[ot][spam] Partial Book Experience: Robert Lifton, Losing R / Cults, Cultism, Zealotry

[Undescribed Horrific Abuse, One Victim & Survivor of Many]

Introduction:
On the Ownership of Reality

I have long been concerned with those who claim ownership of the minds
of others. And also with those who come to offer their minds to such
would-be owners through whatever combination of voluntary
self-surrender and psychological and physical coercion. I've come to
recognize that the mental predators are concerned not only with
individual minds but with the ownership of reality itself. I've been
able to study a number of such mental predators, whether as leaders of
extremist political movements or fanatical religious cults, or as
purveyors of self-generated or solipsistic reality, as is the case
with Donald Trump.

The general tendency among observers has been to identify two separate
groups of mental predators. The first group is characterized by
ideological totalism, an all-or-none set of ideas that claim nothing
less than absolute truth and equally absolute virtue. A clear example
here is Chinese Communist thought reform. The second group consists of
what we generally call cults, which form sealed-off communities where
reality can be dispensed and controlled. Ideological totalism suggests
a system of ideas projected outward with the claim of providing
solutions to all human problems. Cults, in contrast, turn inward as
they follow a sacralized omniscient guru whose extreme version of
reality dominates the minds of individual followers.

I myself held to that dichotomy until I encountered much that called
it into question. I came to realize that ideological totalism and
cultlike behavior not only blend with each other but tend to be part
of a single entity.

I was jolted into that recognition by members of cults (such as the
Unification Church) who embraced a particular chapter in my book on
Chinese thought reform that described the psychological themes of
ideological totalism. Beginning in the late 1970s[1], "Chapter 22"
became a kind of underground documnt for many who were questioning or
leaving cults because it seemed to express quite specifically what
they had been subjected to in their own extremist environment. This
strongly suggested that totalism and cultlike behavior are not
separate entities but part of a common constellation.

Thus, totalistic movements like the Maoist version of Communism can
include powerful gurus like Mao himself as well as sealed-off
communities; and cults like Aum Shinrikyō -- the fanatical Japanese
group that released deadly sarin gas in Tokyo subways trains in 1995
-- can become notably totalistic and seek to impose their bizarre view
of reality on the outside world. That is, totalistic movements are
cultlike and cults are totalistic. In this book I will refer to that
totalistic/cultlike constellation as cultist or cultism.

For instance, Chinese Communist thought reform, in its many versions
including its violent extension into the Cultural Revolution of the
late 1960s, is a systematic effort at political purification of
individual minds and a quintessential example of ideological totalism.
But it also has included a deification of the person and words of Mao
Zedong as not only a political but an all-enveloping guru. During the
1950s, and in the late 1960s, thought reform was applied everywhere in
Chinese society as part of a vast inward turning in an attempt to form
a purified national community of hundreds of millions of people. I was
fortunate to encounter thought reform early in my work because it
sensitized me to a particularly dangerous proclivity of the human mind
for extremism, or what I now would call cultism. I have repeatedly
encountered that proclivity in the destructive behavior I studied over
the course of a lifetime of research.

Aum Shinrikyō, with its religious fanaticism and closed,
guru-dominated community bent on spiritual purification, is the
quintessential version of a cult. Yet from its beginnings, Aum's
actions and behavior were intensely totalistic, and over time the guru
and his followers sought to impose the cult's bizarre communal reality
onto the larger society. Thus, divergent groups can be closely related
psychologically in their shared cultism, their combination of the
totalistic and cultic.

The excerpts in this book come from my earlier research and include
work on Chinese Communist thought reform, the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution, Aum Shinrikyō, the "eight deadly sins" of
ideological totalism, the Nazi movement and the overall psychology of
genocide, and Donald Trump and his followers. The destructiveness and
violence described in these excerpts are fueled by intense cultism. A
final excerpt on what I call the "protean self" and "proteanism"
suggests an alternative to cultism.

I will discuss some of the history of the word "cult" in a later
chapter, but there is no doubt that in our time it has become
pejorative. So much so that there has been a contemporary battle over
terminology: "cult" versus "new religion." One can understand the
insistence of many that, since "cult" is a derogatory term, the more
neutral (though I would say, not entirely neutral) term "new religion"
should be used instead. From as far back as the 1970s, I could hear
the most articulate version of each position from two of my friends,
each of whom I greatly respected. Harvey Cox, the venturesome[2] and
creative theologian, had considerable sympathy for many of the groups,
even to the point of trying out their methods of worship, and insisted
that fair treatment required calling them "new religions." Margaret
Singer, the talented psychologist[3] I'd also known for decades, wrote
extensively about "cults" and their dangers. She had worked with
hundreds of former cult members until her death in 2003, had become a
leading figure in the anti-cult movement, and had to have special
security arrangements at her home because of threats she had received
from cultic fanatics.

I have insisted upon retaining the word "cult" for groups that meet
three criteria: first, a shift in worship from broad spiritual ideas
to the person of a charismatic guru; second, the active pursuit of a
thought reform-like process that frequently stresses some kind of
merger with the guru; and third, extensive exploitation from above (by
the guru and leading disciples) -- whether economic, sexual, or
psychological -- of the idealism of ordinary followers from below.

Apocalypticism

In my work on cultism I have been struck by the significance of
end-of-the-world visions[4], of apocalypse in the service of
all-encompassing purification. That sense of apocalypse turns out to
be present in extremist political movements no less than in extremist
religious cults. Indeed, much of the fuel for the cultist engine is
provided by a strong emotional commitment to apocalyptic world
purification. At the forefront of such all-encompassing purification
is a survivor remnant consisting mainly of members of the particular
group, religious or political, making the apocalyptic claim. When Mao
Zedong anticipated a nuclear war brought about by the "imperialists,"
the Maoist survivors would create a new civilization "thousands of
times higher than the capitalist system and a truly beautiful future
for themselves[5]."

With Aum Shinrikyō, members' "mystical experiences" included images of
the world ending and of a remnant of survivors consisting of the guru
and a few followers. Aum also practiced a form of apocalyptic
activism: of joining in the violence thought necessary to bring about
an Armageddon that would usher in a purified world. That kind of
"proactive" violence is always possible in a group strongly focused on
a world-ending narrative.

Recent cultist expressions are a modern phenomenon that makes use of
very modern components. Aum Shinrikyō, for instance, directly
connected its vision of Armageddon with a strategy of recruiting
scientists to construct the weaponry necessary to help bring it about.
The assumption was that science could be enlisted to carry out the
group's ultimate spiritual project. Similarly, political movements
such as fascism and communism call forth their cultism by mobilizing
their elaborate state apparatus and making use of trained
professionals. Jeffrey Herf, a historian[6] of the Nazi movement, has
referred to the phenomenon of "reactionary modernism," by which he
means the embrace of modern structures and techniques for conducting
an anti-modern crusade. This could involve "great enthusiasm for
modern technology and a rejection of the Enlightenment and the values
and institutions of liberal democracy."

With the Nazi movement, the scientific claim was so intense and
hyperbolic that a Nazi doctor I interviewed told me how he joined the
Party immediately after hearing one of its leaders declare: "National
Socialism is nothing but applied biology." That ostensibly scientific
claim was, at its root, an expression of deep Nazi cultism, of the
most deadly form of biological mysticism ever brought into practice.

There are striking parallels among the political purification of
Chinese Communist thought reform, the spiritual purification of Aum
Shinrikyō, and the biological purification of Nazi ideology and
behavior. That biological purification, the essence of Nazi cultism,
rendered the Nazis a genocidal regime. Genocide itself can be
understood as the purification of the world by means of eliminating a
racial, ethnic, or political contaminant.

In Aum Shinrikyō, the central mission was that of overcoming universal
"defilement," and since the guru alone was completely pure, followers
could only purify themselves by merging with him or becoming his
"clones." In this way the guru assumes the role of a tyrant who has to
be, in effect, "the last man to remain alive[7]."

Owning Reality

That kind of purification is at the heart of the cultist phenomenon
and is central to the quest for ownership of reality. As part of the
imposed reality, the guru becomes the ultimate bastion against the
evil of defilement, the central figure in the world-purifying
apocalyptic narrative. That narrative is considered the only certainty
in an otherwise unknowable future. That is, the guru becomes the
sacred agent of a divine plan for all-encompassing purification.

Moreover, a guru can also claim to be the incarnation of a mystified
"people." Mao Zedong, for instance, found another source of purity in
his evocation of the always-pure "Chinese People." Similarly, the
Nazis embraced a related concept of _Volk_ that denoted not only the
German people but their mystical essence. With the Nazis, the
mysticism was biological: the sense of a great world mission to
reclaim the purity of the Nordic race by eliminating racial threats to
Nordic health and natural dominance.

Mental predators preside over these matters as part of their claim to
ownership of reality. But what is the reality they would own? Reality
is a concept that, despite centuries of psychological and
philosophical investigation, defies precise definition. This is
largely because reality is inherently paradoxical. On the one hand,
what we call reality can be largely constructed by dominant social and
political beliefs, as held by influential groups and leaders -- the
belief that democracy is the best political system, or that God exists
or does not exist, or that human beings are weak and require
dictatorial leadership. In any society such claims to reality can
change and give way to competing and even contrary claims put forward
by newly influential voices.

Yet at the same time there are more immediate, factual components of
reality, which in no way depend upon such theoretical constructions.
For instance, my father's name was Harold Lifton, and I am a Jewish
American psychiatrist preparing a book of excerpts and commentaries.

Reality always contains these two contrasting dimensions -- the
changeable/constructed reality that strongly influences our worldview,
and the immediate/factual reality on which so much of our everyday
lives depend. We consider a person to be psychotic when he or she
"breaks" with immediate reality in the form of delusions,
hallucinations, and extreme paranoia. And we require a shared sense of
reality, consistent with experience and evidence, for our collective
function in a democracy. But we have learned that immediate/factual
reality can be ignored or contested by people who may not be psychotic
but who do so as participants in a cultist narrative of owned reality.

The Influence of Nuclear Weapons

The development of nuclear weapons radically altered the apocalyptic
discourse. Now, we humans could make use of our own technology to do
what in the past only God could do -- destroy the world. This was the
beginning of an era of human-caused technological apocalypticism.
There has also been the fantasy that, since the weapons could do God's
destructive work, they could also carry out his tasks of recreating
the world and keeping it going. Here we enter the terrain of
nuclearism[8]: the exaggerated embrace of and dependence upon nuclear
weapons, whether for "national security," keeping the peace, or
otherwise enhancing the human future. Nuclearism takes us to the
worship of ultimate destructive power as a kind of deity.

Various forms of nuclearism have been widespread among possessors of
the weapons and those who aspire to such possession. The cultist mind
is particularly sensitive to nuclear weapons and to the global
destruction associated with them. Mao and Maoists were preoccupied
with the weapons and expressed a wide variety of passionate concerns
in relation to them: from the idea that all weapons, including atomic
bombs, were insignificant in relation to the Thought of Mao Zedong,
and that nuclear weapons were a "paper tiger"; to the celebration of
the Chinese detonation of a hydrogen bomb in 1967 with dancing in the
streets and waving of little red books of quotations from Mao; to the
apocalyptic fantasy of a Maoist remnant. Even as the bomb was negated
by Mao's words, it became part of a secular apocalyptic vision of
political purification.

With Aum Shinrikyō, the nuclearism was more consistent. Its guru,
Shōkō Asahara, was obsessed with Hiroshima and with the prominent
apocalyptic influences of post-Hiroshima Japanese culture. He sought
to make Aum itself a military power, by manufacturing chemical and
biological weapons (which his cult produced, however crudely) and
attempting to acquire nuclear weapons (in which Aum was fortunately
unsuccessful). Both guru and disciples frequently invoked nuclear
weapons in connection with the pervasive theme of the end of the
world. They persistently spoke about Aum's great task of purifying the
world following the nuclear devastation they anticipated.
Participation in Armageddon-seeking military action was necessary for
this highest of spiritual missions.

As president, Donald Trump manifested his extreme solipsism -- his
self-contained reality -- in the form of a literal threat of
annihilation when he spoke of attacking North Kore with "fire and fury
like the world has never seen."[9] As with everything else, Trump has
been inconsistent and contradictory[10], declaring, after his meeting
with Kim Jonh-un in 2018, that the nuclear threat between the two
countries was over. In the past Trump has repeatedly spoken of
resorting to the weapons in various circumstances, asking why we would
make them if we don't plan to use them. Nuclearism in any form is
dangerous, all the more so when combined with erratic, solipsistic
views and confusing changes in attitude.

More than that, nuclear weapons create a cultism of their own. From
the beginning there has been a nuclear elite in charge of their
construction, stockpiling, and potential use. This elite is often
referred to as the "nuclear priesthood,"[11] which suggests that its
members possess arcane knowledge and mystical authority over the rest
of us. Significantly, a number of people have emerged from this
priesthood late in life and revealed to the world many of its secrets.
No longer "responsible" participants in draconian nuclear planning,
they could now give expression to suppressed doubts and guilt
concerning longstanding advocacy of potentially world-ending policies.

We will also see that climate change has its cultism (chapter eight),
much of it evolving around biblical accounts of apocalyptic weather
events. There has emerged a cult of climate rejection resembling an
actual flat-earth cult, and we are likely to encounter a great deal of
additional cultism in connection with the extremity of the climate
threat.

Zealotry or Proteanism

In this book, I look mainly at cultist behavior in groups and gurus
claiming the ownership of reality. Groups led by gurus who claim
omniscience can be particularly prone to cultist behavior. Where there
is openness to the world on the part of a group, its leader may be
more accurately termed a mentor. Mentors teach and guide and can
provide followers with lasting truths without divesting them of their
autonomy. But when a mentor creates a closed relationship with
disciples that excludes all other truth -- that is, seeks to own
reality -- he or she enters the realm of the omniscient guru.

I have also been concerned with psychological alternatives to
zealotry, and particularly with the mindset of proteanism. The protean
self is characterized by openness, change, and new beginnings, and
strongly resists ownership by others. While proteanism is most evident
during periods of major social change, there is a sense in which it is
inherent ot the human condition. It has a special connection to the
historical experience of modernity and postmodernity. I will say more
toward the end of this book about the emergence of the contemporary
protean self and of our capcaity to resist attempts to own the human
mind.

Cultism -- like all totalism and fundamentalism -- is a reaction
against the potential confusions of protean openness. In that sense
cultism is reactionary not only in its constraints on the self but on
its efforts to stop the flower of history. Expressions of collective
proteanism, one of which Václav Havel called "living in truth,"[12]
can be viewed as a return to the resilience of the self and its
dynamic relationship to the historical process.

1: Beginning in the late 1970s: Personal communication from the
psychologist Steven Hassan, now an authority on cults, who made use of
"Chapter 22" in being "deprogrammed" in 1976 from his membership in
the Unification Church.

2: Harvey Cox, the venturesome: Harvey Cox, _Turning East: The Promise
and the Peril of the New Orientalism_ (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1977).

3: Margaret Singer, the talented psychologist: Margaret Thaler Singer,
_Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight against Their Hidden Menace_
(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass [1995], 2003).

4: end-of-the-world visions: Robert Jay Lifton, "The image of 'The End
of the World': A Psychohistorical View" in _Facing Apocalypse_, ed.
Valerie Andrews, Robert Bosnak, and Karen Walter Goodwin (Dallas,
Texas: Spring Publications, Inc., 1987).

5: "truly beautiful future for themselves": Stuart R. Schram, _Mao
Tse-tung_ (London: Penguin [1963], 1967).

6: "Jeffrey Herf, a historian": Jeffery Herf, _Reactionary Modernism:
Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich_
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).

7: "the last man to remain alive": Elias Canetti, _Crowds and Power_
(New York: Viking, 1962).

8: nuclearism: Robert Jay Lifton, _The Broken Connection: On Death and
the Continuity of Life_ (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press
[1979], 1996)

9: "fire and fury like the world has never seen": Peter Baker and Choe
Sang-Hun, "Trump Threatens 'Fire and Fury' against North Korea if It
Endangers U.S.," _New York Times_, August 8, 2017.

10: Trump has been inconsistent and contradictory: See Michael Lewis,
"Why the Scariest Nuclear Threat May Be Coming from inside the White
House." _Vanity Fair_, July 26, 2017.

11: "nuclear priesthood": See Steven Lee Myers, "Nuclear Priesthood
Gets a New Credo," _New York Times_, December 14, 1997.

12: "living in truth": See Václav Havel, "The Power of the Powerless,"
in _Living in Truth_ (London: Faber and Faber, 1987).