are people just born desperate and gullible?

Umm, did you ever stop and think that some people are born into a certian religion/cult and have no say or choice in the matter. Babies can not make rational decisions or be gullible as far as I know.

I don't think so. I think that the awareness of mind control techniques should be taught to people, so they would be less likely to end up in a cult. This page http://www.counseling.caltech.edu/articles/cults.html

The page lists ways to avoid cults and techniques that can help people avoid them.

The people who join NATLFED are rarely desperate or gullible. This political cult recruits a wide variety of persons including professors, doctors, lawyers, students, social workers, etc. The common thread being persons who are interested in changing conditions that cause poverty, who have seen the failure of other efforts and come to believe that NATLFED is the one true solution.

The recruitment process starts with exposure to the membership based, going door-to-door to sign up members and offering the assistance of the benefits clothing (free food, clothing, legal advocacy, and other benefits). The recruit is then exposed to a variety of tactics including standing in front of grocery stores solicitation money and volunteer sign ups, speaking at churches, telephone calling, mail outs, etc. Intermixed with these activities are classes and the recruit is slowly introduced to more advanced subjects such as labor history, classes on the various lawsuits the organization has waged to win rights for workers, eventually leading to classes on dialectical and historical materialism, Marxism, Leninism, The Art of War, liberation fronts around the world.

If the training cadre has done his/her job correctly, sooner or later the recruit begins to realize the futility of just dispensing benefits. That is when the next level begins, that the group has a permanent solution, revolution to install the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Not every recruit gets to that level and the organization also relies on the committed supporters who come to its defense during times of "attack" (negative press articles, red baiting campaigns in the community, lawsuits against the organization). But those who do get to that level are recruited to the inner Party and become full-time revolutionaries.

I don't have experience with a religious cult but I believe you can see some similarities in the method of drawing in people. The recruitment process can take a year or longer, patience is a virtue. Rarely does it happen sooner, in those instances the person already has a background in socialist/communist activism.

The first year as a Party member, the recruit is now a probational member and begins participating at local unit meetings (political discussions for internal cadres). The person can opine but not veto decisions yet. The person also has two sponsors who are responsible for educating him/her in Marxist/Leninist ideology. It is an unofficial rule to not engage in sexual relations with the person because the person has too much to learn, such a relationship can interfere with his/her development as a communist fighter.

After that first year, the person is now a full member of the Party. The person is eligible to join the military arm of the organization. That is the only section of the Party that has a separate recruitment process, persons are not just assigned to the military, they have to request it.

This is just an overview. I could go into more detail if you'd like.

Mary Struggler

Well looks like I have not really received an answer from the person who said those in cults or join them are desperate and gullible. Figures. I would like to hear from more people born/raised into cults.

I think sometimes it's a matter of life experiences and having quite a few circumstances weigh against you.

Trouble is a lot of self made guru types who promote well being are parasites who prey on those with deep levels of personal difficulty or emotional weakness.

They abuse the position of confessional powers they have.

It's often a holy grail for the lost and lonely or desperate.

There's a huge difference between knowledge and intelligence in my book.

They also target peoples' strengths. No one is immune.

Since everone needs a social network to belong to for survival, maybe we are all born desperate and gullible.
Just look at a newborn baby. They are completely dependent and in need and very teachable.
The phenomena in this century of so so many vicious cults and deranged leaders is probably a reflection of our society as a whole.
People are very transient nowadays and families tend to fall apart more easily and there is a huge influx of new ideas which dictate right and wrong.
Maybe some feel more detatched from the American culture as a whole and this leaves them more inclined to accept a group that ''appears'' to have stability.
Of course that is the tragedy. These vicious groups only appear stable.
Then at their core, after a person is lured in, they become subjects of the sick and sadistic emotional and ever changing whims of a deranged leader.

Unfortunately as human beings we are not born with a sense of right and wrong or with a sense of how our actions affect others. These things have to be taught which is why we are GIVEN "outside authorities" i.e. parents or caretakers at birth The only thing we are born with is a sense of what WE need or a sense of what feels good to US. There's a name for people who conduct their lives on this basis. They are called sociopaths.

'Well looks like I have not really received an answer from the person who said those in cults or join them are desperate and gullible. Figures. I would like to hear from more people born/raised into cults.'

I was born into a family cult that was part of a larger religious/ideological cult. I will not go into further detail for reasons of possible identification. The group is active, violent and eternally unforgiving of apostates.
Being born into such a situation is perfect for the group as the foundational education of the child is the group indoctrination. It is the only reality that the child knows and changing that twisted foundation means undermining the foundation of the person--not something to be undertaken lightly.
As the saying goes, you can take the boy out of Glagow (or any benighted milieu) but you can't take Glasgow out of the boy.

I was puzzled for years that I alone seemed to have been born without the belief gene--which caused me untold grief growing up--but which also allowed me to flee the group as soon as I was able to precariously support myself.

A perceptive person once remarked upon hearing my story that I had been a neglected, abandoned child in the earliest formative years as I had been ignored and left very much to my own devices until it was noted around the age of 4-5 that I was quite feral--at which point I was subjected to massive and violent attempts to 'civilise' me--in the groups image of course.
Being feral, the more and harder the attempts the more resistant I became. This was never a conscious choice for me, indeed I fervently wished for the ability to be like everyone else in my family and social circle for many years, to no avail.

I don't think that I was ever desperate or gullible with regard to the beliefs of cult that I was born into although I have certainly been desperate and gullible on many ordinary occasions since.
We are shaped by the milieu that we grow up in. I was fortuitously much neglected as a child which first caused me much pain and trouble but which eventually provided the impetus and gave me the opportunity to escape and at the same time developed in me the feral cunning needed to survive and stay free.

It wasn't what my perpetrators intended to happen but I like to think of it as the law of unintended consequences sometimes working in my favour. I think now I was very lucky in those events although it is only distance from the pain and terror that allows me take that view.

Something that helped me greatly was reading a Chuang Tzu story years ago that told of a farmer wailing and cursing because his son had an accident that resulted in his leg being amputated and was therefore limited in the help he could give on the farm. Shortly afterward, all able-bodied youths were conscripted to fight for the emperor and the same farmer was the only one in the village left with any help at all. The story goes on illustrating that everything has the potential to be both a curse or a blessing at different times and in different situations.

It sounds quite simple-minded now but at the time it was revelatory to me and gave me something to hang on to in some very dark times.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/03/2010 08:07PM by Stoic.

As a further thought, I have never been able to fathom how much my seemingly True-Believing family actually buys whole-heartedly into the cult belief systems and how much is purely fear-driven cowardice.
I have not been able to fathom that because although intelligent, my family members are scrupulous about not examining the issue, the denial is absolute. This is obviously a result of fear of the consequences should they allow the denial to crack.

Having suffered the consequences, I have some understanding of why they take this view. I also don't consider that I lack that fear-driven cowardice, it was purely a personal survival issue for me so there was no real choice--the danger of staying being greater to me than that of fleeing. I was subject to the same fears and cowardice as my family members but as my circumstances were different, was forced into coming to a different conclusion.