Research Application

Rajneeshpuram

• I need to know more about kids who are raised in cults. My protagonist is someone who got out.

• I need some kind of impending doom event and a cult’s misaligned beliefs about how to prevent it.

• Need more information about the psychology of what happens in a cult commune.

• I don’t think I want the cult in my story to get to the scale that this cult reached. 500,000 people is a LOT. But I do think there is something to be learned from this cult about how they managed to hide their insidious stuff. I like the idea of the cult secrets being discovered by someone snooping through the garbage at the dump.

• I also like the idea of a cult leader being a figurehead and the cult being run by someone who can deflect accountability.

• Starting to see some abuse of vulnerable parties that might be applicable to storyline. Could incorporate medicating cult members who are not easily manipulated.

• Feels like sexual abuse is an inherent part of cult dynamics, will need to consider how in depth I want to get with that. Tricky because I don’t want to misrepresent any sexualities in my world building for a fictional cult. I also think a lot of cults abuse the concept of polyamory, don’t want to contribute to harmful narratives. Maybe part of what the protagonist learns in her adulthood is healthy sexuality. How to respect yourself and others, how to communicate, how to set boundaries, how to define what you like and don’t like, etc.

• Protagonist is someone who got out of the cult in early adulthood, but the cult will have been well established by then. Will need to look at how I shape the cult’s history so it originates from a seemingly logical / rational place and evolved into something awful over time. No one joins a cult with the intent of harming themselves or others lol, they’re usually people who are lost and looking for a savior. Her family will have joined the cult when it was in its early days, like this group who just wanted to meditate and bang each other and live off the grid lol. But then as more people join and there’s less oversight into how people communicate, how people treat each other, checks and balances of power, etc. the cult evolves into something violent and dangerous.

• I don’t know if I want the cult in my story to be so outwardly aggressive - it will have to last long enough for the protagonist to grow up, realize she wants out, and then get out. And then the cult will still need to exist long after her departure. The Rajneeshpuram cult garnered a lot of attention which brought them under scrutiny and quickened the pace of their decline. The cult in my story will be violent and toxic but only internally, they’ll maintain a positive image to the public. The general public will be aware of them and not trust them but have no real reason to shut them down.

• Definitely going to need some sort of doomsday event but the catch will be that it’s real. The cult accidentally got that right, and the protagonist will see it coming. The cult’s practices and abuse and violence will all be unwarranted but their fear of a doomsday event will be valid.

• Definitely going to use the idea that there’s someone trained in medicine in the cult that uses poison to control and manipulate people.

• The cult members need to be victims in the way these Rajneeshees were - ignorant and vulnerable people who are easily led. The cult is run by bad people and they manipulate the vulnerable to accomplish awful shit.

• Definitely need a leader and a spokesperson.

• Whew. Alright well. I don’t know how much of this last episode is really applicable, I don’t think I’m going to be dissolving the cult in my story. And I definitely don’t intend to get into a media circus / legal battle dynamic in the story. It’ll be about the protagonist, her figuring out her place in the world, and her making sense of spirituality in the face of a real threat.

• This last episode gave me insight into human nature and personalities, that will be useful in creating characters in the cult. Especially the differences in personality between cult leaders and cult members.

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Branch Davidians

• Useful to show the extremes cult members are willing to go to defend their beliefs and their leader, definitely establishes the foundation for building an air of fanaticism in a cult community.

• Can draw on the dynamic between parents and kids as inspiration for story

• Cult leader will definitely be mentally ill. Could have OCD? Part of the rules of the cult would be making his/her compulsions into expectations for cult members. And that would lend credibility to the severity of the rules, because the compulsions are intended to soothe whatever anxiety he/she has about spirituality. Whatever their mental illness is won’t be flat out stated but I’ll need to make sure I have a solid understanding of the symptoms and patterns of behavior of the diagnosis so it can be accurately represented. Also, will need to convey it in a way that shows that he/she is a victim of their mental illness because it is untreated. This won’t justify their behavior in the cult, but will definitely make this a more realistic portrayal of the complex psychological dynamics present in cults.

• Will have some kind of “mighty men” army in the cult

• Will use the beliefs about children being the future, ironic in how the cult abuses kids.

• I don’t anticipate there being a showdown with police in the novel. I want the irony of the cult to be that they got their doomsday prediction correct kind of by accident, and it’s something the entire world is going to have to navigate. The cult’s way of living will not be justified by their prediction being correct, it’ll be more like they happened to stumble upon a cause-and-effect that they don’t fully understand. So I guess there could potentially be a showdown if they try to warn people about what’s going to happen and society at large just sees them as being nuts and they don’t understand that there’s an odd grain of truth to what they say.

• If I do end up doing a police standoff, this is a good example of how negotiations could go wrong. The Branch Davidians seemed to be willing to negotiate, to an extent, and that was ruined by aggressive escalation from the FBI / HRT.

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Heaven’s Gate

• Seems like the major cults rely on the basic beliefs of another large religion, they work off the foundation of an existing belief system as an avenue for creating their own fanatics. I don’t believe they do this intentionally, I think they are unwell and truly believe it themselves. So the cult leader in my story will need to be like this - truly trying to figure out their purpose and meaning, just misguided and dangerous in how they go about it. There will also need to be some foundational connection to a larger religious or spiritual belief system. I’ll have to think about that more, I’m not sure I want to attack Christianity in my novel and I don’t know much about other religious systems outside of what I’m learning in this cult research.

• Check partners in the cult for sure. Also showing the human side of empathizing with each other’s difficulty following rules while maintaining unrealistic and unhealthy expectations within the cult.

• Like the idea of only certain people being allowed outside to hide the true numbers living in the mansion. Could find a way to apply this.

• There will need to be some evolutions of the cult’s ideology according to unexpected hardships. All of this will have to have happened before the protagonist is old enough to leave the cult. Maybe this information will come out in a chapter where she explains her experience of the cult to friends in the outside world once she’s established and living a healthy life. **The cult in the story needs to have a realistic explanation but doesn’t have to be fully developed to the extent cults like Heaven’s Gate was, the story isn’t about the cult. It’s about her experience of navigating life after the cult and trying to deprogram herself when there appears to be evidence suggesting that the cult was correct in their predictions. **Maybe need to do some research into cult deprogramming

• This is really helpful in describing someone’s experience trying to leave a cult. This will be useful in portraying the protagonist’s inner battles, especially with doubting herself when she identifies something as being unsafe or unhealthy.

• Part of what I’ll need to do in the story is come up with a reinvention of the main character. The story will take place once she’s done with her transition into her adult life in the outside world, but I’ll need to be able to show flashbacks to her daily experience of the cult and who she was back then.

• The protagonist will need to be intelligent but struggle with self doubt. This story will almost be a bildungsroman but she’ll be fully grown - it’ll be like a psychological exploration of her development of self when her understanding of the world outside of the cult is shaken.

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Dinklage Docuseries

• Tactic: Embrace Your Calling

  • Successful cult leaders claim (and sometimes believe) they are larger than life.

  • They usually demonstrate early childhood traits of narcissism and manipulation of others

• Tactic: Get Your Dogma Down

  • Craft a belief system with yourself at the center

  • “Find some little nugget of truth and make yourself believe in that”

  • Look for a place where you can spend time alone to develop your belief system

  • Types of cults: Self Help Cults / Success Cults / Religious Cults / New Age Cults / Cult of Identity

• Tactic: Craft Your Persona

  • “Cult leaders feed off of their image”

  • You have to be able to show that you are superhuman

  • Figure out the best way to get and keep attention

  • Need charisma - “Your ability to form intimacy, an intimate connection between you and the person you’re speaking to”

    • Charisma overpowers logic, it’s hard to have reasoning and say no to someone when they’re giving you positive attention

• Tactic: Find Your Target Demo

  • People who are susceptible to cult manipulation are: open minded, idealistic, desire to repair the world, young people who are deciding who they want to be outside of their family of origin.

  • Make the targets feel like they are special. They are looking for a chance to belong, to be part of something bigger than themselves, feel like they are part of bettering the world, feel like the cult leader can solve all their problems.

• Tactic: Test People’s Loyalty

  • “The action itself matters a lot less to the cult leader than just knowing that if they tell someone to do something they’ll do it”

• Tactic: Make Noise

  • Become the center of attention in society to draw in more members and fame.

• Tactic: Blow People’s Minds

  • Give people a reason to follow your cult rather than another belief system.

  • Other cult leaders claimed they could levitate, talk to God, heal AIDS and cancer, etc.

  • People can’t feel manipulated because then they’ll leave.

• Tactic: Personalize Your Pitch

  • Find a way to appeal to different demographics.

  • Code Switching!

    • Using different dialects or languages to connect with / influence others

    • Like using “pop” instead of “soda” to show or hide where you’re from"

• Tactic: Make Everyone Chip In

  • Create a community and society for cult members. One way to accomplish this is forcing them into communal living quarters.

  • Give people a common goal to work towards (like community service / outreach / education / etc.)

• Tactic: Expand Your Territory

  • You have to be the biggest prophet if you want to convince people you were their savior.

• Tactic: Always Have Back Up

  • Have a group that will protect the machine of the cult. Keep the secrets and do the dirty work.

• Tactic: Build Your Eden

  • Bring the cult somewhere they will be protected from outside criticism.

• Tactic: Offer Something Exclusive

  • Figure out what your followers want and figure out how to give it to them. Or convince them you can give it to them.

  • It has to be something they can’t get anywhere else, otherwise why would they join a cult?

• Tactic: Demand Service

  • “the more time and effort we put into something, we become more invested emotionally”

• Tactic: Force Conformity

  • Everyone has to look the same - wear the same clothes and have their hair the same way, etc.

  • Lose sense of self and identity / lose confidence / lose ability to question others or disagree

    • Followers who think for themselves might question you and your choices.

• Tactic: Sever Prior Bonds

  • Isolate members from family - restrict communications

• Tactic: Divide and Conquer

  • Don’t allow cult members to create bonds, their allegiance needs to be to the cult leader rather than other members.

• Tactic: Monopolize All Information

  • All info has to go through cult leader / no one gets the full picture

• Tactic: Establish Credibility

  • Cult leader finds a way to prove that they are a conduit of God. They somehow have the answer to the questions that can’t be answered.

• Tactic: Demand Perfection and Purity

  • Not possible - utilizes shame to keep people loyal to the group and continue to attempt perfection

  • Everyone is reinforcing this by striving to follow the rules, it is a closed system with no reality checks from the outside world

• Tactic: Silence Doubt

  • Thought terminating cliche - “That’s all the media’s fault, you can’t trust them” / “Don’t let yourself be ruled by fear” / “maybe you aren’t serious about enlightenment”

• Tactic: Change the Script

  • If a prophecy doesn’t come true, rearrange the “facts” to accommodate the change

  • Invent a doomsday scenario - “It’s much easier to control people when they believe there’s some kind of imminent danger”

• Tactic: Identify A Sign

  • People desperately want to believe that they are part of something bigger, that there is a higher power looking out for them.

• Tactic: Recruit Winners

  • You want the followers to be admired so others will want to join

• Tactic: Model Purity

  • Show that purity exists in you as the leader so members have something to aspire to

• Tactic: Eliminate Dissent

  • Find ways that the belief system could justify the murder of people who are a threat to the group’s secrecy and goals

• Tactic: Seduce The Press

  • The media has to be fed information carefully to keep the cult’s positive image. Cult PR Department / cult purchases of news outlets

• Tactic: Get Political

  • Use political platforms to expand power and influence

• Tactic: Don’t Get Mad, Get Revenge

• Tactic: Pull A Bait And Switch

  • The group has to be secretive about what their actual aim is. The cult gains control a little bit at a time, and ask a little more of the followers gradually. People won’t join if they see the cult’s true purpose from the get-go.

• Tactic: Be A Business, Man

  • You need money for your cult to survive long term

• Tactic: Give ‘Em A Show

  • “Prove” your theology by entertaining and amazing the masses, gather massive crowds and give them a special experience.

• Tactic: Create The Next Generation

  • Followers need to have children who will carry on the belief system

• Tactic: Make Friends in High Places

  • Know how to impress and create trusting relationships with political allies, and be seen with those allies publicly

• Tactic: Become Eternal

  • Figure out how to keep group going even after leader’s death