The kids were not allowed to have a childhood. There was no freedom; there was no kid time. We were forced to always act as adults even though we were still children, and they kept imposing these restrictions all the time. There was no fun. There was no inspiration; there were no activities. Everything was forbidden, and you had to work. The kids had to work. They had to help earn their money and they had to help support the commune, so the commune really took advantage of the children. It was using child labor to help support the commune and the household and all of that for food and what have you.
Plus one really negative thing about the commune was that some of the kids were starving. We didn’t have enough food available for all of the children that we had. There were no snacks or anything like that. There was a very limited amount of food and you could just barely get by on the amount of food that you were given to eat. And sweets and pop and things like that were forbidden. Juice was forbidden. There were many, many rules, and a lot of the children were very frustrated and felt stressed about this because they couldn’t get anything they wanted. You had to go to work, you had to clean the house, and we lived with other people in the house, like thirty or forty other people, and you had to help wash the dishes every single day for three meals: breakfast, lunch, and dinner for everyone. You had to do all of that housework and everything every single day for that large number of people living under the one roof.
When cult members break the daily rules, don’t work hard enough, or have the wrong attitude, they may be threatened with banishment. This is a terrifying threat, because most cults isolate their members from the outside world. Banishment can mean leaving behind everything and everyone a person knows, and being cast out into an alien or evil world. Iris told Janja that threats to expel her from TM stayed with her long after she left the cult:
When cult members break the daily rules, don’t work hard enough, or have the wrong attitude, they may be threatened with banishment. This is a terrifying threat, because most cults isolate their members from the outside world. Banishment can mean leaving behind everything and everyone a person knows, and being cast out into an alien or evil world. Iris told Janja that threats to expel her from TM stayed with her long after she left the cult:
There were several times when I was threatened with being kicked out of the organization when I was younger, which was really frightening at the time. This was my community, and to have been kicked out would have been devastating. And so I learned to be quiet. And even after I had left, there was this fear when I would be called to discuss something at work or at school. I always assumed I would be kicked out … I could feel my blood pressure rising, anxieties.
A young woman who was raised in the Worldwide Church of God explained the effect of expulsions on her as a child:
They had a process of disfellowshipping people, so if you didn’t do what the minister said or you didn’t do whatever, then you were gone. It was often. I mean this would happen frequently. I would ask, “Where is so and so?” We would go to church and somebody wouldn’t be there. I’m asking, “Where are they?” And the reply was always, “Well, we’re not to talk about them anymore.” So it’s just like they were gone. There was one example that was the most painful, but it happened all the time. The most painful one to me was a lady that was just incredible and she just loved me a lot. I was probably seven, and one day she was gone and there was no explanation and we were at the grocery store and I said, “Mom, there’s Mrs. S.” Mom just grabbed me by the hand, put my brother in the cart, and went the other way. It was like we’re not to talk to her, ever, which was really confusing. I remember being really confused by that and no explanation was really given to me. So we just didn’t talk to her anymore.
In response to these strict rules and regulations, the children became frustrated and often rebellious—both of which are normal responses to harsh systems of control. Sometimes, the children managed to get away with rebellion; but in most cases, they were punished even more severely. In cults, normal and healthy coping mechanisms such as resistance are usually turned against people. Shelly Rosen, a relational psychotherapist who has worked with former cult members for over thirty years, notes that the trauma of life in a cult, particularly for children, elicits a type of stress response that can be overwhelming.12 Often, this stress response “gets stuck as a result of social and emotional captivity.”13 According to Rosen, “cult involvement has the potential to be one of the most traumatizing of human experiences.”14
Coping Mechanisms for Surviving Abusive Systems of Control
The main ways that our narrators coped with the controlling systems in their cults was to rebel against them—either openly or subtly. Some rebelled outright, while others resisted internally, through daydreams that took them to different lives, or through subtle rule breaking that helped them feel some sense of autonomy in their extremely controlled worlds.
Lily was one of those who rebelled openly, and she experienced immediate negative consequences:
I did rebel a little, and I got disciplined hard for it. You know, they would make me run around the block, do pushups, have my arms out straight like this, you know. Military-style training. I would be kept in a room and yelled at, called manipulative, called provocative. And I think in a way they broke me down so I did want to, um, I wanted to conform. And I did. And when I conformed, Grandmaster gave me more attention and people started recognizing me more and life was easier. And I started to like being a full member of the College of Learning more than being just a kid who everyone dismissed as, “Oh, she’s a kid.”
Jessica’s form of rebellion in The Family was often subtler, yet necessary to her survival because her asthma marked her as a possibly satanic person. Her very existence was seen as a cause for punishment. However, rather than breaking her spirit, this outrageously unfair punishment (like Matthew’s punishment for his deafness) provoked Jessica into testing out multiple acts of subtle and overt resistance:
Yeah. Umm (laughs). Well, I started asking a lot of questions. I started refusing to close my eyes during prayer because I just didn’t see the difference, you know. I did stuff that was just silly and childish at first. And then, I started writing stories, my own little stories. I started keeping them when I was eleven, but that was absolutely ended [when adults in the cult found out], and they burned my books. But I kept doing little things like that.
We all develop coping mechanisms to help us deal with abusive systems of control, and these mechanisms always involve resistance and rebellion in some form. Cults and other total institutions answer resistance and rebellion with punishment or abuse, both of which tend to make people fall into line and silence themselves. As you observe the systems of control in your own life, note whether they are healthy or toxic, and also note how you respond to them. If you feel your resistance and rebellion arising in response to them, this may be a sign that you are in the presence of a toxic system of control.
Evaluating the Systems of Control in Your Own Life
The following checklist can help you identify systems of control that are healthy, useful, and appropriate—and it will also help you identify systems that are rigid, unyielding, toxic, or abusive. Remember, as you look through these lists, that systems of control aren’t limited to groups; people can be controlled by single individuals as well (think of abusive marriages or unhealthy teacher/student relationships, and so forth).
Healthy systems of control involve rules that make sense, clear checks and balances on power, responsive and respectful leadership, and goals that are attainable and beneficial for everyone. Unhealthy systems of control treat people like cogs in a machine, and they require total submission and unquestioning obedience, regardless of the personal cost.
You can use this checklist to gauge the health of the systems of control you deal with at home, at work, at school, or in any other relationship or social situation. Place a check mark by any of the following statements that are true.
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> The rules and regulations come from above: members have no say in the system.
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The system of control is undemocratic and does not allow for independent thought or action.
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Members must be perfect in their obedience or face dire consequences.
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Rule breaking is treated as a direct attack on the group or its leader.
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Rule breaking has extreme consequences, such as public shaming, beatings, starvation, isolation, shunning, or excommunication.
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Publicly shaming or abuse of rule breakers is used as a scare tactic to keep other members in line.
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Members are encouraged to report rule breakers—including their own family members.
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Leaders or members in the inner circle can break rules without consequences.
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The system of control is connected to the working lives of cult members; hard work and even abject slavery are intrinsic parts of the rules and regulations.
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The leader can change the rules, regulations, and system at will or on a whim.
If you checked yes to one or more of these statements, you may be dealing with a toxic system of control. However, this does not mean that the person or group that developed the system is dangerous, and it does not mean that you’re involved in a cult. This troubling system of control would have to be combined with the other three aspects of bounded choice (a transcendent belief system, a charismatic and narcissistic leader, and a toxic system of influence) before the group or relationship could be considered cultic. However, if this system of control disturbs you (even if the other aspects of bounded choice aren’t present), you may be able to suggest changes and see if the people inside the system can address the problems.
You can also share the features of healthy systems below to help the person or group understand the specific ways in which their system has gotten out of hand. If they can’t or won’t change, you can use these features to find a new person or group with systems of control that are healthy, supportive, nurturing, and fair.
Signs of Healthy Systems of Control
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The system is democratic; all members have a say in how the rules and regulations are developed and implemented.
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Members have the right to question, doubt, and challenge the system.
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Checks and balances are in place so that the system remains fluid, responsive, and fair.
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The system supports equality, and no person is above the rules.
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The system incorporates fairness, justice, and leniency; no one is humiliated, abused, or shunned.
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Members appreciate the sense of structure and discipline that the system provides.
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The system provides a healthy sense of belonging and camaraderie.
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The system helps members develop a unified group identity that does not erase their own identities.
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The group encourages critical thinking and welcomes ideas from outside the system.
When a system of control is healthy, its structure supports and nurtures the people inside it. When a system is toxic, its structure crushes, demeans, and dehumanizes the people trapped within it.
With the help of the bounded choice model, we can see that toxic systems of control use cult members’ hard work, obedience, and need for community against them. Though cult members may gain a sense of pride through fitting in and following the rules perfectly, this form of pride has a tragic outcome because it depends on the good opinion of people who actually mean harm to the members. Hard work, community values, and obedience are excellent qualities; however, when they are required by an inhumane and toxic system of control, they lead to enslavement. Breaking free from toxic systems of control can be painful and difficult, but it can be done. And people can learn how to identify— and support—positive groups and relationships that create healthy systems of control.
In the next chapter, we’ll look at the ways in which a group’s systems of influence can combine with each of the three other aspects of bounded choice to create a fanatically devoted believer who would eagerly do anything for a cult or its leader.
Notes
1.
Erving Goffman, Asylums (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1961).
2.
For a study of this phenomenon on a national scale, see Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1951).
3.
For example, Jonestown, Aum Shinrikyo, the Manson Family, and the cult coauthor Janja was in, the Democratic Workers Party, to name a few.
4.
Frans De Waal, The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society (New York: Harmony Books, 2009), 38–9.
5.
Louis J. West and Margaret T. Singer, “Cults, Quacks, and Nonprofessional Therapies,” in Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry/III, Eds., Harold I. Kaplan, Alfred M. Freedman, and Benjamin J. Sadock (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1980), 3248.
6.
For an in-depth article on The Family’s teen-training program, see Stephen A. Kent and Deanna Hall, “Brainwashing and Re-Indoctrination Programs in the Children of God/The Family,” Cultic Studies Journal 17 (2000): 56–78. See also, Stephen A. Kent, “Generational Revolt by the Adult Children of First-Generation Members of the Children of God/The Family,” Cultic Studies Journal 3, no. 1 (2004): 56–72.
7.
Paddy Kutz, “What Are the Effects of Child Abuse on the Brain?” Accessed April 13, 2012, http://www.newarkadvocate.com/fdcp/?unique=1334335352843.
8.
Ibid.
9.
Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. and Maia Szalavitz, The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 5. Also Chapter 3, “Stairway to Heaven” (57–80), describes Perry’s work with the children who were released from the Branch Davidian compound before the final conflagration, and is particularly relevant here.
10.
Ibid., 62–3.
11.
Ibid., 65.
12.
Shelly Rosen, “Cults: A Natural Disaster: Looking at Cults Through a Trauma Lens,” International Cultic Studies Journal, no. 5 (2014): 12–29.
13.
Ibid., 15.
14.
Ibid.
5
SYSTEMS OF INFLUENCE
Social Pressures, Rigid Expectations, and Constant Manipulation
Well, I was able to have friends, but I couldn’t do anything with them. I could talk to them, but I couldn’t go to their house or anything. If you ask them, they will tell you that it was never forbidden, but the reality is that I wasn’t allowed. It was kind of weird. If you were to question Grandmaster, she would bring up my high school days when she told me to bring friends over that one time. She never said, “You’re not allowed to have friends over,” but it wasn’t allowed at the same time either. There was always an undercurrent of “You don’t know if they worship the devil or not. We can’t let you go over there.”
Lily
We did TM twice a day. We had advanced meetings at our home a couple times a week. We had to be very quiet around the house all the time, and we were encouraged to attend the meetings. We got a lot of ego strokes if we did, but we were not forced to. Weekends were initiations at our home, where the whole house was taken over by recruitment activities, plus there were always several other meetings and all of them took place at our home, too. So either we could help out, which was a whole day full of quiet whispering with incense burning or people chanting in other rooms, or we sort of wandered the streets on our own. My brother used to get out of the house and he would sleep in the back booth of a Carl’s Jr hamburger place rather than come home because it was so uncomfortable at hom
e.
Iris
During my early childhood, I had very little contact with other children as I had no siblings, my cousins were much older, and I wasn’t encouraged to join any organizations outside school or bring children from school to my home. Actually, I didn’t want to anyway because although we had radio, which Exclusive Brethren didn’t normally have, we didn’t have television and didn’t go to any form of public entertainment. And I didn’t want other children to know I was different in that way.
Joseph
What Are Systems of Influence?
Successful groups help their members learn how to create a cohesive group identity that supports individuals—who can in turn strengthen the group. Through social and emotional encouragement and guidance, groups can teach us how to belong, how to share core principles, and how to get into sync with other group members. In healthy groups, these systems of influence support individuality and personal freedom while simultaneously helping group members feel as if they belong. For example, a respectful soccer coach helps her team do their best and supports an atmosphere of respect and excellence that permeates throughout the team. Soon, team members will support each other and strive toward personal excellence as a way to demonstrate their dedication to the coach, to the team, and to each other as individuals. Healthy and successful groups develop an internal identity that is respectful of each individual’s strengths and challenges. These groups are open to change and growth, and they’re mindful of the well-being of the group as a whole.
Escaping Utopia Page 13