Thanks for your response. My transition out of the cult was gradual, aided not by outsiders but by other insiders who also grew out of it over time. A complicated story. There are some parallels to the trump cult but in other ways it was different. I am trying to sort out my own experience to see what if anything can be extracted that mi…
Thanks for your response. My transition out of the cult was gradual, aided not by outsiders but by other insiders who also grew out of it over time. A complicated story. There are some parallels to the trump cult but in other ways it was different. I am trying to sort out my own experience to see what if anything can be extracted that might useful now. So far it is helpful mostly in my own ability to understand some of the mindset of cultists... but not on how to penetrate it. Still searching for answers!
What a mystery that experience must be! To have managed to release it thanks to your friends also traveling the path with whom you could sort things through, and find it still an enigma on this side of it emphasizes how complicated emotionally and psychologically indeed it must have been. I've lived outside the US for a time in a place where there's more connection among people, celebrations, strangers invite you to supper, classmates readily befriend you, lots of religious commemorations, lots of art made by regular people. When I come back home, I feel depressed for a month or so. People aren't on the streets, if they are, they don't look at you; people seem more distant, individual, separate,into their own lives, less into community.
I really appreciate this observation and hearing your experience of being in another country and returning here. I have had a similar experience and you have described it so well. It’s as if there is a kind of deadening of the spirit, here. And people feel closed off and even walled off in their homes. I agree.. I don’t feel the sense of community here that I would like to.
That sense of community is a big part of it I think. We were young idealistic hippies at the start of my cult life (I didnʻt think of it as a cult til way later... before, we were supposedly an egalitarian commune!), trying to escape the alienation & social fragmentation of modern american life. But the belong-to-a-tribe impulse can turn into an even more intense us vs. them alienation. That link someone posted in this thread about how people get strung out on QAnon & the likes is pretty interesting, and fits with this.
Thanks for your response. My transition out of the cult was gradual, aided not by outsiders but by other insiders who also grew out of it over time. A complicated story. There are some parallels to the trump cult but in other ways it was different. I am trying to sort out my own experience to see what if anything can be extracted that might useful now. So far it is helpful mostly in my own ability to understand some of the mindset of cultists... but not on how to penetrate it. Still searching for answers!
What a mystery that experience must be! To have managed to release it thanks to your friends also traveling the path with whom you could sort things through, and find it still an enigma on this side of it emphasizes how complicated emotionally and psychologically indeed it must have been. I've lived outside the US for a time in a place where there's more connection among people, celebrations, strangers invite you to supper, classmates readily befriend you, lots of religious commemorations, lots of art made by regular people. When I come back home, I feel depressed for a month or so. People aren't on the streets, if they are, they don't look at you; people seem more distant, individual, separate,into their own lives, less into community.
I really appreciate this observation and hearing your experience of being in another country and returning here. I have had a similar experience and you have described it so well. It’s as if there is a kind of deadening of the spirit, here. And people feel closed off and even walled off in their homes. I agree.. I don’t feel the sense of community here that I would like to.
That sense of community is a big part of it I think. We were young idealistic hippies at the start of my cult life (I didnʻt think of it as a cult til way later... before, we were supposedly an egalitarian commune!), trying to escape the alienation & social fragmentation of modern american life. But the belong-to-a-tribe impulse can turn into an even more intense us vs. them alienation. That link someone posted in this thread about how people get strung out on QAnon & the likes is pretty interesting, and fits with this.