#cults

Obviously, there must be some connection between the subordination of actual individuals and the grotesque exaltation of symbolic ones like Kim Il Sung. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#dictatorship #kim-il-sung #north-korea #psychology #subordination

When theology erodes and organization crumbles, when the institutional framework of religion begins to break up, the search for a direct experience which people can feel to be religious facilitates the rise of cults. ↗

— Daniel Bell

#break #break up #crumbles #cults #direct

Among [Applewhite's] other teachings was the classic cult specialty of developing disdain for anyone outside of the Heaven's Gate commune. Applewhite flattered his would-be alien flock that they were an elite elect far superior to the non-initiated humans whom he considered to be deluded zombies.[...]Applewhite effectively fed his paranoid persecution complex to his followers to ensure blind loyalty to the group and himself while fostering alienation from the mundane world. This paradoxical superior/fearful attitude towards “Them” (i.e., anyone who is not one of “Us”) is one of the simplest means of hooking even the most skeptical curiosity seeker into the solipsistic netherworld of a [mentally unbalanced] leader's insecure and threatened worldview. ↗

— Zeena Schreck

#mass-suicides #psychopathology #religious-science-fiction #sects #sociology

What is wrong with inciting intense dislike of a religion if the activities or teachings of that religion are so outrageous, irrational or abusive of human rights that they deserve to be intensely disliked? ↗

— Rowan Atkinson

#cults #human-rights #liberty #logic #morality

Don't tell anyone, but on the pagan day of the sun god Ra, I kneel at the foot of an ancient instrument of torture and consume ritualistic symbols of blood and flesh. ...And if any of you care to join me, come to the Harvard chapel on Sunday, kneel beneath the crucifix, and take Holy Communion. ↗

— Dan Brown

#organized-religion #religion #religion

You have to quit confusing a madness with a mission. ↗

— Flannery O'Connor

#delusion #extremism #fanaticism #fanatics #guerrilla-decontextualism

There is a great interest in comparative religion and a desire to understand faiths other than our own and even to experiment with exotic cults. ↗

— Emily Greene Balch

#cults #desire #even #exotic #experiment

Cult recruiting methods based on dosing victims with the brain chemicals released during capture bonding would make cults even more of a problem than they are now. ↗

— Keith Henson

#bonding #brain #capture #chemicals #cult

A piece of advice: if you want to remain in control of a doomsday cult, don't give a date for the end of the world unless you're really, really sure it's going to happen. Being wrong tends to undermine your authority. ↗

— Jennifer Bosworth

#end-of-the-world #dating

Mother goddesses are just as silly a notion as father gods. If a revival of the myths of these cults gives woman emotional satisfaction, it does so at the price of obscuring the real conditions of life. This is why they were invented in the first place. ↗

— Angela Carter

#cults #does #emotional #father #first