From Funereal-disease on tumblr, in a previous discussion: It is usually better to talk about “spiritual abuse” rather than “being a cult”. It emphasizes that the techniques of successful cults are techniques of successful abusers, and is better at being something that happens to a greater or lesser degree; cult is more binary.
I might prefer “social abuse” or “community abuse” to make clear that non-religious forms are possible.
I agree. This kind of abuse is a matter of degree, and exists also outside of religious communities. You can have a political cult that could be explicitly atheist, or an economical cult which is nominally about making money (i.e. an anti-religious or an a-religious group), which would still follow pretty much the same template.
I don’t want to debate the labels here. (Not that I deny the importance of good labels, but because such debate could get us far from the original topic, e.g. into discussing the trade-offs between labels that fit better but you need to explain them to everyone vs labels that just point approximately in the right direction but people quickly recognize them, etc.) But I’d like to mention that Robert Jay Lifton, whose model I used here, calls it “thought reform”.
From Funereal-disease on tumblr, in a previous discussion: It is usually better to talk about “spiritual abuse” rather than “being a cult”. It emphasizes that the techniques of successful cults are techniques of successful abusers, and is better at being something that happens to a greater or lesser degree; cult is more binary.
I might prefer “social abuse” or “community abuse” to make clear that non-religious forms are possible.
I agree. This kind of abuse is a matter of degree, and exists also outside of religious communities. You can have a political cult that could be explicitly atheist, or an economical cult which is nominally about making money (i.e. an anti-religious or an a-religious group), which would still follow pretty much the same template.
I don’t want to debate the labels here. (Not that I deny the importance of good labels, but because such debate could get us far from the original topic, e.g. into discussing the trade-offs between labels that fit better but you need to explain them to everyone vs labels that just point approximately in the right direction but people quickly recognize them, etc.) But I’d like to mention that Robert Jay Lifton, whose model I used here, calls it “thought reform”.