An Everyday Cult

An Everyday Cult PDF Author: Gerette Buglion
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781578690749
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
A personal memoir and a wake-up call for society to recognize and reject the erosion of critical thinking, An Everyday Cult is an essential read for understanding how people fall prey to mind control and cultic manipulation. Buglion's true-life story follows her through eighteen years under a trusted teacher's unethical tutelage and shows how her innocent quest for meaning was answered by a man who ultimately eroded her capacity for critical thinking. Through a treacherous narrative, she lays bare the hallmarks of cultic manipulation-mind control that flies under the radar of human awareness-and implores society to wake up to its ever-present abuses of power. It is a redemptive book of self-awareness and self-discovery. An Everyday Cult imparts a universal story, demonstrating how recognition of cultic membership-largely riddled with preconceived notions-may be an essential key to human evolution.

Cultish

Cultish PDF Author: Amanda Montell
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062993178
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
“One of those life-changing reads that makes you see—or, in this case, hear—the whole world differently.” —Megan Angelo, author of Followers “At times chilling, often funny, and always perceptive and cogent, Cultish is a bracing reminder that the scariest thing about cults is that you don't realize you're in one till it's too late.”—Refinery29.com The New York Times bestselling author of The Age of Magical Overthinking and Wordslut analyzes the social science of cult influence: how “cultish” groups, from Jonestown and Scientologists to SoulCycle and social media gurus, use language as the ultimate form of power. What makes “cults” so intriguing and frightening? What makes them powerful? The reason why so many of us binge Manson documentaries by the dozen and fall down rabbit holes researching suburban moms gone QAnon is because we’re looking for a satisfying explanation for what causes people to join—and more importantly, stay in—extreme groups. We secretly want to know: could it happen to me? Amanda Montell’s argument is that, on some level, it already has . . . Our culture tends to provide pretty flimsy answers to questions of cult influence, mostly having to do with vague talk of “brainwashing.” But the true answer has nothing to do with freaky mind-control wizardry or Kool-Aid. In Cultish, Montell argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. In both positive ways and shadowy ones, cultish language is something we hear—and are influenced by—every single day. Through juicy storytelling and cutting original research, Montell exposes the verbal elements that make a wide spectrum of communities “cultish,” revealing how they affect followers of groups as notorious as Heaven’s Gate, but also how they pervade our modern start-ups, Peloton leaderboards, and Instagram feeds. Incisive and darkly funny, this enrapturing take on the curious social science of power and belief will make you hear the fanatical language of “cultish” everywhere.

Cults in Our Midst

Cults in Our Midst PDF Author: Margaret Thaler Singer
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0787967416
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
Cults today are bigger than ever, with broad ramifications for national and international terrorism. In this newly revised edition of her definitive work on cults, Singer reveals what cults really are and how they work, focusing specifically on the coercive persuasion techniques of charismatic leaders seeking money and power. The book contains fascinating updates on Heaven's Gate, Falun Gong, Aum Shinrikyo, Hare Krishna, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, and the connection between cults and terrorism in Al Queda and the PLO.

An Everyday Cult

An Everyday Cult PDF Author: Gerette Buglion
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A personal memoir and a wake-up call for society to recognize and reject the erosion of critical thinking, "An Everyday Cult" is an essential read for understanding how people fall prey to mind control and cultic manipulation. Tracing the arc of eighteen years under a trusted teacher's unethical tutelage, Gerette Buglion's true-life story shows how her innocent quest for meaning is answered by a man who sees directly into her soul, awakening insight while simultaneously eroding her capacity for critical thinking. Through an increasingly murky and treacherous narrative, she lays bare the hallmarks of cultic manipulation-mind control that flies under the radar of human awareness-and implores society to wake up to its ever-present abuses of power. "An Everyday Cult" imparts a universal story, demonstrating how recognition of cultic membership-largely riddled with preconceived notions-may be an essential key to human evolution.

The Cult of the Amateur

The Cult of the Amateur PDF Author: Andrew Keen
Publisher: Currency
ISBN: 0385520816
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Amateur hour has arrived, and the audience is running the show In a hard-hitting and provocative polemic, Silicon Valley insider and pundit Andrew Keen exposes the grave consequences of today’s new participatory Web 2.0 and reveals how it threatens our values, economy, and ultimately the very innovation and creativity that forms the fabric of American achievement. Our most valued cultural institutions, Keen warns—our professional newspapers, magazines, music, and movies—are being overtaken by an avalanche of amateur, user-generated free content. Advertising revenue is being siphoned off by free classified ads on sites like Craigslist; television networks are under attack from free user-generated programming on YouTube and the like; file-sharing and digital piracy have devastated the multibillion-dollar music business and threaten to undermine our movie industry. Worse, Keen claims, our “cut-and-paste” online culture—in which intellectual property is freely swapped, downloaded, remashed, and aggregated—threatens over 200 years of copyright protection and intellectual property rights, robbing artists, authors, journalists, musicians, editors, and producers of the fruits of their creative labors. In today’s self-broadcasting culture, where amateurism is celebrated and anyone with an opinion, however ill-informed, can publish a blog, post a video on YouTube, or change an entry on Wikipedia, the distinction between trained expert and uninformed amateur becomes dangerously blurred. When anonymous bloggers and videographers, unconstrained by professional standards or editorial filters, can alter the public debate and manipulate public opinion, truth becomes a commodity to be bought, sold, packaged, and reinvented. The very anonymity that the Web 2.0 offers calls into question the reliability of the information we receive and creates an environment in which sexual predators and identity thieves can roam free. While no Luddite—Keen pioneered several Internet startups himself—he urges us to consider the consequences of blindly supporting a culture that endorses plagiarism and piracy and that fundamentally weakens traditional media and creative institutions. Offering concrete solutions on how we can reign in the free-wheeling, narcissistic atmosphere that pervades the Web, THE CULT OF THE AMATEUR is a wake-up call to each and every one of us.

The Cult of Thinness

The Cult of Thinness PDF Author: Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
In this powerful book, Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber goes beyond traditional psychological explanations of eating disorders to level a powerful indictment against the social, political, and economic pressures women face in a weight-obsessed society. ethnicity, gay and lesbian body image, and the globalization of body image issues align a refined cultural study of body image with the trends found in current research studies, demographic data, and popular culture.

Manhattan Cult Story

Manhattan Cult Story PDF Author: Spencer Schneider
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1950994570
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
“We were invisible. We had to be. We took an oath of absolute secrecy. We never even told our immediate families who we were. We went about our lives in New York City. Just like you. We were your accountants, money managers, lawyers, executive recruiters, doctors. We owned your child’s private school and sold you your brownstone. But you’d never guess our secret lives, how we lived in a kind of silent terror and fervor. There were hundreds of us.” Right under the noses of neighbors, clients, spouses, children, and friends, a secret society, simply called School—a cult of snared Manhattan professionals—has been led by the charismatic, sociopathic and dangerous leader Sharon Gans for decades. Spencer Schneider was recruited in the eighties and he stayed for more than twenty-three years as his life disintegrated, his self-esteem eroded, and he lined the pockets of Gans and her cult. Cult members met twice weekly, though they never acknowledged one another outside of meetings or gatherings. In the name of inner development, they endured the horrors of mental, sexual, and physical abuse, forced labor, arranged marriages, swindled inheritances and savings, and systematic terrorizing. Some of them broke the law. All for Gans. “During those years,” Schneider writes, “my world was School. That’s what it’s like when you’re in a cult, even one that preys on and caters to New York’s educated elite. This is my story of how I got entangled in School and how I got out.” At its core, Manhattan Cult Story is a cautionary tale of how hundreds of well-educated, savvy, and prosperous New Yorkers became fervent followers of a brilliant but demented cult leader who posed as a teacher of ancient knowledge. It’s about double-lives, the power of group psychology, and how easy it is to be radicalized—all too relevant in today's atmosphere of conspiracy and ideologue worship.

Cults

Cults PDF Author: Max Cutler
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982133562
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Mystery. Manipulation. Murder. Cults are associated with all of these. But what really goes on inside them? More specifically, what goes on inside the minds of cult leaders and the people who join them? Based on the hit podcast Cults, this is essential reading for any true crime fan. Cults prey on the very attributes that make us human: our desire to belong, to find a deeper meaning in life, to live everyday with divine purpose. Their existence creates a sense that any one of us, at any time, could step off the cliff’s edge and fall into that daunting abyss of manipulation and unhinged dedication to a misplaced cause. Perhaps it’s this mindset that keeps us so utterly obsessed and desperate to learn more, or it’s that the stories are so bizarre and unsettling that we are simply in awe of the mechanics that make these infamous groups tick. The premier storytelling podcast studio Parcast has been focusing on unearthing these mechanics—the cult leaders and followers, and the world and culture that gave birth to both. Parcast’s work in analyzing dozens of case studies has revealed patterns: distinct ways that cult leaders from different generations resemble one another. What links the ten notorious figures profiled in Cults are as disturbing as they are stunning—from Manson to Applewhite, Koresh to Raël, the stories woven here are both spellbinding and disturbing. Cults is more than just a compilation of grisly biographies, however. In these pages, Parcast’s founder Max Cutler and national bestselling author Kevin Conley look closely at the lives of some of the most disreputable cult figures and tell the stories of their rise to power and fall from grace, sanity, and decency. Beyond that, it is a study of humanity, an unflinching look at what happens when the most vulnerable recesses of the mind are manipulated and how the things we hold most sacred can be twisted into the lowest form of malevolence.

The Cult of Smart

The Cult of Smart PDF Author: Fredrik deBoer
Publisher: All Points Books
ISBN: 1250200385
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 149

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Book Description
Named one of Vulture’s Top 10 Best Books of 2020! Leftist firebrand Fredrik deBoer exposes the lie at the heart of our educational system and demands top-to-bottom reform. Everyone agrees that education is the key to creating a more just and equal world, and that our schools are broken and failing. Proposed reforms variously target incompetent teachers, corrupt union practices, or outdated curricula, but no one acknowledges a scientifically-proven fact that we all understand intuitively: Academic potential varies between individuals, and cannot be dramatically improved. In The Cult of Smart, educator and outspoken leftist Fredrik deBoer exposes this omission as the central flaw of our entire society, which has created and perpetuated an unjust class structure based on intellectual ability. Since cognitive talent varies from person to person, our education system can never create equal opportunity for all. Instead, it teaches our children that hierarchy and competition are natural, and that human value should be based on intelligence. These ideas are counter to everything that the left believes, but until they acknowledge the existence of individual cognitive differences, progressives remain complicit in keeping the status quo in place. This passionate, voice-driven manifesto demands that we embrace a new goal for education: equality of outcomes. We must create a world that has a place for everyone, not just the academically talented. But we’ll never achieve this dream until the Cult of Smart is destroyed.

Cult, A Love Story

Cult, A Love Story PDF Author: Alexandra Amor
Publisher: Fat Head Publishing
ISBN: 0973445653
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
For fans of Educated, Captive, and Leah Remini's Troublemaker comes the gripping true-life story of one young woman's accidental journey into a cult. And her escape a decade later. It's rarely obvious when a group is a cult. Most cults don't advertise themselves as such: they are groups of people who look and act just like you and me. Not dangerous. Not deranged. At least, not at first. The slide toward complete control of your personality, your thoughts, and your life is slow and virtually unnoticeable. Until it's too late. Cult, A Love Story has been studied in university classrooms, featured in an audio documentary and on podcasts, and read by cult survivors and their families all over the world, from remote British Columbia, Canada to Australia, Europe, the Middle East and beyond. In this award-winning memoir, Alexandra Amor shines a light on cults so that others might learn from her heartbreaking experience. Amor gracefully and sensitively explains how ordinary and intelligent people get seduced into joining cults, why they stay despite the emotional and psychological abuse, and what the long process of recovery looks like once someone leaves a cult. Amor's transparency about her decade-long involvement with a Vancouver, Canada cult makes this powerful and gripping book an excellent resource for those wanting to know more about how the mind control of a high demand spiritual or religious group works. In this page-turning, personal memoir you will learn: - how normal, intelligent people can, without knowing what's happening, get sucked into a cult's grip - why it's so very difficult for those in high demand groups (cults) to leave - how to evaluate whether a group you belong to is a cult - what the recovery period after a cult looks like - resources and recommendations if you know someone in a cult, or if you are in recovery from a cult yourself "This excellent memoir reveals how a charismatic, manipulative spirit medium can use love for God and neighbor as a hook to drag a small group of devotees into her cynical web of impossible goals for self-perfection. After a heroic struggle for insight, Alexandra Amor was one of the cult members who broke the abusive spell." Joesph Szimhart, Cult Information Specialist