CIIS Public Programs Podcast

transcript

[Cheerful theme music begins] 
 

This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. 
 

In this episode, CIIS professor, writer, and speaker Zara Zimbardo talks with author and journalist Amanda Montell about her latest book, Cultish, in which she argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. Zara and Amanda discuss influence, the social science of cults, and how to recognize the language of fanaticism all around us. 
 

This episode was recorded during a live online event on July 14th, 2021. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. 

[Theme music concludes] 

Zara: Hello, Amanda. Here we are here.  

Amanda: Here we are. [laughing] 

Zara: I am completely thrilled to be interviewing and in conversation with you and just thank you so much for joining us and for joining the CIIS Community to talk about your work and research that is stunningly timely. 

Amanda: Thank you so much for having me. It's really- it's an honor and I got to be at CIIS in person two years ago for Wordslut so it's nice to be “back”? [laughs] 

Zara: In the ether, absolutely. Yeah, and I just want to say that I have spent the last period of time reading your book and enjoyed it immensely. That sounds strange [laughs] when I say enjoy. I mean that I was completely fascinated, profoundly unsettled, horrified, and empowered. [Amanda: Wow.] So, all of that blended together to a feeling of enjoyment and just profound gratitude for your work and your research, which I am- which certainly for me and I imagine for so many others in many of the folks joining us now, who have read Cultish, it is tremendously evocative. It stirred up and surfaced so much for me, personally, in terms of experiences that I've had or people who I love and care about have had, of participating in cult-like situations or being very adjacent to it or in relationship with it and so yeah, thank you for this work which really aids us in listening louder, so to speak, of just really dialing up the perception of cultish language so that we can hear it in a different way and question its impacts, its logics, its style, how it's wielded and what it makes possible and impossible. So, this is an invaluable inquiry. 

Amanda: Thank you so much.  

Zara: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. So much respect for your work and I appreciate how the title itself. Cultish, is both naming a particular language, like English or Spanish, right? That we're learning to get to know through the lens that you're bringing throughout the book and then also the -ish being like cultish-ness. That feels really refreshing that in terms of getting us out of some yes-or-no binary, like is this a cult or is it not? But that you're really inviting us to stretch and think and feel along a continuum of influence from relatively mild and benign to more severe and damaging. So, if we could open with just kind of like foundational, your central thesis, like, what are we talking about when we're using the word cult?  

Amanda: Yeah well, thank you so much for picking up on that double entendre there. Obviously as a word nerd, I was kind of overjoyed when I came up with that one. Actually, my mom and I both came up with it. I want to give her her due credit. Cultish was on an early list of titles, potential titles for this book and then later independently, my mom suggested it. So, my parents are research scientists and they’re persnickety about credit, so I’ll give that credit. [laughs] 

But that's an important question and I'm really glad that you led with it because the word ‘cult’ can be really triggering and really confounding and actually if it's okay, I was thinking I might just read like, a four section- [Zara: Sure.] a four-page passage from Cultish, sort of providing a pretty direct answer to the question that you asked. So, this comes from part one of the book and I really wanted to dedicate part one of the book to the language that we all use to talk about cults so that we could then move forward with a conversation about how cults use language to talk about us and humanity and ideology. So, this comes from part one of Cultish. I'm about to bring up my mom again.  

A couple of years ago, amid a conversation about my decision in college to quit the competitive and quite cultish theater program at my university in favor of a linguistics major, my mother told me that my change of heart really came as no surprise to her, since she'd always considered me profoundly ‘unculty’. I chose to take this as a compliment since I definitely wouldn't want to be characterized the opposite way, but it didn't fully digest as praise. That's because juxtaposed with the dark elements, there's a certain sexiness surrounding cults. The unconventional aspect. The mysticism, the communal intimacy; in this way, the word has almost come full circle. ‘Cult’ hasn't always carried ominous undertones.  

The earliest version of the term can be found in writings from the 17th century when the cult label was much more innocent. Back then it's simply meant homage paid to divinity or offerings to win over the gods. The word ‘culture’ and ‘cultivation’ derive from the same Latin verb, cultus, and, and, sorry, and cults are a close, close morphological cousin. This is a tongue twister, the word evolved in the early 19th century, a time of experimental religious brouhaha in the United States. The American colonies, which were founded upon the freedom to practice new religions, gained a reputation as a safe haven, where eccentric believers could get as freaky as they liked. The spiritual freedom opened the door for a stampede of alternative social and political groups too. During the mid-1800s, well over 100 small ideological cliques formed and collapsed. When the French political scientist, Alexis de Tocqueville came to visit the US in the 1830s, he was astonished by how Americans of all ages, all stations in life and all types of disposition were forever forming associations. Cults of the time included groups like the Oneida Community, a camp of polyamorous communists in Upstate New York. Sounds fun. The Harmony Society, an egalitarian fellowship of science lovers in Indiana. How lovely. And my favorite, a short-lived vegan farming cult in Massachusetts called Fruitlands, which was founded by philosopher Amos Bronson Alcott, an abolitionist, women's rights activist, and father of Little Women author, Louisa May Alcott. Back then, cults merely served as a sort of churchly classification alongside ‘religion’ and ‘sect’; the word denoted something new or unorthodox but not necessarily nefarious.  

The term gained- started gaining its darker reputation toward the start of the fourth Great Awakening. That's the term that some scholars use to refer to the late 60s, early 70s when we saw so many cultish groups form. That's when the emergence of so many nonconformist spiritual groups spooked old-school conservatives and Christians. ‘Cult’ soon became associated with charlatans, quacks, and heretical kooks. But they still weren't considered much of a societal threat or a criminal priority. Not until the Manson family murders of 1969, followed by the Jonestown Massacre of 1978. After that, the word ‘cult’ became a symbol of fear. The grisly death of over 900 people at Jonestown, the largest number of American civilian casualties prior to 9/11, sent the whole country into cult delirium. Some readers may recall the substitute- subsequent ‘Satanic Panic’, a period in the 80s defined by widespread paranoia that Satan worshipping child abusers were terrorizing wholesome American neighborhoods. As sociologist Ron Enroth wrote in his 1979 book, The Lure of Cults, “the unprecedented media exposure given Jonestown alerted Americans to the fact that seemingly, seemingly beneficent religious groups can mask a hellish rot”.  

Then as these things tend to go, as soon as cults became frightening, they also became cool. 70s pop culture didn't wait long to birth terms like ‘cult film’ and ‘cult classic’, which describes the up-and-coming genre of underground indie movies, like The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Bands like Fish and The Grateful Dead came to be known for their peripatetic cult followings. A generation or two after the fourth Great Awakening, the era began to take on a nostalgic cool factor among cult-curious youth. Fringe groups from the 70s now boast a sort of perversely stylish vintage cache. At this point, being obsessed with the Manson Family is akin to having an extensive collection of hippie era vinyl and band tees. At an LA salon the other week, I eavesdropped on a woman telling her stylist that she was going for ‘Manson girl hair’, overgrown, brunette, middle parted. A 20-something acquaintance of mine recently hosted a cult themed birthday party New York's Hudson Valley, the site of numerous historical cults including NXIVM. As well as the Woodstock Music Festival! The dress code: all white. Filtered photographs of guests, sporting ivory slips and glassy-eyed ‘oops, I didn't know I was haunted’ expressions flooded my Instagram feed.  

Over the decades, the word ‘cult' has become so sensationalized, so romanticized, that most experts I’ve spoken to don't even use it anymore. Their stance is that the meaning of ‘cults’ is too broad and subjective to be useful, at least in academic literature. As recently as the 1990s, scholars had no problem tossing around the term to describe any group considered by many to be deviant. But it doesn't take a social scientist to see the bias built into that categorization. A few scholars have tried to get more precise and identify specific cult criteria: charismatic leaders, mind-altering behaviors, sexual and financial exploitation and us versus them mentality toward non-members, and an ‘ends justify the means’ philosophy. Steven Kent, a sociology professor at the University of Alberta adds that ‘cult’ has typically been applied to groups that have some degree of supernatural beliefs, though, that isn't always the case. Angels and demons don't usually make their way into, say, cosmetics pyramid schemes. Except when they do. More on that in part four. But Kent says the result of all these institutions is the same: a power imbalance built on members' devotion, hero worship, and absolute trust, which frequently facilitates abuse on the part of unaccountable leaders. The glue that keeps this trust intact is members' belief that their leaders have a rare access to transcendent wisdom, which allows them to exercise control over their systems of rewards and punishments with here on life- here on Earth and in the afterlife. Based on my conversations, these qualities seem to encapsulate what many everyday folks view as a real cult or the academic definition of a cult.  

But as it turns out, ‘cult’ doesn't have an official academic definition because it's inherently pejorative. Rebecca Moore, a religion professor at San Diego State University clarified during a phone interview, “it's simply used to describe groups we don't like.” Um…well, I'll read a few more sentences. Moore comes to the subject of cults from a unique place. Her two sisters were among those who perished in the Jonestown Massacre. In fact, Jim Jones enlisted them to help pull off the event. But Moore told me she doesn't use the word ‘cult’ in earnest because it's become inarguably judgment laden. As soon as someone says it, we know as readers, listeners, or individuals exactly what we should think about that particular group.  

So, I'll end there. I was trying to read slowly, it's very hard! But yeah, certainly over the course of writing this book and researching it, my personal understanding and definition of the word ‘cult’ has not become more definitive or more precise, but instead, hazier and more nebulous. And that's why I tend to either get really specific when I'm talking about certain groups and call them a fringe religion or an alternative religion, if that's what I'm talking about, or I will do the opposite and sort of hedge and call these groups cultish or cult-like. And that's where the title of this book came from, initially.  

Zara: Thank you. I appreciate taking that time to literally get on the same page and that as we go along and in the conversations that may ripple out for folks who are joining us here, in talking about these topics, that's a great invitation to pause and be specific with what we're talking about. Like what is the context? And what are we trying to foreground? When, you know, with this pattern recognition? Like what elements are present? What impacts keep recurring? You know, [Amanda: Exactly.] How do we know we're not- 

Amanda: And this is not to say, like this is not to say that we should strike the word ‘cult’ from our vocabularies or that, you know, we need to stop using it when describing, say, a cult-followed fandom or brand like Soul Cycle, which I talk about in the book. It's true that as conversationalists, we are naturally pretty savvy at being able to pick up on the context and stakes whenever a familiar word is invoked in conversation. So, when one compares Peloton diehards to a cult, we know pretty automatically that the risk of, you know, being isolated on a commune somewhere is not actually on the table. But when we are earnestly talking about spiritual groups, religious groups, socio-political groups, throwing around the cult accusation willy-nilly, it can really shut down conversations because nobody wants to be told you're in a cult and if your ideologies and your group affiliations vastly differ from others who have equally strong ideologies and affiliations, that cult label is going to do nothing but increase and widen that rift. 

Zara: That's a great point; as well as just bring up a lot of defensiveness. It doesn't really inspire curiosity or courageous and compassionate critical reflection on what might be going on.  

Amanda: You know what's funny though? Is that the people who I would have even like light-hearted, very warm, and empathetic conversations with about the word ‘cult’ being a- being associated with their, you know, fitness studio or their whatever it was, there was a pretty consistent pattern. Those who got really, really defensive when I brought up the word ‘cult’ tended to be involved with groups that were slightly toward the destructive end of the cultish spectrum. And those who laughed and were like, yeah, I can see it, they were members of groups that really kind of weren't as bad. So, the second you start defending why you're not in a cult or why you're not a cult leader, you start to sound like you're going to call them that you're a cult leader and I actually know this firsthand because of course, the internet is a wacky place and I've had an Instagram follower, thoughts about that language. Or two, you know, sort of asked me, kind of as a joke but also somewhat in earnest, like, what's the difference between, you know, an Instagram or social media cult leader and what you're doing on social media and I had to sort of like not really go there in Instagram messages because the second I tried, I knew I would just be digging myself into a hole. 

Zara: Yeah. It is interesting that yeah, following and followers are right built into that language [Amanda: Isn’t it just...] yeah and that's where, you know, your book, that's one of the places where it ends in terms of reflecting that cult followings, cult membership, and what can be, you know, a whole range of cult dynamics, are not so much happening where someone is- people are meeting in real life but that it's vastly happening online and incredibly enhanced with algorithms and rabbit holes and self-fulfilling bias, right? All of this. I want to ask briefly, just what compelled you to really dedicate your attention to looking at this topic of language and power and cultishness - what drew you in?  

Amanda: That's a good question. Well, I, my whole life, have been interested for some reason in the relationship between language and identity and power, the ability to cultivate a whole identity and personality and relationships just based on the accent that you speak with or your word choice. We take language for granted because it's invisible and seemingly harmless. We grew up with axioms like ‘sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can never hurt you’ but I don't know. I just, I, some combination of nature and nurture made me a very language focused, curious person. So, there's that side of it.  

Language is the lens through which I see the world, but I also grew up with a cult “survivor” in the family. Guess you could- I don't know if he would identify as that. Former cult- former cult joinee against his will? Ugh, labels! But so, my, my dad was a teenager in the late 60s in 1969, when his dad forced him, because he was a kid, to join Synanon which folks who were in California in the 70s and 80s, might recognize, it was this group that was actually founded in Southern California, but was based in the Bay Area by the time that my dad got there. It started as a sort of alternative drug rehabilitation facility for hard drug users, which were called dope fiends. And then later grew to accommodate so-called ‘lifestylers’, or people, like my dad's dad who were hippies, my dad's dad was like a pseudo intellectual, a card-carrying communist and wanted in on the blossoming, countercultural movement of the era. And so, he moved my stepmother- step-grandmother and my dad and his two little half-sisters on to this remote commune, what we would now recognize as sort of the ‘classic cult’, this sort of, socialist utopia, which was on remote land in- outside of San Francisco, where there were so many bizarre rules and rituals, there was a charismatic leader named Chuck Dederich. The Synanon’s most famous ritual was this nightly activity called “The Synanon Game” where people would be divided into circles and forced to subject one another to rounds- hours of vicious interpersonal ad hominem criticism. This was pitched as group therapy, but really, it was a means of social control, and this type of practice can be found in so many other cultish groups from The People's Temple AKA Jonestown to the modern-day “Troubled Teen Industry”, which was actually- I learned while researching this book was actually based on Synanon. So that's chilling. Yeah.  

So, I grew up on my dad's stories of Synanon and he was always so generous with his storytelling and sort of, I think processing everything that had happened through that process of storytelling. And I remember that the most interesting part of his stories to me, was always the special language that they used in Synanon in order to create solidarity and us/them dichotomy to instill ideology, to obscure truth to shut down independent thinking, and encourage conformism; all of the things that a cultish group needs to do in order to gain and maintain power in- yeah, life there was divided into these two semantic categories: in the game and out of the game. There were so many special terms and so I grew up sort of like, well pretty skeptical and independently thinking because my parents are also research scientists so they're professional questioners and professional like, proof-finders and proof-seekers. So, I grew up sort of like, keenly sensitive to Synanon-esque cultish sounding rhetoric and it's not like I would only listen for it while watching a Heaven's Gate documentary or something like that, I would hear it, you know, in my high school theater program and in the startup where I worked in my early twenties and all over the place. So that's really what planted the seed of my really lifelong fascination with the relationship between language, power, relationships, identity, cultishness. 

Zara: Thank you. And with what you just shared, I mean those seem to be key features or characteristics that you’re tracing and tracking across a really wide range of contexts from multi-level marketing and fitness and wellness to Scientology to some of the more extremist cults to QAnon, but you know, of those elements of creating an us versus them inside and outside those who get it, those who don't, some kind of siege mentality and something that is so again, like, fascinating and disturbing is the way that this shared language and bonding that is created, can be both used to become kind of like the ideological ground that people are standing on while also destabilizing them and making them doubt themselves and doubt their own knowledge, their intuition with all of the kind of gaslighting that can go on and that was something that I found particularly chilling throughout the book again, with, you know, personal examples coming to the surface. How certain terms, certain concepts, certain kind of, like, “wink” code words can create a kind of a warm community of shared understanding that can be liberatory, that can be in the service of healing or social change. And then those same terms can get wielded in a way that can be abusive, policing, or justifying this treatment for people who have become heavily, emotionally, psychologically, financially invested in whatever the community is, and the- I’m wondering if we could hang out for a bit with this concept of thought terminating cliches, coined by psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton in the early 60s because you returned to this again and again from different angles and from different contexts, what is a thought terminating cliche and how does it function, and how can we be sensitized to it, to them? 

Amanda: Yes. Well, this is one of the key elements of cultish language. It's one of those things that once you become aware of it, you won't be able to unhear it. So, a thought terminating cliche again, I wish I'd come up with it. It's the perfect label for this phenomenon which you'll find everywhere. Also known as a semantic stop sign. They’re these stock expressions that are easily memorized, easily repeated, and aimed at shutting down independent thinking or questioning. So, as you mentioned, questioning is the enemy number one for a cult. They're trying to accomplish things that can't be accomplished if people are allowed to express dissent and push back and weigh in individualistically on what's going on. So, you need a robust glossary of thought terminating cliches to make sure people are not able to do that, to express that pushback.  

So, examples of thought terminating cliches that we might hear in our everyday lives in include things like “well, boys will be boys”. Or “well, everything happens for a reason” or “you know, it is what it is. It's all in God's plan” and expressions like that are really compelling because it's work to think. And it's a relief not to have to and they alleviate cognitive dissonance or the uncomfortable discord you feel in your mind when you're holding two conflicting ideas in there and at the same time. So, let's come up with some cultish examples and in those contexts, these can be a lot more destructive and nefarious.  

So, in Synanon for example, where everybody is physically isolated, and their lives are being dictated by this one person at the top. This guy named Chuck Dederich. If someone in Synanon wanted to question, you know, why do we have to play the game, the Synanon game, every single night, or why aren't kids allowed to go to outside schools? Or you know, why do we have to shave our heads? Why do we have to be reassigned new Synanon partners? There was a thought terminating cliche that could be served on command, and it went “act as if” and it was this imperative to act as if you believed in this policy that Chuck Dederich put in place until you did because if you're feeling dissonant about it, well that's a you problem. This is the gaslighting that you were talking about, that's a you problem, and Chuck is a visionary and a genius and he knows what's best. And so, if you have an issue, act as if and then you can tell your- you can sort of brainwash yourself, right? Like you want badly to believe that this place where you spent the past 5, 10, 15 years, is everything that it would promised it would be, you don't want to have to cut your losses, you don't want to have to create conflict and so you're going to use “act as if” as a cue to put that cognitive dissonance in that dis- that, you know, dissent to bed. In a group like NXIVM, if folks binged the NXIVM docuseries like I did, you might recognize thought terminating cliches that Keith Ranieri would use things like, “well don't let yourself be ruled by fear” or dismissing valid concerns as “limiting beliefs”. In Jonestown and so many different cultish groups throughout history and the world of thought- classic thought terminating cliche is “it's all the media's fault. Blame the media.” So thought terminating- [Zara: Fake news?] fake news! Yeah. And that's an example of loaded language, right? So, they're up there, so many examples of that, but yeah, the media is a classic, classic scapegoat and it's, you know, it's tricky. And this is what toxic relationships are in general. Whether you're in a toxic one-on-one relationship, or in a toxic relationship with the group you're in, like, there's always some truth to what's going on there. If there weren't, you would, you would never have joined, you would never have stayed. And so, you know, it's like we do need to express skepticism toward the media to a degree, we do need to, you know, check preconceived notions that we have in our minds about what our limits are and what we can achieve or can't achieve. Like there's a little bit of truth there. But when you have these stock expressions that are there to shut you down anytime you have a question, that's a red flag because anything legitimate will stand up to scrutiny. 

Zara: So powerful. One other, I mean, again like you said, it's like you can't unhear it because they can be so ubiquitous and some of these same cliches or kind of pseudo proverbs can be used to open up some critical inquiry or reflection as well as to just shut it down.  

Amanda: Sure.  

Zara: You know, or drive the blame into oneself and that was one example that stood out to me, when you were describing the Shambhala community in the thought terminating cliché of “why, don't you go sit with that”, right? And, of course, right, all the meaning there, that's sitting with something can obviously be a profound, ongoing spiritual practice to really question what's going on, see the different layers of something. Whereas this was then starting to be wielded in a way when someone when anyone was holding up a mirror to forms of exploitation that was going on to say, like, well actually go find that wrongness in yourself.  

Amanda: In yourself. Yes. And it's, you know, it bears mentioning that language only has meaning and only has power within context. So just, you know, if you go about your daily life and you hear someone say, you know, well, why is it with that? Just the once, that's not some sort of dog whistle or a really serious red flag, that that person is trying to exploit you. But again, when these phrases are being repeated systematically and you feel yourself sort of halting that independent thought process, or you feel like the argument is going nowhere after that phrase is invoked. That's a sign that this is closer to a semantic stop sign than anything else. 

Zara: Right. Yeah, and I appreciate how you also name the term brainwashed as a form- as a semantic stop sign that like not only is it [Amanda: It can be.] that, yeah it can be, it can be unhelpful. It can be harmful, and it can just be othering when we're talking about cult recruitment, people's different experiences along the continuum of influence that when we're saying, oh, those people or that person is brainwashed, right? It's also talking about oneself as like, well I wouldn't be prone to that. I wouldn't be so susceptible that is, you know, this scary other thing that's going on that I can't relate to instead of saying, how could that be happening? What can I actually relate to and what are these shared conditions of susceptibility that we are all in? Where cult-like behaviors, right, and cultish language right, like you asked this question, like why does it seem like everyone sounds- everyone's talking like they're in a cult these days, you know, it’s just proliferating and I, you know, reading your work also just kept feeling so much empathy for how deep our needs are for belonging and for meaning. And that's such a deep part of what makes us human and is such a huge dimension of our lived experience that charismatic leaders or different marketing schemes can tap into and exploit and I'm wondering if you could talk a bit about these terms which you got into with the deep dive into multi-level marketing, and some of the pro-feminist empowerment and so much going on there. But of toxic positivity and love bombing.  

Amanda: Yes.  

Zara: What is that? And you look at it in different contexts, but in that one, it really, really shone.  

Amanda: Yes. Yes. Well, thank you for bringing up the brainwashing topic. Yes, brainwashing can be used to sort of morally divide us and we do it as a protective mechanism. We say, like I would never end up in a group like that, they were brainwashed, but really, brainwashing is nothing but a metaphor, you know, it is the explanation that prevailing wisdom and the popular media tends to give for why people wind up in cults but it's not a real or testable phenomenon. And again, it's often used just to shut down a conversation and prevent us from asking the more interesting question of what is really motivating people's behavior and it's all these other things. All these other really, really interesting things that have a whole lot to do with language. But yes.  

So, Americans have a distinct and consistent relationship to cultishness over time. And there are a lot of reasons for that. But one of the reasons is that we, you know, we- our history stems from the capitalist Protestant ethic which is what informed our value of the American dream. We are optimists and seekers born-and-bred as Americans and that in combination with a whole bunch of other social and cultural factors has made us, you know, attracted to organizations and leaders who are making grandiose promises that you can achieve anything you want. And again, that doesn't have to be cultish, that promise. It isn't totally true. Not, not everybody can accomplish anything just when you put your mind to it. But when it gets cultish is when, well, multi-level marketing is one of the contexts in which it gets cultish and I decided to put that industry in the book.  

First of all, because people were always constantly asking me about it, but also because I think the multi-level marketing industry is this sort of really extreme case study in toxic positivity and the prosperity gospel that imbues all of American workplace culture in general. But the way that the multi-level marketing industry exploits this American value for you know, productivity and progress and self-improvement is well, it's, I don't know how far I want to go back, but you asked about the language of, you know, pseudo feminism and how the multi-level marketing industry exploits that.  

So, since the dawn of the modern direct sales industry in the 1940s and 50s, the industry has always targeted non-working wives and mothers as the primary sales force. The reason why is very interesting, I won't get into it. But so, while in the 40s and 50s, Tupperware, just like the OG multi-level marketing company, MLM, was pitched as like, the best thing to happen to women, since they got to vote, this opportunity to be a businesswoman to earn a full time living with part time work from home. Now multi-level marketing companies and Tupperware, still around, pitch themselves as an opportunity for “girl boss”, “boss babe”, “mompreneurs” to become part of an empowering movement. So, the precise terms have changed but MLMs have always capitalized on whatever commodified pseudo feminist language was trendy at the moment to convince women that they should be a part of not only this industry, but a movement, a community and that's part of what makes these companies so cultish is that they're not just sort of scammy and predatory, they are missionary in character. They are helmed by these charismatic leaders that members come to revere and worship almost in a religious way. There is such intense pressure in these groups that truly codependent life consuming relationships start to form when you invariably do not become a millionaire mompreneur within a year like they promised, because mathematically, it's not possible.  

The way that these pyramid scheme-esque organizations are structured, they will do what these other cultish groups that we've been mentioning before do, they will gaslight you into believing that you didn't try hard enough, you aren't really dedicated to the American dream like you should be because this is a good system, and a good system always works. And the exit costs are incredibly high because of these high pressure, boundaryless relationships that have formed since everything- since everybody's financial success depends on the financial success of the recruits below them. So yeah, I decided it was important to focus on the language of multi-level marketing, not only because it is fascinating in and of itself, but it says something about our workplace values in America at large.  

Zara: Yeah, and with the prosperity gospel, which I've really been sitting with, [small laugh] the Protestant prosperity gospel that financial well-being and physical well-being is seen as God's favor. It's incredible to see how many iterations there are of that in secular or non-religious, spiritual contexts. I was reminded of years ago, when The Secret was making a big sensational splash, such expert branding there, it's a secret, [Amanda: The secret!] Yeah, exactly. Okay. Got hooked, you know, and some people close to me did actually get really hooked and enthralled with that, of that the saying what was it? Like, “ask, believe, receive”, right? That you are harnessing the power of your mind and imagination. Perhaps tuning into divine frequencies and calling in what you want and manifesting it, you know, like imagining your hands on the steering wheel of the new car that you want, and this plays out in so many different ways that is not named as Protestant. And, yeah, I want to ask like how, how does that ideology play out in some of the more like in the wellness and metaphysical, you know, these kind of like, cutting edge science meets ancient wisdom type of industries.  

Amanda: Mm, yeah, well in our culture at large these days, I'm hearing this new age, metaphysical meets pseudo-scientific vocabulary in so many spaces, not only spiritual circles, like, you know, folks who love The Secret or folks, who gather in like divine goddess, like moon ceremonies, or whatever. But I also hear this language yeah, in boutique fitness studios, like Soul Cycle. Also, I'll hear it in like, evangelical spaces like sort of hipster celebrity attended megachurches, all that are kind of trying to brand themselves as like Jesus is cool for the young generation. I'll hear them even in startup culture and this language, I'll name some key buzzwords and people will recognize it. I'm talking, you know, metaphysical, mystical sounding language, like holistic, actualize, paradigm shift, missional, intentional, organic, [Zara: Mhm. Vibrations.] vibrations, frequencies.  

This is language that you hear in just so many spaces and so many different contexts. And in spaces like Soul Cycle, let's say, and wellness spaces which have come to serve a truly religious role in people's lives. You know, as our culture and particularly younger people move away from traditional religion, they still crave a spiritual experience, and they still crave a community experience. And so, researchers at places like the Harvard Divinity School have found that folks literally name Soul Cycle as their new church or literally name CrossFit as their new religion and you might think well no, like CrossFit is not a religion, but actually as tricky as it is to define the word cult, experts have been arguing for even longer about how to define a religion. It's very tricky, I sort of like what the theologian and writer Tara Isabella Burton says, which is not what religion is, but what religion does and that's to provide four things: community, spirituality, ritual, and meaning- wait. Community, meaning, purpose, and ritual.  

And those things don't necessarily have to involve God at all. You can find them in your Soul Cycle studio, you can find them in your wellness circle, you can certainly find them in your Evangelical megachurch and you can even find them in the startup where you work. The boundaries separating spirituality and business and celebrity and recreation are really blurred. So yeah, I'm touching on a lot of things here. I mean, the prosperity gospel shows up in all of these places. We hear it in everyday phrases like God helps those who help themselves and you know this idea of monetary blessings like, like, oh, I'm so blessed to have this home. It's like the connection between your wealth and your self-improvement and God is not natural. It was created by the Protestant ethic. And as Americans again, we fetishize self-improvement, it's the perfect religion for us, even if we're young people in 2021 who reject mainstream religion or ideas of God. We still want to participate in the spiritual. We still want to participate in the woo-woo and we can do that in a space, like Soul Cycle, or in, even in our workplace and the language like holistic and actualize and frequencies, and whatnot can make us feel really connected spiritually to others, who are using the same vocabulary words. It's like a new religious vocabulary for us, but it also has a downside. It doesn't have to, but it can be, it can be tricky. So, we can talk about that if you want.  

Zara: There's- we could definitely talk for hours and hours about this. I want to bring up a portmanteau that I recently learned, or last fall was introduced to, of the term “conspirituality” and have been definitely logging some hours listening to the Conspirituality podcast, but of this combination of conspiracy theories and spirituality. And…so important to explore and I was deeply rattled.  

It was last fall, listening and tuning into the phenomenon of conspirituality as it relates to QAnon and what might be called, soft QAnon or pastel QAnon, and how- and this overlap with so many communities and fields, right in healing, wellness, spirituality, etc., that so many people I know are a part of and to see the ways that this language- hear the ways that this language was circulating, and I just want to read a quote from you saying, “because New Age ideas and conspiracy theories have overlapped in such inauspicious ways over the past decade, giving us the whole new category of cultish belief, termed conspirituality. Many of QAnon’s central buzzwords fall into the very same category of New Age vernacular: paradigm shift, 5D consciousness, awakening. This is no accident. The familiar innocent sounding words work to reel in and bond recruits without revealing too much.” And also, the language of freedom, free thinking, I did my own research, all of this. And I think what really rattled me is the ways that to learn about ways, that some of these, major influencers, progressive healing and spiritual folks, using this terminology and how slippery and dangerous it, how slippery and dangerous it can be. And so, I wonder if you could speak to that.  

Amanda: Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, it seems like an unlikely combination at first; you have these stereotypical right-wing extremist conspiracy theorists who believe the Earth is flat and who are these, you know, Holocaust deniers and such and then you have these, you know- 

Zara: Or that we're being controlled by this pedophile cabal. 

Amanda: Yeah. Yeah. So great. So, we can maybe define conspirituality in more precise terms. So, it first emerged in formal writing in 2011, recent, and it's basically defined by these two tenets: the first classic to conspiracy theory ideology and the second classic to new-age ideology. The first being that there is a sinister cabal of powerful forces, secretly controlling the socio-political order and the second being that we as a culture are on the precipice of a paradigm shift in consciousness.  

So, you'd think that these stereotypical conspiracy theorist guys, mostly guys, and these new agers who are interested in alternative healing and such who are these like seemingly progressive, seemingly feminist, mostly women. You'd think they might have nothing in common, but the cultural tumults that we’re experiencing and have especially over the course of the past five years during the Trump administration in combination with all of the turbulence brought on by the pandemic and all of the lack of trust in government and healthcare and big business combined with social media algorithms have led these two camps to a similar, you know, media averse, anti-government, doctor-wary place. And the vocabulary words, the key vocabulary words of QAnon, which again like some of us might think of QAnon as this like one sort of denomination of this big tent cult. Folks who you know, believe that Hillary Clinton drinks the blood of children in order to remain young and other really extremist beliefs that is, that's, that's only one sort of sect of QAnon at this point because QAnon has really, again, mostly because of social media become like a black hole sucking in every breed of conspiratorial ideology that exists in this culture and there are a lot of them because conspiracy theories tend to surge during times of crisis.  

And the pandemic in combination with the election, in combination with social media, that was a time of crisis, and we crave conspiracy theories, sort of naturally as humans, because we're interested in special knowledge. We're interested in answers, we're interested in closure and conspiracy theories provide those things and because QAnon again, I'm referring to it in the sort of big tent sense, because QAnon’s key buzzwords are so broad, awakening, deep state, paradigm shift. Folks can sort of project whatever they want them to mean onto them and not sort of approach them with enough skepticism to realize that they could serve as an on-ramp to more dangerous ideology. So yeah, I mean, it's really for some, it's confounding that you would see people emerge like the QAnon shaman.  

If people remember the guy in the capital during that awful day, he was wearing the headdress and you know, he was very appropriative but also he seemed like a spiritual guy but he was this right winger and you're like, this makes no sense and QAnon has taken over so many yoga studios and you're like, again, this makes no sense, but it really has a lot to do with these groups’ commodification of certain Eastern derived vocabulary words and ideas with a lot of scientific words and ideas with a lot of words and ideas purloined from feminist politics. Like, anti-vaxxers will say things like, you know, “my body, my choice” and “forced penetration” to talk about vaccines. So yeah. Language is really the material with which these extreme beliefs are fabricated, and it's entirely possible to be sort of like onboarding to QAnon online and not even really know it.  

Zara: Right. That was a big part of what rattled me so much. The weight of having these like linguistic- yeah, different Venn diagrams really becoming-  

Amanda: Oh yeah. I have to- it's become a hobby of mine. Like actually making those Venn diagrams and posting them on the Internet.  

Zara: That is a great hobby. And so on, continuing on this theme that's like in the what we could call New Age, spiritual, metaphysics, physics, healing etc., for people who are finding great meaning and improvement of life issues or healing and connection in contexts where you know, part of the promise is to maximize one's self potential or to tap into these various higher powers. What are some of the red flags? Like you've mentioned a number of them and your book is really this like amazing archive of red flags; what are some of the ones to pay attention to words. Like oh something that was once medicinal is now becoming poisonous. How do I assess that? We assess that? 

Amanda: Yeah, I think, I think a couple of the major ones to think about are first of all, the, the love bomb and then the bait-and-switch. You asked earlier for me to talk about love bombing, which is, you know, this classic cult term that refers to when someone upon first meeting you, will shower you with love and attention in order to make you feel really seen, like they're speaking uniquely to you, only to sort of go back on those promises later. Anyone who's ever been in a toxic one-on-one relationship might relate to this experience where a charming narcissist, who in a cult situation might be called charismatic power abuser, might like shower you with love and attention and then take it all back later and you're, you know, constantly working towards how you were treated in the beginning. But really, that was just a tactic of manipulation to suck you in. So, the love bombing and then the bait-and-switch.  

If you have been in something for a long time and you're realizing like, the promises that were made so vehemently are not being delivered. It sounds obvious. But that's a big one. And then, the other, the other big one is that, you know, anything legitimate will allow you to participate casually, will allow you to have outside influences in your life, but if your group affiliation, whatever it is, encourages you to cut people who don't agree with it or who speak ill of it, or who aren't involved with it out of your life. If you find that, it's monopolizing all of your time. If you find yourself unable to strip off the linguistic uniform at the end of the day, that can be troubling.  

Because, you know, I often say that the word sacred literally means set aside and so I do not encourage people to disaffiliate with spiritual groups. I think that can be incredibly powerful for people like we don't want to be so cynical that the most enchanting parts of the human experience go away, like we're irrational and communal by nature. And so, participating in spiritual activities and groups is, is really quite human, but at the end of the Soul Cycle class, or the ceremony, or the service, or whatever it is, you need to have the ability to step back into another life, another identity. And if you're unable to do that then that, that's something worth looking at again.  

Zara: Hm…hm. I appreciate all of the nuance and care that you bring to these complex topics and complex situations and not throwing out the mystical babies [Amanda laughs] with the mystifying bath water.  

Amanda: That’s so funny. No, I mean, I live in LA. It's like if I'm not cool with a little mystical magical, I just I wouldn't function well here. [laughs] 

Zara: I just want to ask one more question, which is, you know, a lot of times as we spoke about earlier with the term brainwashing, but people can be like, oh, who is drawn to a cult. And how is that not me, or how could it be me? But if we shift to be like what are the conditions of susceptibility that we’re all in? In terms of certain forms of alienation you mentioned, you know, in terms of like distance from healthcare, government, religion, community, etc. What are some of the, yeah, conditions of susceptibility and/or conditions that are making cults grow like cultishness grow like…? 

Amanda: Yeah. Right. So, I think the mythology that exists is that people who wind up in really destructive cults are desperate, disturbed, intellectually deficient. But what I found instead talking to so many scholars and survivors was that the through line was not desperation. But instead, extreme optimism is again, this very American thing, so it's kind of funny while like cynicism might protect you from the lure of sort of, you know, NXIVM-esque group, you might also die alone, so it's good to be open to experience but also skeptical of experience, but I think it's sort of a combination of vulnerability due to a lack of institutional support.  

So, one of the other reasons why Americans have such a consistent relationship with cultishness is because we are the exception to a pretty consistent pattern in- all over the world. Scholars have found that the higher the standard of living in a certain culture, the fewer believers you find. Like supernatural religious believers. So, the higher the life expectancies, the higher the education levels, the better people are doing, the less they tend to need religion or spirituality. The US is this glaring exception to that rule. And one of the reasons this might be is because we don't have a lot of trust in the institutions that are supposed to provide us with support. If an American finds themself very poor or out of a job or gravely ill, you know that there's you know, like we don't have what other cultures have like universal healthcare and programs that are there to keep us healthy and keep us safe.  

And so in order to fill those voids, we look to alternative groups and some of them are exploitative and destructive and some of them are not so much but that- where optimism comes in here is that if you are a cynic and you don't think that there are solutions to your problems or to the world's most urgent problems, you're not going to wind up in a group like NXIVM or Heaven's Gate because you're not going to buy what they’re selling. And what they're selling is always something really positive. We're going to solve racism, classism, we're going to make you happier. So, it's this, it's this combination of vulnerability with sort of resilience and idealism in the face of that vulnerability that can make someone attracted to cultish groups and that doesn't necessarily have to be bad. You just have to approach them with the right combination of fact checking and cross-checking. And all of these things that we've been talking about the, the skepticism to keep you safe. 

Zara: Thank you.  

Amanda: Yeah, thank you.  

Zara: Well and again, gratitude for your work that is attuning us to the language of fanaticism so that we can also play these roles in our own agency to support each other to question, what's going on? With language and power and how deep this goes. So, thank you so much Amanda. 

Amanda: Thank you. 

Zara: And thank you to everyone listening.  
 

[Uplifting theme music begins] 

Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live. 
 
Podcast production is supervised by Kirstin Van Cleef at CIIS Public Programs. Audio production is supervised by Lyle Barrere at Desired Effect. The CIIS Public Programs team includes Kyle DeMedio, Alex Elliott, Emlyn Guiney, Jason McArthur, and Patty Pforte. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe wherever you find podcasts, visit our website ciis.edu, and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. 
 
CIIS Public Programs commits to use our in-person and online platforms to uplift the stories and teachings of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; those in the LGBTQIA+ community; and all those whose lives emerge from the intersections of multiple identities.  

[Theme music concludes]