"There was much licentiousness condoned in the name of not being "religious"."
Cult leaders hate being accountable to objective guidelines of any kind, hate anything that is a reminder that there is something they cannot control, standards where they are falling short.
So...one cult building strategy is for the leader to persuade us that these moral guidelines are necessary but only for inferior people, timid people --not for bold spirits, not for us.
Or the leader states that moral guidelines are not necessary for persons who are highly evolved.
Or that there are persons at such a high level of holiness or realization that they are no longer accountable to conventional moral guidelines and that persons not at their level have no right to "judge" them or judge their actions.
Nothing's more effective than using charisma and group pressure to get us to
regard "religion" aka virtue as something behind the times, that keeps us childish,
unsophisticated, something that makes us
ridiculous.
In an old play, a king tells his supporters to
pressure a virtuous young woman to lower her moral standards -
so that he can seduce her.
Quote
"Go, call your Wives to counsel, and prepare
To tempt, dissemble, promise, fawn and swear,
"To make Faith look like Folly use your skill,
"Virtue an ill-bred crossness in the Will..."
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archive.org]
Once a trusted charismatic leader gets just a few disciples to share this
perspective, a group norm is created. Peer pressure can be applied to new
members to reframe social virtues as evidence of backwardness and inferiority.
Adroitly done, such a leader can trick us into regarding honesty, sobriety, moderation, a sense of fairness, a capacity to feel disgusted or embarrassed by degrading, loutish behavior as sources of shame. Look what Rajneesh did to his his followers. He reframed degradation and debauchery as liberation.
Aristotle stated that humans cannot be fully human unless capable of three things all of which are underminded by cultic leadership:
* Ability to reason and reflect
* Ability to moderate and regulate one's emotions and cravings
* Participation in a shared society whose members all engage in decision making
and vote on policy. decision making
This is how the tobacco companies create advertisements and events designed
to make tobacco use seem empowering and abstention as being a killjoy. Ditto for the alcohol adverstisements.
There's a similar strategy used by cult leaders in non Christian faiths - "Crazy Wisdom".
It is used to excuse vile, shocking behavior.
I am sorry to say I bought into this crap, because I stayed in some situations
for far too long.
In this scene, it is postulated that there is not one truth, but two truths, a truth that is higher, beyond all good and evil, beyond illusion, accessible and understandable *only* to those who are enlightened.
Relative truth is the world of illusions, consensual reality, the world of right and wrong.
The assumption is that the cult leader is so enlightened, so special that he/she cannot be held to standards of conventional morality.
Such a person may be rude, lewd, exploitative, harmful by conventional standards, but is actually dismantling our enslavement to conventional morality so that we can attain this same higher wisdom.
(Disgusted) This 'crazy wisdom' alibi was popularized by gurus, such as Chogyam Trungpa, Gurdjieff, Adi Da and Carlos Castaneda.
Gurdjieff called it the way of the sly man.
What is interesting is that these 'crazy wise' types all manage to acquire
wealth and are taken care of by entourages of disciples.
The crazy wise types
avoid suffering the consequences of their behaviors - they arrange for their disciples to make excuses for them.
Jesus suffered the consequences of his behavior alone. Had Jesus been a typical crazy wise guru, he would have tricked his beloved disciple into getting arrested and being crucified.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/25/2018 01:06AM by corboy.