Cults are dangerous. Cults erode or remove your free agency and in return they offer a sense of membership, of belonging. Beware. Beware. Maintain your freedom to think and act. Recognize and be aware of these characteristics of cults.
- Charismatic leader who demands total loyalty and obedience.
- Threat of exclusion if you disobey the leader's rules.
- Contribution and "consecration" of your property and wealth.
- Instructions to avoid reading or viewing or listening to anything that contradicts the teachings of the great leader.
- Difficulty in leaving. Threats of bodily harm, loneliness, loss of privilege, loss of property and/or wealth, loss of fellowship, being followed, byzantine rules for getting out, constant pressure to stay, etc.
- Instructions to study and re-study daily the teachings of the great leader. Constant imprinting of the core teachings beginning with loyalty and obedience.
- Expectations to attend meetings and demonstrate loyalty and obedience.
- Strict hierarchy topped by the great leader. You may think you know what's best for you, but if your local or general leader says otherwise, you are wrong.
- Expectations to conform to grooming and dress.
- Sexual implications of membership from intimacy with the great leader and / or unwillingness to recognize the natural sexual variations evident in 10% of the global population since history began. Responsibility to confess in some detail sexual "sins" of which there are many.
- Questioning or Criticizing the great leader and their appointed lieutenants is not tolerated.
- Asking or forcing members to separate themselves from the rest of the (evil) world. Clipping communication links including phone, mail, news, radio, etc.
- Placing loyalty and obedience to the leadership above all else, including self and family. Even to the point of sacrificing your life and total property and wealth.
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