Normal
By Carl S ~
Cults are fascinating. Every time you look into them, you learn something new. Consider what types of personalities are drawn to them, for example. They are the vulnerable, easily exploited, individuals seeking the “purpose” they're taught they're supposed to have, and looking for someone to give them that purpose. They feel alone and dis-empowered, want someone else to make the decisions for their lives. They are the ones raised to believe there is a god or higher power who gives his instructions via “revelations,” especially to his chosen charismatic individuals, who share in or embody his divinity.
The wackiest individuals with the most bizarre credentials are magnets for such needy people. Most of all, these “sacred” ones have a sixth sense of just how to play them. By increments, they test to ascertain just how far adherents are willing to accept perversity as normal. Entrapped, the adherents become unaware of their predicament. What starts for them as joy and answers, becomes imprisonment. This system has played out for ages, and will continue, since there are unsuspecting sheep only too ready to relinquish their consciences to that of the majority, after being so very welcomed warmly and enthusiastically into the cult family.
My fascination with cults leads me to watch every time a program comes on about them. Like the minds of psychopaths, cults beg the question, ”What's going on?” But when I watched the final chapter of “People Magazine: Cults,” I was unprepared for the obvious: A former cult member said, “In the cult you come to accept the perverse as normal.” Earlier programs, on different channels, had prepared me with examples: One member left her baby outside to die in the cold, children as young as 7 have been initiated into sex by the idolized cult head, they come to accept child-brides/multiple wives, of all ages, etc. They ignore the fact their leaders have no conscience and are sexually perverse.
“In the cult, you come to accept the perverse as normal.” And if you follow the progressions of every cult, it's true. This parallels with every religion. The perversions accept killing a son as “normal,” worshipping someone who drowns children becomes “normal.” Torturing and burning to death women accused of conspiring with an unseen “devil” and frightening the cult, is “normal.” Punishing or casting out anyone who dares to question the perverse as normal, becomes the ”normal” thing to do. Passively accepting genocide is “normal,” and giving your children over to being taught things you don't believe, is “normal.”
“In the cult you come to accept the perverse as normal.”For nearly 2000 years, Christianity defined the perverse and irrational as the only “normal,” with its “alternative truths.” Regimes which follow major religion's methods flourish. For those who were raised in Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, or Hitler's Germany, the perversity of those regimes was, you guessed it, “normal.” To this day, there remain people who still accept the crazy “normality” those men created. Huxley's “Brave New World” predicts a future where normal requires individuals to be pacified by a government-issued tranquilizer. When the psychopaths take over (as is happening in 21st century U.S.A.), the “new normal” of religious perversity will take the place of civilized normal.
It's no wonder members who leave a cult or are left adrift after the cult is disbanded, don't know how to adapt to the natural, normal, world. Everything they'd accepted had been twisted. Black became white, “freedom” was slavery, surrender was victory, and “revealed truths” were fabrications. Their “normality” had lasted, usually for years. An article about a man who'd been deeply depressed for years and came out of it can be helpful. The writer says, “He had been ill for so long that he found normal surroundings and liberty of movement strange at first.” Been there too. Nothing beats the real normal.
The wackiest individuals with the most bizarre credentials are magnets for such needy people. Most of all, these “sacred” ones have a sixth sense of just how to play them. By increments, they test to ascertain just how far adherents are willing to accept perversity as normal. Entrapped, the adherents become unaware of their predicament. What starts for them as joy and answers, becomes imprisonment. This system has played out for ages, and will continue, since there are unsuspecting sheep only too ready to relinquish their consciences to that of the majority, after being so very welcomed warmly and enthusiastically into the cult family.
My fascination with cults leads me to watch every time a program comes on about them. Like the minds of psychopaths, cults beg the question, ”What's going on?” But when I watched the final chapter of “People Magazine: Cults,” I was unprepared for the obvious: A former cult member said, “In the cult you come to accept the perverse as normal.” Earlier programs, on different channels, had prepared me with examples: One member left her baby outside to die in the cold, children as young as 7 have been initiated into sex by the idolized cult head, they come to accept child-brides/multiple wives, of all ages, etc. They ignore the fact their leaders have no conscience and are sexually perverse.
“In the cult, you come to accept the perverse as normal.” And if you follow the progressions of every cult, it's true. This parallels with every religion. The perversions accept killing a son as “normal,” worshipping someone who drowns children becomes “normal.” Torturing and burning to death women accused of conspiring with an unseen “devil” and frightening the cult, is “normal.” Punishing or casting out anyone who dares to question the perverse as normal, becomes the ”normal” thing to do. Passively accepting genocide is “normal,” and giving your children over to being taught things you don't believe, is “normal.”
“In the cult you come to accept the perverse as normal.”For nearly 2000 years, Christianity defined the perverse and irrational as the only “normal,” with its “alternative truths.” Regimes which follow major religion's methods flourish. For those who were raised in Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, or Hitler's Germany, the perversity of those regimes was, you guessed it, “normal.” To this day, there remain people who still accept the crazy “normality” those men created. Huxley's “Brave New World” predicts a future where normal requires individuals to be pacified by a government-issued tranquilizer. When the psychopaths take over (as is happening in 21st century U.S.A.), the “new normal” of religious perversity will take the place of civilized normal.
It's no wonder members who leave a cult or are left adrift after the cult is disbanded, don't know how to adapt to the natural, normal, world. Everything they'd accepted had been twisted. Black became white, “freedom” was slavery, surrender was victory, and “revealed truths” were fabrications. Their “normality” had lasted, usually for years. An article about a man who'd been deeply depressed for years and came out of it can be helpful. The writer says, “He had been ill for so long that he found normal surroundings and liberty of movement strange at first.” Been there too. Nothing beats the real normal.