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InvisibleSclorch
Clyster

Folding@home Statistics
Registered: 07/12/99
Posts: 4,805
Loc: On the Brink of Madness
Start your own cult.
    #856780 - 09/01/02 10:31 AM (21 years, 6 months ago)

How to Create a Cult in Five Easy Steps
excerpt courtesy of Greene and Elffers

Step 1: Keep it Vague; Keep it Simple
...
To create a cult you must first attract attention. This you should do not through actions, which are too clear and readable, but through words, which are hazy and deceptive. Your initial speeches, conversations, and interviews must include two elements: on the one hand the promise of something great and transformative, and on the other a total vagueness. This combination will stimulate all kinds of hazy dreams in your listeners, who will make their own connections and see what they want to see.

To make your vagueness attractive, use words of great resonance but cloudy meaning, words full of heat and enthusiasm. Fancy titles for simple things are helpful, as are the use of numbers and the creation of new words for vague concepts. All of these create the impression of specialized knowledge, giving you a veneer of profundity. By the same token, try to make the subject of your cult new and fresh, so that few will understand it. Done right, the combination of vague promises, cloudy but alluring concepts, and fiery enthusiasm will stir people?s souls and a group will form around you.

Talk too vaguely and you have no credibility. But it is more dangerous to be specific. If you explain in detail the benefits people will gain by following your cult, you will be expected to satisfy them.

As a corollary to its vagueness your appeal should also be simple. Most people?s problems have complex causes: deep-rooted neurosis, interconnected social factors, roots that go way back in time and are exceedingly hard to unravel. Few, however, have the patience to deal with this; most people want to hear that a simple solution will cure their problems. The ability to offer this kind of solution will give you great power and build you a following. Instead of the complicated explanations of real life, return to the primitive solutions of our ancestors, to good old country remedies, to mysterious panaceas.


Step 2: Emphasize the Visual and the Sensual over the Intellectual
...
Once people have begun to gather around you, two dangers will present themselves: boredom and skepticism. Boredom will make people go elsewhere; skepticism will allow them the distance to think rationally about whatever it is you are offering, blowing away the mist you have artfully created and revealing your ideas for what they are. You need to amuse the bored, then, and ward off the cynics.

The best way to do this is through theater, or other devices of its kind. Surround yourself with luxury, dazzle your followers with visual splendor, and fill their eyes with spectacle. Not only will this keep them from seeing the ridiculousness of your ideas, the holes in your belief system, it will also attract more attention, more followers. Appeal to all the senses: Use incense for scent, soothing music for hearing, colorful charts and graphs for the eye. You might even tickle the mind, perhaps by using new technological gadgets to give your cult a pseudo-scientific veneer?as long as you do not make anyone really think. Use the exotic?distant cultures, strange customs?to create theatrical effects, and to make the most banal and ordinary affairs seem signs of something extraordinary.


Step 3: Borrow the Forms of Organized Religion to Structure the Group
?
Your cult-like following is growing; it is time to organize it. Find a way both elevating and comforting. Organized religions have long held unquestioned authority for large numbers of people, and continue to do so in our supposedly secular age. And even if the religion itself has faded some, its forms still resonate with power. The lofty and holy associations of organized religion can be endlessly exploited. Create rituals for your followers; organize them into a hierarchy, ranking them in grades of sanctity, and giving them names and titles that resound with religious overtones; ask them for sacrifices that will fill your coffers and increase your power. To emphasize your gathering?s quasi-religious nature, talk and act like a prophet. You are not a dictator, after all; you are a priest, a guru, a sage, a shaman, or any other word that hides your real power in the mist of religion.


Step 4: Disguise Your Source of Income
?
Your group has grown, and you have structured it in a churchlike form. Your coffers are beginning to fill with your followers? money. Yet you must never be seen as hungry for money and the power it brings. It is at this moment that you must disguise the source of your income.

Your followers want to believe that if they follow you all sorts of good things will fall into their lap. By surrounding yourself with luxury you become living proof of the soundness of your belief system. Never reveal that your wealth actually comes from your followers? pockets; instead, make it seem to come from the truth of your methods. Followers will copy your each and every move in the belief that it will bring them the same results, and their imitative enthusiasm will blind them to the charlatan nature of your wealth.


Step 5: Set Up an Us-Versus-Them Dynamic
?
The group is now large and thriving, a magnet attracting more and more particles. If you are not careful, though, inertia will set in, and time and boredom will demagnetize the group. To keep your followers united, you must now do what all religions and belief systems have done: create an us-versus-them dynamic.

First, make sure your followers believe they are part of an exclusive club, unified by a bond of common goals. Then, to strengthen this bond, manufacture the notion of a devious enemy out to ruin you. There is a force of nonbelievers that will do anything to stop you. Any outsider who tries to reveal the charlatan nature of your belief system can now be described as a member of this devious force.

If you have no enemies, invent one. Given a straw man to react against, your followers will tighten and cohere. They have your cause to believe in and infidels to destroy.


--------------------
Note: In desperate need of a cure...

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InvisibleSclorch
Clyster

Folding@home Statistics
Registered: 07/12/99
Posts: 4,805
Loc: On the Brink of Madness
Re: Start your own cult. [Re: Sclorch]
    #856787 - 09/01/02 10:32 AM (21 years, 6 months ago)

So many patterns I see........


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Note: In desperate need of a cure...

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Anonymous

Re: Start your own cult. [Re: Sclorch]
    #856795 - 09/01/02 10:37 AM (21 years, 6 months ago)

Are you saying that the Shroomery community is a cult?  :confused:

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InvisibleServator
Viral Agent

Registered: 08/30/02
Posts: 4,893
Re: Start your own cult. [Re: ]
    #856802 - 09/01/02 10:41 AM (21 years, 6 months ago)

/me prepares to take up arms against the unbelievers. All enemies of the Shroomerites must perish!!  :grin:

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Anonymous

Re: Start your own cult. [Re: Sclorch]
    #856840 - 09/01/02 10:56 AM (21 years, 6 months ago)

Yes, my friend, that is how it works.

Jim Jones

Jimmy Swaggert

Jim Baker

And those are just the Christian ones.

*Sigh* I guess mankind is a sad sad lot.  :frown: 

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OfflineGrav
 User Gallery

Registered: 02/06/02
Posts: 4,454
Last seen: 11 years, 3 months
Re: Start your own cult. [Re: Servator]
    #856850 - 09/01/02 11:00 AM (21 years, 6 months ago)

Yes!
finally a chance to put my new Spore Gun(tm) to good use


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Anonymous

Re: Start your own cult. [Re: Sclorch]
    #856868 - 09/01/02 11:08 AM (21 years, 6 months ago)

You need to amuse the bored, then, and ward off the cynics.

How about this little ditty for doing just that?

"If you're happy and you know it clap your hands!"  clap

"If you're happy and you know it clap your hands!"  clap

"If you're happy and you know it then your life will surely show it."

"If you're happy and you know it clap your hands!"  clap

The words aren't much but the music is really snappy.  Really, it is. :smirk:

Cheers, 

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InvisibleSclorch
Clyster

Folding@home Statistics
Registered: 07/12/99
Posts: 4,805
Loc: On the Brink of Madness
Re: Start your own cult. [Re: ]
    #856886 - 09/01/02 11:19 AM (21 years, 6 months ago)

Are you saying that the Shroomery community is a cult?

Don't be ridiculous. No.


--------------------
Note: In desperate need of a cure...

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Invisiblechodamunky
Cheers!

Registered: 02/28/02
Posts: 2,030
Loc: sailing the seas of chees...
Re: Start your own cult. [Re: Sclorch]
    #856989 - 09/01/02 12:42 PM (21 years, 6 months ago)

"The night time is the right time..."
"The night time is the right time..."
"The night time is the right time..."

Joining the Cult by Adam Sandler, hehe funny ass skit

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OfflineToxicManM
Bite me, it's fun!
 User Gallery

Registered: 06/28/02
Posts: 6,725
Loc: Aurora, Colorado
Last seen: 8 hours, 5 minutes
Re: Start your own cult. [Re: ]
    #857114 - 09/01/02 01:34 PM (21 years, 6 months ago)

Shouldn't that be

"If you're happy and you know it clap your handth"


You hadda know that would show up.


--------------------
Happy mushrooming!

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InvisibleSwami
Eggshell Walker

Registered: 01/18/00
Posts: 15,413
Loc: In the hen house
Re: Start your own cult. [Re: Sclorch]
    #857118 - 09/01/02 01:36 PM (21 years, 6 months ago)

You left out the part about sex. Please address this most crucial issue from the perspective of the aspriring cult leader.


--------------------



The proof is in the pudding.

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InvisibleSclorch
Clyster

Folding@home Statistics
Registered: 07/12/99
Posts: 4,805
Loc: On the Brink of Madness
Re: Start your own cult. [Re: Swami]
    #857134 - 09/01/02 01:42 PM (21 years, 6 months ago)

Swami-
This post is only about how to START a cult. What you do with that power is at your discretion.


--------------------
Note: In desperate need of a cure...

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InvisiblethePatient
Criminal Bodhisattva
Male User Gallery

Registered: 07/07/02
Posts: 3,289
Loc: Indiana
Re: Start your own cult. [Re: Sclorch]
    #857488 - 09/01/02 04:29 PM (21 years, 6 months ago)

I've heard it only takes 12 followers to start your own religion.

Dont quote me on it.


--------------------
T h e r e  a r e  n o  o r d i n a r y  m o m e n t s.

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InvisibleXlea321
Stranger
Registered: 02/25/01
Posts: 9,134
Re: Start your own cult. [Re: Sclorch]
    #857695 - 09/01/02 06:21 PM (21 years, 6 months ago)

If it's that easy why not try starting one?

I have very great doubts you'll be successful following the above formula.


--------------------
Don't worry, B. Caapi

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OfflineLiquidSmoke
My title's cooler than yours DBK

Registered: 09/04/01
Posts: 25,335
Loc: S.A.G.G.Y.B.A.L.L.S.
Last seen: 8 months, 24 days
Re: Start your own cult. [Re: thePatient]
    #857725 - 09/01/02 06:36 PM (21 years, 6 months ago)

So....





What does this have to do with Spirituality and Philosophy?



--------------------
"Shmokin' weed, Shmokin' wizz, doin' coke, drinkin' beers.  Drinkin' beers beers beers, rollin' fatties, smokin' blunts.  Who smokes tha blunts?  We smoke the blunts" - Jay and Silent Bob strike Back

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InvisibleXlea321
Stranger
Registered: 02/25/01
Posts: 9,134
Re: Start your own cult. [Re: Sclorch]
    #857737 - 09/01/02 06:44 PM (21 years, 6 months ago)

This reminds me of all those "How to be a millionaire in 5 easy steps" you get in spam mail.

Somehow they never seem to work either... :laugh:


--------------------
Don't worry, B. Caapi

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OfflineDiscordja
Pope

Registered: 08/07/02
Posts: 243
Loc: Atlantic Canada
Last seen: 19 years, 6 months
Re: Start your own cult. [Re: Xlea321]
    #857746 - 09/01/02 06:49 PM (21 years, 6 months ago)



--------------------
Remember, it's only true if it makes you laugh...

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InvisibleSclorch
Clyster

Folding@home Statistics
Registered: 07/12/99
Posts: 4,805
Loc: On the Brink of Madness
Re: Start your own cult. [Re: Xlea321]
    #857838 - 09/01/02 07:46 PM (21 years, 6 months ago)

If it's that easy why not try starting one?
I have very great doubts you'll be successful following the above formula.


The validity of this method is secondary to the psychology behind it. The intention of this post is simple: I wanted to display some common techniques used to pacify those with a strong desire to believe (ANY belief).

Cults don't prey on the buffoon...


--------------------
Note: In desperate need of a cure...

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Anonymous

Re: Start your own cult. [Re: Sclorch]
    #857875 - 09/01/02 08:02 PM (21 years, 6 months ago)

I'd have to agree.
Once you 'Group', you become what you despise.

Was that anti-social?
Oh well.
-Im in a one man cult. :grin:-OoD 

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Offlinewhiterastahippie
lover

Registered: 07/18/02
Posts: 718
Loc: look into a child's eyes,...
Last seen: 21 years, 3 months
Re: Start your own cult. [Re: Sclorch]
    #857971 - 09/01/02 08:54 PM (21 years, 6 months ago)

the JW's did it great.


--------------------
Peace and Love to all!

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