Escaping Utopia

by Lalich, Janja; McLaren, Karla;

  In contrast, abusive and high-demand groups strip away individuality, are rigid and perfectionistic, and place the needs of the group leader (and/or the transcendent belief system) above all other things. These unhealthy groups use constant peer pressure to enforce intense and self-sacrificing commitment until unquestioning obedience to the group’s beliefs, rules, and expectations becomes a daily or even hourly task. An essential aspect of unhealthy influence is that the leader and all members of the group can criticize or report those who stray from the perfect path—and in this toxic environment of self-sacrifice and constant criticism (external and internal), people can become sealed into what Janja calls a “bounded reality,” from which it is extremely difficult to escape.

  On one hand, people sealed into these systems of influence are striving toward perfection in a group of absolutely dedicated people who are their friends, family, and community—such that leaving would feel like losing everyone and everything they care about. On the other hand, the group’s constant manipulation and perfectionistic expectations keep members so hyper-focused on performance—and so unsure of themselves—that they don’t have the time, space, or energy they need to even think about leaving. The group is everything and everyone they know. Their leader is like a god (or may actually claim to be the reincarnation of God). Their group’s perfect path is the only answer. Therefore, their only real choice is a bounded choice: to obey fully, eliminate all of their doubts and their individual needs, and commit themselves completely— or risk losing everything.

  The Unique Features of Cultic Systems of Influence

  Though we are taught to think of our sense of self as our own creation, social scientists have come to understand that our self is actually a social construction that is created through our social experiences. We are influenced by the people around us, and we learn from and embody their values, ideas, beliefs, and opinions. While each of us establishes and confirms our unique sense of self as we make our way through life (hopefully without too much undue influence from others), we are in the end social creations. Our social relationships help make us who we are, and finding the right balance between external influence and our own internal moral structure is what individuation is about. But for cult members, individuation isn’t an option, because cultic systems of influence are built to strip away each member’s internal moral structure and replace it with the group’s ideals, beliefs, rules, and perfectionistic expectations.

  For children born or raised in cultic groups, their sense of self is shaped in an environment of extreme influence. For many of them, there is little sense of a “true self’; instead, any of their thoughts or behaviors that might instinctively emerge and stray from the norm are ignored, pushed aside, punished, or removed. A young man who grew up in The Family described the many difficult emotions he felt as he tried to fit into the destabilizing environment of his childhood:

  Retrospectively, I was a miserable child. I was angry a lot. I was bitter a lot. I don’t know if stress is the right word, but certainly I was filled with confusion. I didn’t understand what standards were expected of me. Some “uncles” or “aunts” would expect something. Then someone else who would be with us one or two days a week would expect something else. You never knew what you would do to deserve a punishment or what the punishment would entail. The degree of punishment varied as well—from mild to severe for the same offense committed by a different individual. And so for me, it was a constant state of trying to behave somehow. I tried as much as I could to be good and to, you know, go along with the flow and try to fit in.

  I don’t remember being a truly happy child. I don’t remember being well fed or well educated or anything like that. I don’t remember being a kid who was very happy or even very popular. I always felt very small. I was put down verbally and physically. Honestly, if I was forced to, I could probably find something positive about the experience. I guess maybe it made me grow up quicker. They suppressed free thought, free spirit. That was all suppressed. The fact that I was able to find my voice and get out— I don’t attribute that to them. I attribute it to myself.

  A young woman who was born and raised as a Seventh Day Adventist remem-bers that her own ideas, feelings, and concerns weren’t important:

  I was taught to be very pleasing. And that has been kind of a lifelong struggle trying to put that into perspective. I was very naïve and, in a sense, really immature—because I didn’t have any encouragement to develop a sense of self. And that was so apparent when I finally left. It was very frightening.

  I also think that I spent much of my childhood kind of depressed. I felt really powerless, without any voice. For instance, I was vaguely aware of pedophiles who were in our church, but it just simply didn’t occur to me to talk to my mother—because it wasn’t acceptable. I saw things and heard things that felt wrong to me, but I didn’t feel like I had a right to say anything. The Adventists always knew best.

  A young woman who was born and raised in The Family remembered being astonished that teenagers outside the cult could think their own original thoughts:

  My mom encouraged me to get a job and kind of assimilate to the world. Not to pick up any skills for living in the world, but rather for the purpose of recruiting other people into the group. She was always finding new ways to recruit people, which seemed very normal and wholesome to me at the time. So that’s how I got myself into this situation: I’m standing in a group of kids about my age. I’d gotten a little job at the grocery store and a bunch of kids my age worked there. We were all standing around and everybody was joking, being sarcastic, and I was just floored. I was just (sighs) … it was the hardest thing for me to grasp. I turned around and looked at one of them and asked him—and it was the most sincere question—“Did you think of that by yourself?” And they thought, of course, that I was being sarcastic with them and they all laughed, and I was like, “Okay, what’s so funny?”

  I realized that I couldn’t even think of these things—because they were funny things, they were sarcastic things, they were things that nobody had told them, they didn’t read them in a book, they were just being facetious with each other. And I didn’t understand how they could do that without having learned it. Because, of course, nothing came out of my mouth or my brain that I thought of on my own. Everything I thought was there because somebody had taught me or somebody placed it there.

  Each of these young people experienced powerful levels of influence, but it’s important to understand that systems of influence are everywhere. They’re in our relationships, in the media, at work, and in crowds—and they’re an essential part of the process of persuasion. As social psychologist Robert Cialdini explains in his landmark book, Influence: How and Why People Agree to Things,1 each of us both persuades and is persuaded countless times each day. We talk our friends into coming out for a movie; we see a pizza commercial and suddenly feel hungry; we give the cold shoulder to a misbehaving colleague at work; or we donate more money than we meant to because everyone else did. We are surrounded by persuasion and influence. Some of it is benevolent; for instance, we learn to take care of our health through the influence of parents, teachers, doctors, and public health campaigns. But some of it is damaging; for instance, we can be manipulated into buying things we don’t need, influenced to distrust or hate others, or persuaded out of our own good judgment by someone we respect or fear.

  People who want to persuade others and make them comply use many different influence tactics, and Cialdini found that the majority of these tactics “fall within six basic categories … [each] governed by a fundamental psychological principle that directs human behavior.”2 These psychological principles are what make these tactics so effective, and in cultic systems of influence, Cialdini’s six principles of influence work in these ways:

  1.

  Reciprocity: Reciprocity engages your desire to give back by offering you something valuable. They offered me perfection and salvation, so I felt obliged to follow them with abs
olute dedication.

  2.

  Social Proof: Social proof tells you that something is safe and acceptable. Everybody else is going along, and nobody is complaining, so it must be okay. There must be something wrong with me if I feel wary and things don’t make sense.

  3.

  Authority: Authority engages automatic respect. Early in life I was taught to respect authority figures (parents, teachers, crossing guards, policemen, doctors), so why would I question this superior being with great wisdom who is telling me what to do?

  4.

  Consistency: People want to be seen as consistent; they don’t want to appear mistaken or foolish. Cialdini notes that “Automatic consistency functions as a shield against thought, [so] it should not be surprising that such consistency can be exploited by those who would prefer that we not think too much in response to their requests for compliance.”3 If I make a public commitment, I’ll try to see it through even if I have reservations and concerns.

  5.

  Liking: Liking engages powerful social longings. Someone I know and like is asking me to attend a special study session. Why shouldn’t I go? When I do go, I’m surrounded by friendly, hopeful people who invite me back. Why shouldn’t I go back to the next session? Besides, the leader gave me the most glorious compliment, so why shouldn’t I trust him? He seems so likable.

  6.

  Scarcity: Scarcity breeds desire. The group is telling me that their way is the only way. How can I pass up this incredible opportunity?

  In many instances, systems of influence (such as public health campaigns) can have positive effects on individuals. But in cults, these systems aren’t focused on the well-being of individuals; instead, they’re focused entirely on the needs of the cult and its leader—and on turning idealistic people into fully committed and obedient cult members. In exchange for a sense of meaning, purpose, and deep belonging, each cult member is required to give up her sense of self, her individuality, and her identity.

  Matthew remembers watching new people come into the Twelve Tribes, and he describes how the group would attract and then entrap them:

  A high percentage of people who lived in the commune were from the Grateful Dead show at Woodstock. Those people felt like they had a very empty soul and they wanted to feel satisfied, so that’s how they came to live in the commune. It was a really easy group to attract at that time, you know, and the commune used two different faces. What I mean by the two different faces is that to the outside world, the commune would look very caring, very compassionate and loving—and everyone would look very happy and blah, blah, blah. But once people would join the commune, they would have to deal with a lot of rules, demands, criticisms, and oppression. There was a lot of peer pressure and a lot of preaching, and a lot of abuse would occur. But it was like an inside thing that they would never show to the outside world. The outside people would look at us, and everybody would try to put on a happy face so that the outsiders would think that everybody loved each other. Inside was very ugly though, and abusive, and that’s how people became brainwashed.

  Many cults rely on the power of closeness and belonging, and use them as a form of influence and control. Many cult members truly enjoy their close comradeship with each other; it’s one of the things that can make it so hard to leave these groups. Yet there is a serious downside to this closeness, because cults exploit the communal intimacy they encourage when they apply their intense systems of influence onto the community.

  Criticism, Perfectionism, and Constant Monitoring

  In most cults, members are expected not only to bond with each other and strive heroically toward perfection, but are to criticize and report on anyone (including themselves) who veers from the cult’s perfect path. Cultic systems of influence enforce and require constant self-criticism, peer monitoring and surveillance, and reporting any wrongdoing to leadership. These requirements help turn members into deployable agents of the cult and its leaders.

  A young woman who was raised in Scientology recalls the way her fifth-grade classmates were deployed to bring her back into the fold:

  I went to the Delphian school, which was a boarding school for Scientology kids; but I never fit in. I asked my mom if I could go to public school, and she said yes. I was about eleven at the time. So I left Delphi one day and didn’t tell anyone I was leaving. A few days later, I was walking into a store in town and a van pulled up and it was people from Delphi. They had me get in the van with them, and they took me back up to the school. I remember sitting at a table with other kids, and all of them were talking to me and trying to convince me not to leave. They told me that I was making a mistake: you go to public school, you’re gonna get into drugs, you’re gonna get pregnant, you’re never gonna get out, you know, you’re going to have a horrible life. Scientology is the way. This is the path, and if you leave, you’re sentencing yourself to a whole other life.

  Most cultic groups employ peer pressure to keep their followers in line, yet many groups also create public self-reporting rituals that make self-criticism a communal event. A young woman who was born and raised in the International Churches of Christ describes the public confessionals that occurred during church services:

  At church, they would ask me to pour out my heart, which was confessing and crying. Sometimes peers would be there with me. They broke you down and got you to say what a horrible person you were. They talked about sexual temptations and worldly thoughts, but never about the true differences between right or wrong, because only the leader was qualified to teach that. It was always intense, always crying, sometimes just from peer-initiated rebukes, where we acted like the grown-ups and criticized each other.

  This intense pressure that cults apply to their members causes a great deal of internal tension. While a dedicated cult member may feel relieved to have a sense of commitment and purpose, the triple requirements of total obedience, selfcriticism, and surveillance of others become a constant source of tension, anxiety, and dread. Members experience joy and renewal when they commit to the leader and the group (they are born again, literally or figuratively); yet, this joy strangely depends on self-exposure, self-criticism, and the willingness to criticize and accuse their comrades. The strict authority that cult members submit to certainly bonds them to the group in powerful ways, but this submission also creates a power imbalance that invites exploitation and abuse.

  As a little girl in the FLDS, Samantha received a great deal of criticism from other mothers who wanted to shame her into compliance with the group’s approach to mother-child bonds:

  I was considered a brat because I was very clingy with my mom. The other mothers would chastise me and call me names for being clingy with her. My mom had a nervous breakdown when I was six months old and would continue to have them until she was out of the house. So when she would go to the hospital, she would be gone for a couple of weeks; and when she would get home, I would be very, very clingy with her. So the other mothers would berate me, call me names, and tell me that I was going to give her another nervous breakdown if I didn’t give her a break. So I would only sit on her lap if I was told to sit on her lap. They said that having me was what caused her to break down, so I was in charge of making sure she took her medication when I was a child. They put that responsibility on me because I shared a room with her. What I remember very clearly one time is that she stopped taking her medication; she told me not to tell anyone and I didn’t. She had a nervous breakdown and they blamed me for that. I would have been about nine or ten.

  In Samantha’s life, there were no outside influences to counter the influence of the other mothers. In the world outside cults, we typically become accustomed to and skilled at responding to the everyday influences around us; yet what is troublesome about cults is that the influences are all pointed in the same direction—toward compliance and conformity with the cult’s needs and beliefs. In our lives outside a cult, we have countless influences—parents, relatives, friends of different stripes, the media,
various religious creeds, educational institutions, and so forth. Samantha didn’t have any of these. Her school was run by the FLDS, all forms of media were banned, and all of her family members were in the cult along with her. She didn’t have any other influences to temper the damaging social influence of the group. Samantha was isolated, and this isolation was shared in some form by most of the sixty-five survivors Janja interviewed.

  A woman who was born and raised in the Church of the Living Word recalls how literature and art helped her both tolerate and maintain her isolation:

  Socially I felt that if I had any interaction with people outside, I would be tainted. So I spent a lot of time reading literature during school when we had down time or just keeping to myself. I didn’t have any friends or people who would try to be friends with me. I didn’t know how or what you could talk about with people outside the church. That was also when I really got into art because I was so miserable. It was a good outlet.

  In the world outside cults, we encounter different ideas and varying points of view on everything from politics to relationships to the death penalty to art to college majors to flavors of ice cream. And it’s up to us to be challenged by these ideas and opinions and make our own choices. Conversely, in cultic groups, individual opinions and choices are frowned upon or forbidden—as is education. Many cultic groups refuse to allow their young people to go to college, and a young woman born and raised in the Assemblies of God recalled her cult’s reasons for distrusting higher education:

  I was just profoundly naïve because I had not had any experiences with people who weren’t involved in the church. And the people who are involved in that church are usually profoundly naïve and anti-intellectual. “Don’t send your kids to college because you’ll lose them”—was the constant refrain. Colleges will ask your kids, “Could God lift a rock so high?” or something like that. They think that’s what happens in college. Someone asks a common paradoxical question and it ruins people’s faith, just like that. That’s what they assume. Or that people just want to party and have fun and get drunk, and that’s the only reason anyone would go to college or leave the church.