From: Kafka Dreams 
To: still
Subject: putting the "cult" in "culture"
Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2001 17:49:36 -0400


I have these interests, these little hiccups of curiousity about the
world which manifest as weird semi-obsessive graspings at some pocket
of information.  

I want to master the basics, play with the information, see how the
new information reveals some underlying assumption in my personal
worldview, and occasionally throw my perception of THINGS into chaos.
At the very least, I like expanding my knowledge of the universe.

This is a meditation about one of those subjects.

Years ago, after a particularly interesting episode of THE X-FILES
("Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'" - a very funny one that scrapes
across the raw nerve of subjective versus objective truth) it was
pointed out to me that the writer was paying homage to (or blantantly
ripping off) THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE.

So the next day, I rented the movie and watched it.  

I was literally blown away.  Frank Sinatra could act!  Who knew?

At one point in the film, Frank's character had piles of books on a
table all on the subject of brainwashing and mind control and I found
myself wishing that I knew what books they were so I could read some
of them.

It seemed to me that understanding mind control was a reasonable
handle for understanding the subjectivity of the human experience.

(I'd already noted that little-t "truth" seemed to be like language in
the Village A, Village B, and Village C example.  Village A can talk
to Village B, even though they have both drifted independently from
their original shared language.  And Village B can talk to Village C.
But Village A and Village C have trouble understanding one another.
It seemed to me that truth was like that - the further one got from
the source, the harder it was to understand.  And, the source was
suspect as all human experience is subjective.  So one's observations
are suspect as well.  Aggravating, slippery concepts.)

So, I looked around and looked around and eventually stumbled across
_The Anatomy of Illusion: Religious Cults and Destructive Persuasion_
(1987) by Thomas W. Keiser & Jacqueline L. Keiser.

A very interesting piece of work, it first presents the idea of
brainwashing in a historical context (originally intended to control
prisoners in China; adapted to Russian politics but was never meant to
survive as a permanent mental pattern and as such extinguishes quickly
the majority of the time).

It then follows the history lesson with the idea that cults do not
brainwash people into doing things (like staying awake chanting for 12
hours or not eating) - cults narrow your context for what's right and
what's wrong until the cults' version of those rules dominate your
reality.  (There's a lot more to it, like changing your sleeping
habits, isolating you from friends and family, etc. all designed to
make you more vulnerable to the induction process; and there's also
the phenomenon of how the children of cult members are raised.)

Ultimately, it becomes perfectly normal, within the context of one's 
existence, to chant for 12 hours or forgo food.

Great, professional, scholarly little text and an easy read.

But that was years ago and I hunger for more information.  Also, my
thoughts on persuasion have started colliding with and twining into a
brief essay I wrote back in 1997 about this phrase I woke up with one
morning:

  "That which sustains us may eventually come to define us."

I've been thinking about this concept in relation to work, primarily
because I changed jobs back in December 2000.  I left Operations
(interrupt-driven environment revolving around solving problems and
fixing broken stuff) for Engineering (project-driven environment
revolving around designing stuff to have less problems and redesigning
stuff when they do have problem) and since then, I've been noticing
some significant differences between the two organizations.

In Operations, one is made to feel like one cannot change the world
BUT at the same time, one is a critical component in the machine and
failure to perform (in fact, to perform above & beyond the call of
duty) could destroy the whole system.  

The pressure to conform to this value-set is tremendous, but (much
like cult initiation) it happens gradually.  One starts in a low-level
position and is gradually convinced that this part of the company is
right, it's the center, it's the great sufferer because others don't
perceive its importance.  If one sticks with it, one moves up through
the ranks (learning new secrets and rituals all the time) receiving
increased responsibility.  BUT, there is never a commensurate increase
in authority.

In contrast, in Engineering one is made to feel like one can solve any
problem, so long as one applies oneself sufficiently, and that design
has its own schedule that does not heed the call of the machine.
(It also has its own pitfalls, which I am slowly discovering.)

It's an astounding change in ego-rule-sets, one whose repercussions
are still filtering through me 8 months later.

So I thought I'd look for more related resources on cults, cult
perspectives, persuasion, and the like to plumb them for a new
language to talk about the subject and a better understanding of how
we as humans respond to being submerged in a particular (read:
corporate) culture for nearly a third of our lives.

Most of the titles I've found so far tend toward the "escape" and
"recovery" aspects of cult lifestyles.  Although there are some
studies of subject itself, it's hard to sort through which is which.

Reading various lists and bibliographies, I realized that there was a
quiet but strident voice in the back of my head complaining that there
were no HOW-TO handbooks on how to ACQUIRE and USE these kinds of
persuasive powers and similar skills.

And, as I focused on this voice (naively thinking that, as with
Network Security, one wants to know HOW something happens), it was
saying:

  "Well, THIS is REALLY going to cut into my plans to take over the
   world." 

Wow.  Didn't know that was there.  

Hmm.