Name: The Psychology of Cult Members and Fanatics
Uploaded: 2024-02-14T18:42:50.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Psychology of Cult Members and Fanatics' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-02-14. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Psychology of Cult Members and Fanatics' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-02-14. Transcript available.

Nobody has any idea how the world works until they plug into a group and the
group has its
stories that it tells about how the world works, every group has its model of
what a hero is,
and this set of beliefs a hero has. And once we've plugged into that group, we
orient ourselves
towards becoming that person. And you know, cults are interesting because cults
are like,
all human groups are kind of cults, but looser. So every human group is a
status game in the sense
that it's a group of people who believe the same things, and there's sort of
rules for being part
of that group. And the more, the better you become at following those rules and
becoming its ideal
of self, the higher you rise up that status game. The only reason between cult
and a religion and a
business and a political group is just that it's much tighter. So the rules are
much stricter,
like there's a zillion rules, like, you know, I've written before about what
they call the
- what was the cult that they castrated themselves? - Yeah, Heaven's Gate.
Heaven's Gate, that's right. And they had rules even about like how much
toothpaste you're allowed
to put on your toothbrush. They had a rule about exactly how scrambled eggs
were to be cooked,
and the rule was dry but not burnt. So there was a rule about how much water
you put in your bathtub.
- And was the leader, was he castrated as well? - No, he wasn't surprisingly
enough. - Really?
- Yeah, they were called T and Doe. And there he is, T. Yeah, yeah. - Just
imagine you are so low
in your life that you think that's the guy that has all the answers.
Is that a tribal thing? This is what I've always assumed, that that's just some
holdover from when we
were a part of groups of 150 people that needed a leader. And generally that
leader would be some
old warlord. He was probably like 35, like, you know, back then, but had gone
through a lot and was
a strong leader, was someone that you admired as a leader. And maybe in these
tribal times,
that's baked into our DNA. And when someone comes along and speaks confidently,
I am never confident.
I'm never confident. If you're so confident about all these thoughts and about
where, what life is
about and where we're going and what awaits us. And if you follow these rules,
God, that's so confident.
I'm not that confident. So I could get sucked in. Any human could get sucked in,
but is that what it's
from? Is it from tribal times? - Yes and no. So one of the really surprising
things about tribes,
the tribes in which we evolved, is that the idea of the big man is a bit of a
myth. So they were kind of
leaderless. Leaders would bubble up by consensus when, say, we wanted to solve
a particular problem
to do with hunting, then the best hunters would be deferred to. And what do you
think?
But at some point in time, they became leaders. I mean, they've been leaders
for so long.
When we settled down. - When was that? Like agriculture days?
Yeah, it was about 11,000 years ago. - But don't you think that's enough to
bake
it into our DNA? - I don't know. I think what is in our DNA is that idea of, A,
stories. So,
you know, we're storytelling animals. We're thinking stories. Every tribe has
its particular
story about the world. And so we're very good at channeling those stories. And
as I said,
every story has its design of what is a hero. And we try and become that kind
of hero. So that's that
holdover from the tribal day. But more fundamentally, again, it's that brain
question of,
who do I have to be? What do I have to do? Tell me what I have to do in order
to achieve connection and
status. And that's what a cult does. And that's what a charismatic leader does.
It tells you,
this is what you've got to do. These are the rules. This is who you have to
become.
And that's really seductive to us subconsciously because those two things of
connection and status
are so incredibly important to us. - Yeah.
Is it something you think should be taught like very early on? It seems like
this is information
we should get to kids as young as we can. - Yeah.
- So they can recognize these patterns that people fall into. - Absolutely. I've
always thought that
there should be a lesson in school about what is a human? What is the basic
operating system manual for
a human? And these are the mistakes that humans make. Because, as I said, you
know, one of the sort of big
ideas is that we're not particularly interested in the truth. The truth is it
doesn't matter to human
brains. What matters is what do I have to believe in order for people to like
me and respect me?
- Yeah. Well, that's why religions, like even radical religions, are so intoxicating.
Like, you have to be all in. You're part of a very special group. And you all
love each other like
brothers and sisters because you're part of this group. - Yeah. - And you can
come up with some radical ideas
and get people to subscribe to that. Especially if you attach things like death
for people who leave.
- Yeah. - You know? - Yeah, yeah. That's right. - You're operating in some red
line territory.
- Yeah. - Like, that's a wild group. - And the religions and the cults always
do that thing of
offering amazing rewards. - Of course. - At some point in the future. - Bro,
heaven.
- Yeah. - It's the best spot ever. - It's the best ever.
- And the diversion of heaven differs between how bad the place where you live
sucks. - Yeah.
- And it's like, I think there's like, there's like eight and a half billion
people in the world.
And the amount of, I think it's like 500 million atheists. So that just shows
you how many,
just how wired we are to believe basically any old shit we're told to believe
as long as it,
we feel like it's going to get a status and secure connection into a supportive
group.
- We were, I remember during the suicide bomber days when that was something
that was in the news
all the time, they talked about 72 virgins and that these gentlemen thought
that they were going
to get 72 virgins in heaven. Like that is so cultural. - Yeah.
- Like if you offered 72 virgins to a Christian, they'd be like, what the fuck
are you talking about?
I'm not fucking any virgins, you crazy psycho. How old are they? What are you
saying? I'm not a pedophile, dude.
I just like women. What the fuck? You know what I'm saying? It's like, yeah, I'm
not sure how, I mean,
I don't know if that 72 virgins thing is true. - It could be like 21 year old
versions that have been saved
for this moment by the great one. But I think that term is not real. I think
the term 72 virgins is like saying,
how many, you know, how many times have you lost your phone? A fucking million.
It's like that kind
of a, you know, it's not, it's an exaggeration. - But I think the real, I think
the real promise
there though, I mean, the 72 virgins is yeah, but, but I think the real promise
for suicide bombers
is again, it's status. It's like, if you sacrifice your life on behalf of the
group's mission, you're
a hero, you're like a God. And so, so that's the promise. And again, I think it's
a really good
example of how human beings value status over their lives. I mean, that's how
much we value status.
We, we're the only animal that kills ourself, which is just a weird thing in
itself. An animal
would voluntarily end its own life. And very often the reason that people will
kill themselves is
because it's a sudden drop in status or they feel completely isolated and alone.
So it says they're
lacking in those essential kind of psychological resources to such an extent
that they, you know,
in their own lives. And that's how much we value these things. And suicide
bombers are another
manifestation of that. Like, like if you're going to consider me a hero and if
Muhammad is going to
consider me a hero, strap me up, brother, you know, that, that, that, that's
how much that, that's how
crazy we become about these, these social rewards. - God, that is such an
insane belief. It's so insane.
And when the, the most evil thing is when you hear about them talking kids into
doing it.
Yeah. - You know, a young child, you know, you're getting, I mean,
what is the youngest suicide bomber they've ever used? - I don't know.
- Just the idea that you can buy into it so much that you're willing to let
your children go do that.
- Yeah, but it's wild. - It's, it's, it's evil if you think it's this kind of
calculating,
um, uh, kind of mathematical algorithm of advantage, but, but, but they
sincerely believe it.
- Yes. - They really believe it's true.
- Right. - I mean, you know, I've been,
as a, when I, before I was an author, I was a journalist, I've been meeting
kind of crazy people,
including Nazis, um, as part of my journalistic career. That's one of the
things that always
strikes me is that they, they really believe it. So it's not even in the sense
that, um,
they, that they're doing anything calculating by talking their children to
being suicide bombers.
They think they're doing something heroic. They think they're doing something
amazing.
- Yeah. - As did the Nazis, as did the communists.
- As, yeah, as does the KKK. - Yeah.
- People, they can fall into belief structures and they, they don't necessarily
have to make sense.
But if they find enough supportive people around them that also believe that,
then it becomes part of their tribe identity. - Yeah.
- And it can get, it can be really stupid.
- Yeah. - It can be really stupid.
We're fucking way more vulnerable than we would like to believe.
That's one of the things that I was saying, like when I watched those cult
documentaries,
part of me is like, thank God I didn't run into those people.
Thank God. - Yeah.
- They would have got me. - And when they look at the psychology of people
that are vulnerable to falling into cults, it's very often people that have
struggled to
fit into the status games of ordinary life. - Yeah.
- So they've got, the family hasn't worked, the job hasn't worked. - Exactly.
- The hobbies haven't worked. So they've got no identity. They've got no tribe.
So they're really vulnerable to these cults, which, because what cults offer is
absolute certainty.
- Yeah. - If you cook your scrambled eggs this way,
if you only put two inches of water in your bath, you're going to, you know,
the UFOs will come down
and they're going to take you to the level above. That's what they were
offering to you though.
The level above human. - You have to wear the Nikes though.
Remember you have to wear the purple Nikes? - Yeah, that's right.
And there's this crazy memoir of one of the guys who was in this group who he
cut,
he didn't, he didn't cut his own balls off. He left before the ball cutting,
but he was, but he was jealous.
Like, like he wanted to have his balls cut and there was only, there was only
one person that could
have it done in the beginning. And they flipped a coin and he was really
annoyed that he lost the coin flip.
- Oh my God. - But what was interesting about his memoir was he said that
people talk about brainwashing in cults.
People talk about how we were forced to follow these rules, but we wanted to
follow the rules.
Like not following the rules would be like being a NASA astronaut and just not
caring about how the space shuttle works, you know?
So they're not, they don't consider themselves brainwashed. They consider
themselves, well, they're just in a status game.
Like any other status game. It's just a very, very strict one. - Right.
Well, that's why, you know, one of the fascinating things about some cults is
that they use very bizarre language and that they all agree to it.
They have like specific terms that they say, like doesn't Scientologists, they'll
call people.
They have like an abbreviation for someone who's like a hostile person. What is
it that they do?
Because I remember someone was explaining to me, someone who left the church
was explaining to me how,
like if someone would be hostile, you have like a very specific way you
describe them and that they all
do it in the group. - Suppressive persons. - Suppressive persons. Yes. You're a
suppressive person.
Or potential trouble sources. - Dude, I ordered Dianetics in like 1994.
I had just moved to LA and I thought it was a self-help book. I was like, all
right. Yeah.
Fucking look at it. Your brain's going to explode. You got to get your shit
together.
Look at all these people that are succeeding on Dianetics, you know? I was 26
or whatever it was.
So I ordered this book and they've never stopped sending me things. - Oh no.
I mean, they fucking never stopped sending me things. - Was there ever a point
when you thought,
hang on a minute, this is quite interesting? - No. All right.
No, no. Once I realized it was Scientology, I was like, oh, Dianetics is Scientology?
Yeah. - I was like, okay. But then part of me was like,
damn, a lot of these Scientologists are doing really well in Hollywood.
It's like, maybe that's a good cult to join. - Yeah.
Yeah. - Maybe if they just let me be me.
Because it seems like that was part of it. There was a big allure over how many
successful people were following that religion.
I mean, some of the most successful actors, Tom Cruise is one of the most
successful actors of all time.
And he's literally the poster boy for that. - Yeah, that's right.
Somebody was saying to me the other day that they thought that actors were
particularly susceptible to Scientology
because they've got this weird, they don't really have an identity actors.
They were always sort of slipping into everybody at different people's
identities.
I thought that was an interesting kind of theory. - Especially if you're really
good.
Yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You probably lose who the fuck you are. Who am I? Am I Rocky?
Am I the Mission Impossible guy? - Yeah, exactly.
Well, when they're walking around, everybody treats them that way.
I'm sure they treat Stallone like he's Rocky and, you know.
You got to give respect to Tom Cruise, though, because Tom Cruise is like 60
years old,
and he still does his own stunts, including jumping a motorcycle off a cliff.
Yeah.
That's how much he believes in this stuff.
But that's why these groups are kind of functional as well.
It's like I kind of have a weird kind of sympathy.
I grew up in a very strict Catholic household with very strict Catholic parents.
And I was very, I hated it. I was very rebellious as a teenager.
And I guess in my 20s and 30s, I was very, very atheist and, you know, hated
religion.
But then I kind of did a lot of this research and once you accept that what
humans
need to be healthy psychologically and physically is connection and status,
you see that that's actually what religion provides people.
That's what religion provides my parents, is that they're connected into a
community
and they feel important.
Yeah.
They feel they're good Catholics because my dad conducts the choir and,
you know, this, that, and the other.
And so that's invaluable.
That's what humans need to survive.
And in our, you know, in the current world, in the huge populations in which we
live,
it's very hard to feel securely connected.
I mean, as you said a moment ago, the tribes in which we evolved were very
small,
like 30 to 50 people.
So it's quite easy to feel securely connected.
It was quite easy in that environment to feel important, like valued by other
people.
I mean, probably that it was not rare in the tribe to feel invaluable.
Like you're needed because everybody was needed.
There wasn't many people around to find the tubers and catch the rabbits or
whatever.
But in this day and age, in these huge groups in which we belong to it,
it's much harder to feel relative status because you're competing with millions
of people,
especially online.
So, and I think that's a source of a huge amount of sort of misery in the
modern world.
It's stress, it's sort of, I call it identity anxiety, you know, identity
stress.
We feel really unsatisfied with the amount of connection and status that we
have because
we exist in these fucking massive international tribes now.

The Psychology of Cult Members and Fanatics

Nobody has any idea how the world works until they plug into a group and the
group has its
stories that it tells about how the world works, every group has its model of
what a hero is,
and this set of beliefs a hero has. And once we've plugged into that group, we
orient ourselves
towards becoming that person. And you know, cults are interesting because cults
are like,
all human groups are kind of cults, but looser. So every human group is a
status game in the sense
that it's a group of people who believe the same things, and there's sort of
rules for being part
of that group. And the more, the better you become at following those rules and
becoming its ideal
of self, the higher you rise up that status game. The only reason between cult
and a religion and a
business and a political group is just that it's much tighter. So the rules are
much stricter,
like there's a zillion rules, like, you know, I've written before about what
they call the
- what was the cult that they castrated themselves? - Yeah, Heaven's Gate.
Heaven's Gate, that's right. And they had rules even about like how much
toothpaste you're allowed
to put on your toothbrush. They had a rule about exactly how scrambled eggs
were to be cooked,
and the rule was dry but not burnt. So there was a rule about how much water
you put in your bathtub.
- And was the leader, was he castrated as well? - No, he wasn't surprisingly
enough. - Really?
- Yeah, they were called T and Doe. And there he is, T. Yeah, yeah. - Just
imagine you are so low
in your life that you think that's the guy that has all the answers.
Is that a tribal thing? This is what I've always assumed, that that's just some
holdover from when we
were a part of groups of 150 people that needed a leader. And generally that
leader would be some
old warlord. He was probably like 35, like, you know, back then, but had gone
through a lot and was
a strong leader, was someone that you admired as a leader. And maybe in these
tribal times,
that's baked into our DNA. And when someone comes along and speaks confidently,
I am never confident.
I'm never confident. If you're so confident about all these thoughts and about
where, what life is
about and where we're going and what awaits us. And if you follow these rules,
God, that's so confident.
I'm not that confident. So I could get sucked in. Any human could get sucked in,
but is that what it's
from? Is it from tribal times? - Yes and no. So one of the really surprising
things about tribes,
the tribes in which we evolved, is that the idea of the big man is a bit of a
myth. So they were kind of
leaderless. Leaders would bubble up by consensus when, say, we wanted to solve
a particular problem
to do with hunting, then the best hunters would be deferred to. And what do you
think?
But at some point in time, they became leaders. I mean, they've been leaders
for so long.
When we settled down. - When was that? Like agriculture days?
Yeah, it was about 11,000 years ago. - But don't you think that's enough to
bake
it into our DNA? - I don't know. I think what is in our DNA is that idea of, A,
stories. So,
you know, we're storytelling animals. We're thinking stories. Every tribe has
its particular
story about the world. And so we're very good at channeling those stories. And
as I said,
every story has its design of what is a hero. And we try and become that kind
of hero. So that's that
holdover from the tribal day. But more fundamentally, again, it's that brain
question of,
who do I have to be? What do I have to do? Tell me what I have to do in order
to achieve connection and
status. And that's what a cult does. And that's what a charismatic leader does.
It tells you,
this is what you've got to do. These are the rules. This is who you have to
become.
And that's really seductive to us subconsciously because those two things of
connection and status
are so incredibly important to us. - Yeah.
Is it something you think should be taught like very early on? It seems like
this is information
we should get to kids as young as we can. - Yeah.
- So they can recognize these patterns that people fall into. - Absolutely. I've
always thought that
there should be a lesson in school about what is a human? What is the basic
operating system manual for
a human? And these are the mistakes that humans make. Because, as I said, you
know, one of the sort of big
ideas is that we're not particularly interested in the truth. The truth is it
doesn't matter to human
brains. What matters is what do I have to believe in order for people to like
me and respect me?
- Yeah. Well, that's why religions, like even radical religions, are so intoxicating.
Like, you have to be all in. You're part of a very special group. And you all
love each other like
brothers and sisters because you're part of this group. - Yeah. - And you can
come up with some radical ideas
and get people to subscribe to that. Especially if you attach things like death
for people who leave.
- Yeah. - You know? - Yeah, yeah. That's right. - You're operating in some red
line territory.
- Yeah. - Like, that's a wild group. - And the religions and the cults always
do that thing of
offering amazing rewards. - Of course. - At some point in the future. - Bro,
heaven.
- Yeah. - It's the best spot ever. - It's the best ever.
- And the diversion of heaven differs between how bad the place where you live
sucks. - Yeah.
- And it's like, I think there's like, there's like eight and a half billion
people in the world.
And the amount of, I think it's like 500 million atheists. So that just shows
you how many,
just how wired we are to believe basically any old shit we're told to believe
as long as it,
we feel like it's going to get a status and secure connection into a supportive
group.
- We were, I remember during the suicide bomber days when that was something
that was in the news
all the time, they talked about 72 virgins and that these gentlemen thought
that they were going
to get 72 virgins in heaven. Like that is so cultural. - Yeah.
- Like if you offered 72 virgins to a Christian, they'd be like, what the fuck
are you talking about?
I'm not fucking any virgins, you crazy psycho. How old are they? What are you
saying? I'm not a pedophile, dude.
I just like women. What the fuck? You know what I'm saying? It's like, yeah, I'm
not sure how, I mean,
I don't know if that 72 virgins thing is true. - It could be like 21 year old
versions that have been saved
for this moment by the great one. But I think that term is not real. I think
the term 72 virgins is like saying,
how many, you know, how many times have you lost your phone? A fucking million.
It's like that kind
of a, you know, it's not, it's an exaggeration. - But I think the real, I think
the real promise
there though, I mean, the 72 virgins is yeah, but, but I think the real promise
for suicide bombers
is again, it's status. It's like, if you sacrifice your life on behalf of the
group's mission, you're
a hero, you're like a God. And so, so that's the promise. And again, I think it's
a really good
example of how human beings value status over their lives. I mean, that's how
much we value status.
We, we're the only animal that kills ourself, which is just a weird thing in
itself. An animal
would voluntarily end its own life. And very often the reason that people will
kill themselves is
because it's a sudden drop in status or they feel completely isolated and alone.
So it says they're
lacking in those essential kind of psychological resources to such an extent
that they, you know,
in their own lives. And that's how much we value these things. And suicide
bombers are another
manifestation of that. Like, like if you're going to consider me a hero and if
Muhammad is going to
consider me a hero, strap me up, brother, you know, that, that, that, that's
how much that, that's how
crazy we become about these, these social rewards. - God, that is such an
insane belief. It's so insane.
And when the, the most evil thing is when you hear about them talking kids into
doing it.
Yeah. - You know, a young child, you know, you're getting, I mean,
what is the youngest suicide bomber they've ever used? - I don't know.
- Just the idea that you can buy into it so much that you're willing to let
your children go do that.
- Yeah, but it's wild. - It's, it's, it's evil if you think it's this kind of
calculating,
um, uh, kind of mathematical algorithm of advantage, but, but, but they
sincerely believe it.
- Yes. - They really believe it's true.
- Right. - I mean, you know, I've been,
as a, when I, before I was an author, I was a journalist, I've been meeting
kind of crazy people,
including Nazis, um, as part of my journalistic career. That's one of the
things that always
strikes me is that they, they really believe it. So it's not even in the sense
that, um,
they, that they're doing anything calculating by talking their children to
being suicide bombers.
They think they're doing something heroic. They think they're doing something
amazing.
- Yeah. - As did the Nazis, as did the communists.
- As, yeah, as does the KKK. - Yeah.
- People, they can fall into belief structures and they, they don't necessarily
have to make sense.
But if they find enough supportive people around them that also believe that,
then it becomes part of their tribe identity. - Yeah.
- And it can get, it can be really stupid.
- Yeah. - It can be really stupid.
We're fucking way more vulnerable than we would like to believe.
That's one of the things that I was saying, like when I watched those cult
documentaries,
part of me is like, thank God I didn't run into those people.
Thank God. - Yeah.
- They would have got me. - And when they look at the psychology of people
that are vulnerable to falling into cults, it's very often people that have
struggled to
fit into the status games of ordinary life. - Yeah.
- So they've got, the family hasn't worked, the job hasn't worked. - Exactly.
- The hobbies haven't worked. So they've got no identity. They've got no tribe.
So they're really vulnerable to these cults, which, because what cults offer is
absolute certainty.
- Yeah. - If you cook your scrambled eggs this way,
if you only put two inches of water in your bath, you're going to, you know,
the UFOs will come down
and they're going to take you to the level above. That's what they were
offering to you though.
The level above human. - You have to wear the Nikes though.
Remember you have to wear the purple Nikes? - Yeah, that's right.
And there's this crazy memoir of one of the guys who was in this group who he
cut,
he didn't, he didn't cut his own balls off. He left before the ball cutting,
but he was, but he was jealous.
Like, like he wanted to have his balls cut and there was only, there was only
one person that could
have it done in the beginning. And they flipped a coin and he was really
annoyed that he lost the coin flip.
- Oh my God. - But what was interesting about his memoir was he said that
people talk about brainwashing in cults.
People talk about how we were forced to follow these rules, but we wanted to
follow the rules.
Like not following the rules would be like being a NASA astronaut and just not
caring about how the space shuttle works, you know?
So they're not, they don't consider themselves brainwashed. They consider
themselves, well, they're just in a status game.
Like any other status game. It's just a very, very strict one. - Right.
Well, that's why, you know, one of the fascinating things about some cults is
that they use very bizarre language and that they all agree to it.
They have like specific terms that they say, like doesn't Scientologists, they'll
call people.
They have like an abbreviation for someone who's like a hostile person. What is
it that they do?
Because I remember someone was explaining to me, someone who left the church
was explaining to me how,
like if someone would be hostile, you have like a very specific way you
describe them and that they all
do it in the group. - Suppressive per