Identifying Cultic Relationships in Everyday Life

I avoid relying on gross generalities without clarification because they oversimplify the complexities of the world in which we live. So, when I refer to a “cultish world,” it is not to say that it applies to all societal systems everywhere. In other words, I am not saying that our government is a cult. I am not saying that your religion, your company, your favorite brand, or our military is a cult. I am not saying that all authority is manipulative. Nor am I saying that, as social creatures, our desire to belong is a trap.

I am saying that conscious manipulation is very much alive within many organized structures in our society. And I am saying that a cultish structure, when deconstructed, is like any other structure that functions based on the psychology of how people organize. What distinguishes groups from being better or worse, safer or more dangerous, positive or negative, and everything in between, is intent.

The word ‘cult’ is often overused. For example, I’ve heard people refer to their yoga or spin class as a cult. Or perhaps their acting class. I’ve heard people say a particular group of sports fans is a cult. And this is not to discount the possibility that any group of like-minded people could develop into a cult. Mine did. But more accurately, we would say that these groups exhibit cultic tendencies or behaviors. 

This is an important distinction because these words carry weight that inaccurately lead to misunderstanding. Part of the problem is that the language we use to define a cult often refers to an organizational structure where a charismatic leader controls a group of people who exhibit extreme beliefs and behavior. But there are many variations in how those beliefs and behaviors manifest, ranging from subtle influence to extreme control. For this reason, it is a constructive exercise to avoid relying on extremes and thinking instead more along the lines of a continuum. This is not unlike the shift currently underway in the study of narcissism, where clinicians now describe narcissists on a spectrum that ranges from mildly self-absorbed to malignant and dangerous. 

In other words, if we could detach from using the word “cult” to describe a “thing” and move toward ‘cultish’ as a term that describes harmful behavior and unhealthy interaction, we open up a whole new way to talk about relationship. Cult, as a noun, is too limiting to accurately describe the full spectrum of unhealthy power dynamics that occur in cultic relationships. Not all controlling, manipulative behavior falls under the category of a full-blown cult. But it does exist everywhere, at different levels, which is why I find it useful to use cultish as an adjective to discuss various beliefs and behaviors that are not quite so extreme, but destructive and corrosive, nonetheless. 

The mechanisms extreme cultic groups use to recruit, retain, and control their members are not unique to these groups. In fact, these methods borrow from structures that predate them by centuries. They operate in plain sight, every day, in ways that most of us have never thought to examine through this lens. I refer to this as a ‘cultiverse’ that surrounds everyone without them realizing it.

This I learned the hard way from living inside one of these structures for twenty years of my life.

In my case, when the group wanted to ensure my loyalty, they did not argue with me to sway my beliefs. Rather, they changed my behavior first. My diet. My daily routine. My social circle. They even relabeled everyone inside with nicknames which effectively detached us from our very identity - from the person we were before. They rebuilt the architecture of my daily life and watched my convictions reorganize themselves around this new structure. A structure that was never mine. It was theirs.

Acclaimed author Robert Cialdini referred to this mechanism as the law of consistency in his best-selling book, Influence. By the time I believed the group’s "teachings," the behavioral foundation for that belief had already been set so thoroughly that my commitment to the group’s belief system and way of life felt like an independent choice.

Cialdini called this mechanism ‘behavioral modification preceding belief.’ It is not unique to cultic organizations or their leaders. It is a technique found in advertising, military training, religious initiation rites, and the entire history of institutional socialization.

Advertising does this every time it tells you that you are insufficient as you are and then offers you the product that will make you more acceptable. The wound and the remedy are sold together. The vulnerability is identified and then the solution is offered back to you as a product you need to purchase.

Military training does this when it systematically dismantles individual identity: the name, the clothes, the hair, the civilian self, and replaces it with institutional identity. This is not inherently corrupt. There are genuine reasons why the cohesion required in combat is built upon the foundation of shared identity and sacrifice. But the mechanism is the mechanism. Understanding it is not condemnation of the people who use it or the purpose it serves. Rather it is a tool to help us frame situations where the outlines of our sense of self are blurred at the hands of another person or institution.

Political rhetoric does this when it divides the world into dualistic thinking like “us” and “them,” loyal and disloyal, patriot and enemy, believer and heretic, and makes belonging to the group contingent on accepting that binary position without question. The price of membership in this way of thinking requires you to surrender your ability to assess the complexity of the world around you. Stated simply, you are incentivized to abandon your own critical thinking in order to feel accepted by the group.

The trademark of a cultic framework is that it turns your own better nature into the lever of coercion. The goal of any abusive strategy is to exploit one's desire to be good. This is not unique to cults. This form of manipulation is in our daily lives and potentially inherent to any interaction between two or more human beings. 

It is the relationship where love keeps moving out of reach. The workplace where loyalty is demanded but never reciprocated. The community where belonging is conditional upon a conformity that keeps changing. The media environment, which is engineered to keep you uncertain, outraged, and afraid in order to control the collective thoughts and behaviors of the public. To be clear, these are not cults, per se. But they are using a cultic playbook, and you cannot protect yourself from a game you cannot name, or for that matter, a book you cannot read.

Cultic mechanisms, whether deployed by a cultic leader, a political party, an advertising agency, or any other institution, work by finding those needs and inserting themselves as the exclusive source of supply to satisfy those needs. You can belong here, but only on these terms. You can have approval here, but only if you continue to perform at the required level. You can gain certainty and clarity here, but only if you stop asking the questions that challenge the narrative.

What all of these mechanisms share is the weaponization of our morality, emotions, and noble inclinations, which are then exploited and used against us. Every human being wants to belong. Every human being needs approval. Every human being needs a framework for making sense of a world that is genuinely complex and frequently frightening. These are not weaknesses. They are the vulnerabilities that come with being human.

The difference between an institution that uses these mechanisms responsibly and one that uses them predatorily is not the mechanism itself. It is the direction in which the mechanism moves. Does it ultimately expand your capacity to think, choose, and belong more fully to your own life? Or does it gradually narrow your world until the institution and its approval are the only things left that you care about?

That question is worth asking about every significant institution – and relationship - in your life. Not with paranoia, but with the specific, grounded clarity that comes from understanding how these mechanisms work.

To protect ourselves from those who abuse these mechanisms, we need a shared language. Not because I want to pathologize all power or treat all authority as predatory, but because terms like mind control, cultic dynamics and brainwashing are used to refer to people who find themselves in some remote compound, where there is a charismatic leader with a zealous following. The perception among the masses is that these mechanisms only affect ‘other people’ in unusual circumstances. Not you or me. 

The issue is that if we don’t understand the words being used, we can’t employ them, and as a result, conversations can't happen, help can't be found, and problems can't be fixed. Until we have a shared nomenclature that accurately identifies and describes these dynamics, we will struggle to heal. Otherwise, we cannot escape a prison we do not know we are in. And we cannot navigate a situation we do not have words to describe.