Post by dudetyson on Sept 23, 2011 14:06:04 GMT -6
DILUTION VERSUS ISOLATION
Small groups that start on their own often have a strong temptation to get a bunch of people to sign up. In fact they take anyone and everyone, and I’ve seen it a million times. The new recruits display little or no awareness of the group’s stated doctrine and are not devoted to practicing it. The group can lose its sense of direction, essentially having been diluted. This trend exacerbates the problem of over-attachment to individual figureheads rather than to philosophies and practices, which to me is a form of sleep. The figurehead-teacher is in turn in a difficult situation. They must choose between keeping their new recruits by not pushing the doctrine, or they must push a doctrine which not everyone agrees with, even though as members of the group they supposedly are already supposed to be on that basis.
Furthermore, the group becomes unstable, with people noisily exiting and demoralizing everyone else as they go. Usually the leavers expressed themselves by saying “Mr. Figurehead is a loser/full of shit!” while in reality they have real, unarticulated disagreements with the doctrine of the group itself which they only realize through experience.
At the same time, it is possible to err in the opposite direction. In a quest for unspoiled purity a group may entirely eliminate all interaction with anyone else. It hovers in stillness, often becoming stale and shrinking.
THE SYNTHESIZING SOLUTION
The third-side solution is the INTERMEDIARY GROUP. A group which revolves around a goal or activity which is potentially Cult-related, and yet is not formally a part of the Cult.
The best candidate for an intermediary group is one with no doctrine of its own, or minimal doctrine. Fortunately, most groups are very non-ideological. People who hang out and watch horror movies? Definitely no formally-enshrined ideology there. Yoga or meditation groups? It depends on the group, but generally it’s minimal. Activist groups? Generally they just have their single goal and a general tone, with different ideologies competing across them but no single ideology formally dominating.
The Cult is the center of the octopus, the intermediary groups are the groups into which we stick our tentacles. However we should almost never try to turn an intermediary group into a branch of the Cult. Rather, anyone who becomes interested in the Cult, by bumping into it through the intermediary group, should go to our own Cult-specific gatherings.
A POINT OF CONTACT, NOT A GROTTO
The reason to avoid taking over intermediary groups is because the whole point of intermediary groups is for the Cult to have contact with non-Cultists over long periods of time which allow us to gradually persuade. Limiting a group to Cult-only cuts out all the non-Cultists and defeats the purpose. If the Cult formally takes over a non-Cult group, then the remaining non-Cultists will be alienated and depart.
Again, it may be tempting to “take over” a group and thus (apparently) quickly gain a lot of recruits. But even if the members agree at first, it’s still a bad idea. This is because of something called “cognitive dissonance.” In the chaos of life, people often find themselves in and out of this or that situation. However, often they do not consciously believe in the arrangements they find themselves in, or only half-believe in them, in a muddled way.
If you invite a whole group into the Cult, in a moment of group enthusiasm everyone may seem to agree. But soon you will find that there are people with real, serious objections to the doctrine you are teaching, which they find themselves in the odd position of having agreed to keeping, but do not actually believe. It is better to recruit on a firm individual basis, after having a prolonged interaction with the potential Cultist, and assuring that they actually are on board with the key principles.
Sure, that way may be harder, that way may take more time, and more patience. However, it ensures that your group will not have the unstable disruptions of many groups with low starting requirements and high turnover. You will not have dissenters resenting you for taking over their group. You will not have a sad, all-too-often personal rift develop between those who stick with the group and those who realize they didn’t know what they were getting into.
Note that it is not wise to try to turn other religions into intermediary groups, because they are themselves attempting to be the center of an octopus, and if their ideas are different from our own, then our interaction is one of immediate ideological conflict. It is fine to have friendly relations with other religions, but using them as a recruiting grounds tends to make you more enemies than friends.