As many others, I find myself in a peculiar situation. I’ve “woken up” from being indoctrinated into a cult.

I do not fully understand how did I woke up or why. Neither I understand why all of us won’t wake up. What kind of force holds us(them?) all captive.

Just about everyone in my position wants to fight the good fight. Free the minds of the people entangled in all this. Show the bastards that run the show you are no longer a slave.

And that is the tricky part. “Nobody joins a cult.” If someone is in a cult, they would never consider – are they? The structure of the cult prevents one from seeing the truth. If it’s a “well established religion” – the danger is even bigger. You’d imagine that an organisation represented in different countries and cultures can’t be hiding shady shit, right? It’s too big to be a scam? Think again. Bigger organisations have more victims to learn from. Multinational monsters know how to exploit weaknesses that are in you, no matter the language. Local sect of 10 people that exists for half a year can be dangerous, too – but in a different way. Millions of members are sweet sweet learning platform and it is being used to find a perfect bondage for victim’s free will.

Whoever sets out on a path to fight indoctrination finds him- or her-self in a very complicated position. It’s like helping a drug addict. Quitting drugs would be hard in itself, but your biggest problem is that first you are going to be the enemy. Someone dying for next hit of whatever they want will not see you as a saviour, a kind soul, a loving husband or wife or daughter or friend. They will see danger. They will see risk of facing the pain of withdrawal in you. You will be the enemy. And before you can even start to dismantle the actual problem, you have to establish trust.

Now, cults know their shit. The one I was part of starts “us versus them” programming since lesson one. You won’t even know that Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t celebrate Christmas, but you will be warned of the family members that “will not understand and try to dissuade you from learning the truth”. The Truth®. Since the moment you respond to first phrase said by the cult recruiter, a campaign to burn your support systems has begun. Trust me, I know because I was really good at it.

Now, how do you help someone like that?

How do you help millions of deceived people that are scared OF YOU. Yes, you are their demons. You are their worst fear. Not the devils and the ends of the world and aliens and hell, no – you are.

I am thinking about this a lot. I would not presume to know the answers. Seriously, fuck people with “the answers”. There’s been enough of that.

I want to contribute to a discourse though.

I think that important thing is – to succeed, we must join forces with others. Sects, cults and abusers learn from each other. Consciously or not, they do. Many of those who are “ex-something” overspecialise. It’s about whether or not their pastor had 27 wives or is their society president has account in Cayman Islands or whether their leader has freemason symbols on a pyramid by his burial place. Yes, all those are important. If those are about abuse – those are rightfully first things to concentrate on. But later, once basic things are determined, going into specific details is actually not great.

First, secret inner lingo is a thing. Showing the world the truth about your cult would often incorporate 5 hour lecture about ancient prophecies and secret artefacts and some other stuff that is specific to your cult. As wrong as they may be, as bullshit the claims may turn out – all you achieve after debunking them is reducing specific cult’s score by one point. Cults are prolific in bullshit generation. Another lie will emerge before you know it and you’ll return to the same starting point. If you still have audience, that is.

Second – seeing similarities in cults is a powerful weapon. Witnesses expect the cult (or rather a sect) accusation and have bullshit answer to counter – “the word sect just means a religion that is formed by splitting from some other”. You see, this is bullshit because a cult has definitions. BITE model of Steven Hassan and the work of other authors show that cult is not a simple slur you invoke to smear a group of people you don’t like. It’s a scientific term that describes behavioural patterns of a group that make that group dangerous – one that exercises undue influence. One of the most awe inspiring moments of my waking up, and I have heard other cult survivors say similar things was listening to ex-members of other cults. For me, I read accounts of ex-Mormons. People living on the other side of the planet, struggling to leave absolutely different religion from mine were repeating blanket excuses that I grew up with. Word for freaking word.

I had goosebumps. I am still processing it.

We are all in the same boat.

We have all been tricked by the same fucked up mental constructs, into mutually hating groups that promise each other divine judgement.

What that means is all those in power behind groups who hold our friends captive have the same problem. They share weaknesses.

nerd symbolism is heavy with this one

They are all part of the same system and that system is humanity’s struggle to be rational and transparent in it’s dealings. Every one of ex-members fights the same fight. We are not ex-jw, ex-mormon or ex-scientology. We are ex-bullshit, ex-special-treatment, ex-manipulation, ex-abuse, ex-fear.

We don’t fight our ex-pastors, ex-elders or ex-bishops. We fight anti-intellectualism.We fight ignorance. We fight intellectual dishonesty.

And we can do this better if we come together to share our findings. When we abstract from the lingo and the local circumstances onto greater scheme of things. Design tools that will help complete strangers.

One big benefit of such “abstracted” solutions is taking oxygen from the fire that every cult has prepared and bottled up, as in molotov cocktails. That fire is persecution complex. “Here come heretics hating our True® Religion® Of Peace® and Truth®. It has been foretold by our glorious prophets or bronze age and divine revelations of unknown nature. Close your eyes, block your ears, shun, disregard, attack, force silence, protect our faith.” This is what you get when you try to argue against specific cult’s specific mistakes. You are coming onto a minefield that has been lovingly designed by those in charge. You are likely even helping to create even bigger rift between poor souls inside and the rest of the world. You provide scary examples and horror stories of ‘those angry heathens’.

From what I’ve seen and what limited self-reflection I did on this matter, people wake up not because of the facts. Facts are fuel. Scepticism is the spark. You can pile up evidence all you want – until poor victim “smells something is not right here” they won’t be able to use those facts to free themselves. And scepticism is hard to demonise. Sure, sects are trying to. “Reject the tendency of critical thinking” was a mantra of my childhood. “The better the university the bigger the danger” is one of the more recent jems of wisdom coming from the Watchtower. But there’s nobody to insult here, really. There’s no “meat” to this fight. It’s hard to demonise and prevent people from coming in contact with something as abstract as analytical abilities. Many organisations will instruct their followers about “bad books” and “bad websites”. It’s easy. It’s way harder to issue divine condemnation on wikipedia articles or an infographic about world’s affairs or videos about logical fallacies.

We can’t pass keys to prisoners in their meals. Any prison guard would look for that. We can pass them metallic things that used together act like keys and lock-picks.

So, this is what I think I must do to help my friends. Stop helping my friends and start helping everyone who comes into contact with me for whatever reason be a little more aware of biases, of ways to trick the brain in seeing what is not there, of manipulation techniques and of past self-proclaimed saviours who have turned out to be thugs.

This is the way I am trying to use. Let me know if you find this approach useful.

Cheers.