[charisma] and the lure of the cult

Being an overweening egotist himself, this blogger can't understand the lure of the cult. At least he can understand it but can't feel the pull.

Remember the teen series Beverley Hills and how Kelly was lured into one of these cults run by one of her professors? [Yikes, Higham thinks ... there but for the grace ...]

Reminds this blogger of Jim Jones, of which one google entry opens:

This was a Christian destructive, doomsday cult founded and led by James Warren Jones (1931-1978).

Now there are a whole lot of things to say about this:

1. He used a sort of pseudo-Christianity as his springboard to lure people in. It was presented as Christianity for modern times, tuning in with many anomalies and vagaries in the bible and stressing the "free love" aspect, interpreting it as free sex, as distinct from the real Christian message of platonic love for one's fellow man, a completely different message.

Looking specifically at Jones:

His intention was to create an agricultural utopia in the jungle, free from racism and based on socialist principles. People who had left the organization prior to its move to Guyana told the authorities of brutal beatings, murders and of a mass suicide plan, but they were not believed.

And that's the key - what could have been a social experiment - inter-racial free love - became quasi-religious and the behaviour by no means matched the message. Also, there is always an element of socialism in these things. It's a mix of Christianity and Marxism, the former voluntary, the latter coercive. Dangerous brew.

2. There are distinct tendencies in such men [and it is usually but not always men]:

a. Egotistical yet personally not whole. Overcompensation for an inferiority complex [e.g. Charlie Manson];

b. Perceived as highly intelligent and well educated, concerning himself with the macro-issues of the world [either incapable or not interested in the day-to-day details of public life] and able to use articulate rhetoric to convey his message but when that message is analysed, it's found to have little actual substance.

As the most astute Agatha Christie observed, in N&M:

... carrying you away on a tide of emotion ...

c. Often with some sort of inner drive of a twisted nature, e.g. satyrism, lust for serial killing, whatever. In other words, possessed and a little other-worldly. As a sidelight, a good sign that the guy's finally gone over the edge is when he adopts the cassock, the robes, the one-piece garb, such as with Neo;

d. Needs a following to support and justify his excesses but once he has the following, not satisfied with the organization he's set up and feels the need for some sort of denouement [e.g. Manson and Jones];

e. Having had a tough time, e.g. Manson's time in prison and basically being, inside the psyche, a "wrong 'un". Look at such people in history, look, for example, at Clyde Barrow - look at his psychology. The correlations are uncanny;

f. Personally very dangeous if crossed and capable of turning savagely on former friends. See the Jonestown beatings as an example of those who dared to deviate or dissent.

3. The Method

He gathers followers through his charisma, his up front charm, his assiduous attention to women, knowing how to give the compliment and when to apply it and through offering a vision of a new world of love and peace where all the old muddling, hatreds and cruelty are all swept away and in its place some sort of utopia, of course with him as the head of it and his few "chosen" accolytes at his side - his henchmen and favourite concubines.

A Messiah fixation with a twist.

Another thing he does is identify "the enemy", i.e. any who have both the insight and the power to oppose and stymie him. His methods are not nice and there's no depth to which he will not stoop to silence dissent. As he becomes more powerful and more "family" join him, he sends them out to do the dirty work e.g. Manson again.

One method is to crucify the reputation of former accolytes who broke away. Now the very nature of this girl being an accolyte in the first place is that she has a screw loose and therefore she is not psychologically capable of opposing and only damages herself in the process, turning people against her.

Just been watching Die Hard again and it was a motif running through it. John McClane [Willis] was immediately viewed as a kook, a crazy, all sorts of things and why? Because he was presenting an idea, i.e. that a major hotel [citadel] had been taken over by terrorists, a concept which no one particularly wanted to believe.

Don't forget, his reputation had already been tarnished in his earlier gung ho ventures and he had a habit of seeing conspiracies which ultimately turned out to be so. People liked him personally but humoured him with his weird ideas. Analogously, don't forget Sackerson's blogname - They Laughed at Noah.

Back to our new Messiah. His theology, such as it is, is that Christ had a good idea going but didn't take care of the fine detail. He, the new cult Messiah, will supply that fine detail tuned into modern and future times and invokes all the religious and spiritual imagery, in other words, hijacking the "image" of the Christ, to add drive to his recruitment.

Whoa! That is seriously weird stuff. Not only that but as any real Christian can tell you, the central aspect is firstly redemption and secondly love your brother. In the message of Jones and other messiahs, there's no redemptive aspect - a warning bell for real Christians.

And now to the point of this post. What if a blogger knows one of these budding messiahs already? What if the great man is already inside the citadel, so to speak and is about to open his campaign? What should this blogger, as someone who instantly recognizes the type because he himself possesses many of the preconditional traits - what should he do?

Apart from posting a post like this, what should he do? Especially as he is now surely high on the hit list and expects his personal reputation to be tarnished very soon, most cogently? One of his own dear lady friends even suggested, some time back, that he should be sued for unsubstantiated remarks.

So what should he do?