Originally posted by Draklar
Originally posted by zanzibar
You cannot make such a statement about members of cults without saying the same thing about every member of every mainstream religion, including all forms of Christianity.
Why every member now? One of disadvantages of mainstream religions is that some of their members don\'t even know anything about it, thus not really seeking moral solutions.
And no, you\'re wrong. Cults have different kind of relations between members. Have much more \'agressive\' way of gaining members, mainstream religions are often very passive (nowadays, since it\'s no longer legal to go somewhere and slay all who won\'t join). Oh, and cults performing mass suicide is a good example why cults are more so.
There have been cults who have performed acts of mass suicide, who have performed horribly violent acts, who are aggressive and misleading in recruitment (the oakland family division of the unification church for example), but they are the vast
minority of new religious movements in America. Just like it\'s the vast
minority of followers of mainstream religion who exercise similar practices.
The point is that if you\'re going to label all cult members equally, then you must also label all members of mainstream religions equally within similar criteria.
Originally posted by Draklar
To turn more on-topic,
is there anything that makes this cult... a cult. And not like \"Oh, hey look! I\'m in a cult of some sort! Heh, I forgot.\"
Sloppily copied from my notes, a modern sociological list of cult characteristics:
1. Cults are primarily concerned with satisfying the needs and desires of members.
2. Cult leaders lay claim to esoteric knowledge which was lost, repressed or discovered -- the knowledge is special, the leaders are the sole possessers of it, and the knowledge has secretive treatment or secret qualities.
3. Cults offer some more direct kind of ecstatic or transfiguring experience than mainstream religious traditions.
4. Cults are focused on a charismatic leader, and as a result they\'re subject to disintegration when the leader dies or becomes discredited.
5. Cults are loosly organized and no systemiatic orientation to broader society is adopted; cults are in a constant state of flux.
And none of this is off topic. Why? Because this is useful for forming new guilds within RP if you want them to have realistic cultish elements and structure. Also, it\'s interesting to note that most guilds on planeshift are already cultish in structure and behaviour according to the criteria I listed. I think for RP purposes, the cult of S. might benefit from the academic literature on the subject.
So there, we were on-topic all along. :-D
