Dealing with cult members: yet more warnings

More crucially important points to bear in mind:

- Spend enough time with cult members and they may come to think of you as one of them, behave as if you are theirs to command and expect you to abide by their rules. They may even try to stop or punish you if you speak or behave in ways that they find unacceptable.

- You may become public enemy no.1 if you are seen as a threat or start to confront them.

Being lied to and left stranded, both literally and metaphorically, is bad enough; being let down and betrayed when a favour is needed and being dropped and avoided by someone you thought was a friend is even worse. Worse still is being turned against and attacked by cult members because they consider you insubordinate or a criminal, traitor and enemy - and this only because you are standing up for the truth and speaking out against evil.

Defence Against the Dark Arts Part X: Plus X and Bad Medicine

There are two very amusing short stories that I feel impelled to re-read from time to time. One is Plus X by Eric Frank Russell, the other is Bad Medicine by Robert Sheckley.

Plus X was written by an Englishman, Bad Medicine by an American. Both stories were first published in 1956, in the classic pulp science fiction magazines Astounding Science Fiction and Galaxy respectively.

Plus X is about a human prisoner of war on an alien planet; Bad Medicine is about a homicidal maniac in New York. Both men use psychological methods to escape their condition. 

I don’t want to be a spoiler, so will say only a little more about the stories.

Plus X by Eric Frank Russell
John Leeming is the hero of this story. He is a prisoner of war, captured by a reptilian race. He escapes by fooling the enemy, persuading the reptilians that earthmen and their alien allies have invisible, and dangerous, companions.

For me, one of the best scenes is when one of the enemy aliens interrogates another earthman prisoner - who knows nothing about Leeming’s lies - about these companions to get some independent confirmation. This man has no idea what his captor is talking about, but manages to give very good answers that confirm the story. 

He says, “Where did you get this information?”, and when asked whether the invisible companions might manage to take over some of the reptilians, says with great menace, “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

It is all very amusing and very clever.

Dealing with cult members: some more warnings

Some crucially important points to keep in mind when befriending cult members:

-Their friendship is conditional and may end at any time

-Everything you have done for them may count for nothing if you break any of their rules

-They may let you down and not return favours

-They may cut off contact and turn against or avoid you for what at first might seem incomprehensible or trivial reasons

Once again I learned this from personal experience, and once again I later found that many other people have had similar experiences.

Conditional friendship

You may think that you have a good relationship with a cult member, but there are several factors that could cause it to not be the kind of relationship that you thought it was. There is a good chance that it will come to an abrupt end too.

The members may be hoping for financial or other support, and they will cool off or even drop you when this is not forthcoming or you are unwilling or unable to provide any more. They may be hoping to convert you, and will disappear when they realise that you are not going to join them.

Dealing with cult members: some warnings

There are some crucially important points to keep in mind when dealing with cult members. Here are two of these points:

- They will lie to you
- They will let you down and leave you stranded

I learned this from personal experience, experience for which I later found independent confirmation online and in books.

Lying
Not only do cult members conceal much of the truth about their organisation, they will also often lie about it, brazenly and repeatedly.

I am not talking here about people on the periphery who don’t know anything so pass on wrong information in all good faith, nor am I talking about members who are so confused and in such a terrible state that they no longer know the difference between truth and lies: I am talking about people who lie knowingly and deliberately.

They will lie about their beliefs and practices and procedures inside the organisation, denying for example that members are obliged to hand over their earnings and take part in auditing sessions where they are forced to give sensitive personal information and confess to misdeeds. 

They will dismiss allegations made against the cult, saying that they come from liars, enemies and traitors. 

They will brazenly lie about where donated money is going, saying for example that it will help children when much of it really goes to buy support from politicians and pay the travelling expenses of a rent-a-crowd mob.

They will lie about the purpose of an impending gathering, saying for example that it is entertainment when it is really political.

Leaving a cult - much easier said than done

“Why don’t they just leave when they find out what they have got into?”

It is much easier to ask why people don’t just leave when they learn what happens behind the scenes in a cult or cult-like organisation than it is to find acceptable and comprehensible answers. It is not easy for outsiders to understand the external pressures and techniques and internal thought processes that keep people inside.

The best sources of answers and explanations are ex-members. They are the ones with the excruciatingly painful personal experience of cult life, and some of them may be able to explain what was going on in their minds and in their lives in terms that ‘civilians’ can understand.

The deeper in that people go, the worse life often gets but the more difficult it is for them to get out. I am not talking about people on the fringes and in the outer circles who may wander in then drift away or drop out: I am talking about long-term, hard-core members.

I am also mainly talking about people who might think about leaving, not those few who genuinely feel at home in their organisation or the large number of unfortunates who have lost all sense of self and self-preservation.

People are discouraged and prevented from leaving

The message given, overtly or covertly, to many cult members is, “Don’t you dare leave, you traitor. It will be much the worse for you if you do!”

Cults make it difficult for members to leave in as many practical, guilt and fear-based and emotional blackmailing ways as possible. They use coercion and intimidation to keep dissenting members in line.