to provide. Direct confrontation with our fears. Validation. Deep purpose. Community.

'Cult' has a hygienic specificity that suggests pathological false beliefs & behaviours exist Over There. Whereas, of course, these beliefs & behaviours exist on a spectrum. We all belong to communities & subcultures with dogma, rules, punishments & outgroups.

I'm not in any way suggesting cults are *good*. Just that, if folks feel they need them in order to get heard, in order to feel valued, in order to feel like their needs for meaning, love & self-worth are being met, that's a damning indictment of modern society.

The hardening of one's explanatory lens around a set of maxims to be defended, I feel like a lot of Very Online folks can relate to that more than maybe they'd like to admit. Cults don't need desert compounds any more. The internet makes the compound a purely mental construct.

We see the cultist in others, but not in ourselves. In psychology they call this the Third Person Effect. We believe others are influenced by advertising, the media, their peer groups, but not ourselves. Oh no siree. *We* come to our beliefs from first principles.

It's pervasive, like a mass hallucination. & to name it without admitting, yes, I'm susceptible to this too is just to perpetuate the nonsense. Most cult leaders - or cult-adjacent figures - claim to have risen above it. To have woken up. To have access to The Truth.

It resonates with followers because, in a sense, they're onto something. Yes, we do follow conventions without thinking why. Yes, there are absurdities we accept as normality. Yes, many of us don't wrestle with the hard questions day in, day out. This is all correct.

But of course, that doesn't mean the leader, the influencer, the guru, is any less ensnared. & they don't tend to hold their own claims, their own ideology, to the same rigorous standard of skepticism. They emphasise life's uncertainty, then offer: ah! Absolute answers.

& sometimes just: community. A gang of fellow-seekers. A place where you can speak about your trauma - unstrap the heavy wicker creel you've carried all these years & take out each memory one by one, unwrapping them, laying them out at last. No one else asked.

I'm not sure it's possible to create a community that's genuinely unconditionally accepting. I'm not sure such a thing would be desirable. So of course *any* community has behaviours & beliefs it anathemises & punishes. That's just, any society, right?

But I do feel like we could get better at being with each other. About opening up, finding ways to listen, to be vulnerable, finding ways to support each other through expressing & processing tough emotions & memories, in whatever way each person feels able.

Cults flow in to - pathologically, parasitically - fulfil unmet needs. Extremism will continue to thrive on the internet while we aren't able to offer people genuine pathways to not merely survive & be tolerated, but to thrive & be valued.

It's more complicated & resource-intensive than simply saying 'oh let's have a dialogue hashtag bekind', obviously. But we can use joined-up systems thinking - epidemiological perspectives, in other words - to combat misinformation & online cults, rather than mockery & hate.

And those are my opinions about an area I have little knowledge of and no professional expertise in. If I've hit upon any kind of truth, it was a mix of intuition and luck. Just spitballing, folks. Feel free to disagree.