“Cult”, “brainwashing”, “deprogramming”, etc. are terms of propaganda used by the dominant culture to combat competing memeplexes.
There is something like manipulation. To make this a discussion about anticipated experience, here is an experiment proposal:
Kidnap a few new members from different religious organizations. (It’s just an imaginary experiment.) Keep them for one week isolated from their religious groups: no personal contact, no phone, no books. If they start to do some rituals they were told to do, for example repeat a mantra or sing a song, prevent them from doing so. Otherwise, don’t do them any harm, and keep them in a nice environment. -- When the week is over, just let them go. Observe how many of them return to the original group. Compare with a control group of randomly selected people you didn’t kidnap; how many of them remained in the group after the week. Are there statistically significant differences for different religious groups?
My prediction is that there would be observable differences for different religious groups. I believe there is some pressure involved in the process of recruitment in some religious (or not just religious) groups; some algorithm which increases the chances of membership when done properly, and fails when interrupted. Perhaps “brainwashing” is too strong word, but it a kind of manipulation. It consists of pushing the person towards more expressions of commitment, without giving them time to reflect whether they really want it (whether it is okay with their other values).
People like to resist coercion. Reactions to being kidnapped in order to be forced to abandon the cult could be different than reactions to being kidnapped and held for a week by a mad psychologist with a mysterious agenda. Though for the agenda to be mysterious, the idea of preventing them from engaging in rituals would have to be abandoned.
There is something like manipulation. To make this a discussion about anticipated experience, here is an experiment proposal:
Kidnap a few new members from different religious organizations. (It’s just an imaginary experiment.) Keep them for one week isolated from their religious groups: no personal contact, no phone, no books. If they start to do some rituals they were told to do, for example repeat a mantra or sing a song, prevent them from doing so. Otherwise, don’t do them any harm, and keep them in a nice environment. -- When the week is over, just let them go. Observe how many of them return to the original group. Compare with a control group of randomly selected people you didn’t kidnap; how many of them remained in the group after the week. Are there statistically significant differences for different religious groups?
My prediction is that there would be observable differences for different religious groups. I believe there is some pressure involved in the process of recruitment in some religious (or not just religious) groups; some algorithm which increases the chances of membership when done properly, and fails when interrupted. Perhaps “brainwashing” is too strong word, but it a kind of manipulation. It consists of pushing the person towards more expressions of commitment, without giving them time to reflect whether they really want it (whether it is okay with their other values).
This is pretty similar to what the deprogrammers did. They didn’t have too high success rates.
People like to resist coercion. Reactions to being kidnapped in order to be forced to abandon the cult could be different than reactions to being kidnapped and held for a week by a mad psychologist with a mysterious agenda. Though for the agenda to be mysterious, the idea of preventing them from engaging in rituals would have to be abandoned.