1970s Cults

Fucking est. I grew up in SF. Obviously, Jim Jones was the worst. But there were so many others. Wish I could undo that part of my childhood. Saw so many swallowed by cults. We now have better experience and language to describe and somewhat prevent them, MAGA being the newest one.

Well, OP the 70s were bookended by the Manson murders on one end and Jonestown on the other so I could see it being a concern.

It was the 60s and the counterculture and a new way of living. And sometimes it went wrong.

I'll explain it to you at my next seminar at the Holiday Inn convention center.

Itt was a counter culture echo from the 60s.

The Moonies. Or was that the early eighties?

[quote]The Moonies. Or was that the early eighties?

They started in the 1970s because we had several come to our church around 1977/78. There was this one nice man who I suspect was gay. His wife had already been assigned to him and they were going to get married in a group ceremony in Madison Square Garden. I think he really wanted out but was too introverted to figure out how to get out.

All the serial killers cropped up in the 70s, too.

Wasn’t Nikki in some sort of cult in Young & The Restless? I think a lot of confused young people joined them for a sense of belonging. The 70’s were a very unique decade.

Children of God Moonies Est/Lifespring

Growing up in one of those weird 1970s families I thought I might be susceptible to it so I made my mom promise to get me deprogrammed because I would never go for that in my right mind.

GET WITH DEPROGRAM!

Love our country? Want to help fix stupid? You can earn $2,000 a week as a certified MAGA Deprogrammer. No experience necessary. Local, six week in-person training classes beginning soon.

Clock, watch, or time piece?

Synanon. A very dear friend's father was an inveterate alcoholic who hauled the entire family from Oklahoma to California to join.

She didn't describe what the practices were or give any details (probably too painful), just that it made her father worse and was psychologically and emotionally abusive, particularly to her younger developmentally disabled sister and younger brother who was gay. Mind you, they were kids and her brother was years away from discovering/understanding his sexuality, but they picked up on it. I can't imagine what it was like for her. At 12, she was the family caretaker as her mother was utterly useless.

One detail she did give: all the women were forced to shave their heads when the founder's wife lost her hair during chemotherapy. Very culty.

I didn't know about the criminal activity and I don't think my friend did either at such a young age.

[QUOTE]Described as one of the "most dangerous and violent cults America had ever seen",[7][8] Synanon disbanded in 1991 after several members were convicted of offenses including financial misdeeds, evidence tampering, terrorism, and attempted murder.[9][7]

I think it was the Patty Hearst kidnapping that brought this to the attention of the American people. The news glommed onto it, and she became the poster child for brainwashed cultists. While the Symbionese Liberation Army wasn't a cult it did show how a mind could be easily manipulated when involved with a controlling group.

I did the Lifespring training. It was the '80s.

Cults are just as commonplace today...NXIVM, QAnon, Scientology, loads of weird religious groups and offshoots of larger denominations. JWs, the Amish, FLDS, Kaballah, etc. Lots of smaller New Age-y groups like Twin Flames, Teal Swan, etc. Those weirdos camping in the Scotland forest. All those MLM organizations are pretty culty. I would even call MAGA a cult.

[quote]Wasn’t Nikki in some sort of cult in Young & The Restless? I think a lot of confused young people joined them for a sense of belonging. The 70’s were a very unique decade.

She got to fuck Paul Williams, so it was okay

OP, it’s hard to really appreciate this now, but in the late 60s, many young people really thought a new age would dawn, and consciousness would expand.

But the Age of Aquarius didn’t dawn after all. So many of them — perhaps disillusioned, perhaps still questing — looked for a smaller scale version, personal transformation, and joined communities that pursued alternative lifestyles. Some of them were communes, but others were cults (and it’s not always so easy to tell them apart).

I think that explains it.

Paul Williams? Really?

Um......has anyone here heard of Fox News??

[QUOTE]but in the late 60s, many young people really thought a new age would dawn,

I think a lot of us, not just young people back then felt this way after Obama was elected. Not a "new age," but at least a better one. I felt hopeful after Clinton's election, too. And then the 2 Ton weight fell from the sky.

I was too naive to anticipate the backlash, like this thing in Youngstown, OH who blames Obama for our poor state of racial relations. This is around the time where hope started dwindling for me and the cult beyond the Tea Party began to rise.

This was somehow a point on which my parents were overly concerned.

From about 1972 to 1976 (age 12-16 for me), they were worried that hippies, drugs, and cults might get their filthy hands on me and that they would have to sever all ties with me because of the connections I didn't have to any of these things. It was the era, of course. Having had two very ordinary, unexceptional children a generation earlier made my parents think that their oddball, bright, probably (definitely) homosexual son would be easy pickings for the times. Hare Krishnas, sex freak hippies, weed smoking professors, and cultists who would use me to try to bleed my parents of their money.

At University I certainly fell in with the weed smoking professors, and the old tweedy ones who hosted seminars and socials in the their Tudor Revivals over Bloody Marys. Cults and religions, no way. I was an atheist from age 10; it wasn't a belief system, just a knowledge of what I needn't concern myself.

Anyway their fears were much misplaced and I never so much as took a brochure from or had my ear bent by cultists nor radical long-hairs.

What's the difference between a cult and a religion?

Exactly.

cults are organized around one or maybe a few charismatic leaders whose defining characteristic is they cannot be questioned and cannot be held responsible for their behavior. Often cult leaders indulge in behavior that contradicts the teachings of the cult. The cult is taught to rationalize this behaviour.

Cults demand some form of obedience, sometimes tacitly, but you always have to give up and submit to an outside force.

Larger mainstream cults like Scientology beg borrow and steal from a variety of sources and include some valuable information in their "teachings" but corrupt those teachings with an agenda of greed and consolidating power around the leaders

NEVER join any personal growth, political or spiritual group without continually looking for signs of mind control, conformity and abuse. The minute you see that happening get out.

AND NEVER GIVE THEM A DIME.. not a fucking cent. They will give up on you if your refuse to buy anything..

I'm embarrassed but in the mid 70s I got into the Guru Maharaji because the guy I liked was one of his followers. Weirdly, when I tried to get "knowledge" from the Guru, which is how you get accepted by the cult, I was told to wait because they didn't think I was ready. I think what they meant was that I didn't really believe and eventually I lost interest in the cult, and the guy.

But I did spend time in Golden Gate park going up to people and telling them about he Guru. Thank God no one had a video camera back then.

r25 OMG!!! My 13-year old brother was briefly 'into' that guy, back around 1974. He 'snapped' one day and became obsessed with the guy, talking about third eyes and something about touching the back of his throat with the tip of his tongue.

It didn't last long because our family had no money, so brother had nothing to offer the guru's followers. At one point they asked him to give them our family's appliances, like laundry washer and drier.

I love this thread.

I think people in the 60s were fed up with the rigid conformity of the 1950s hence why the counterculture movement exploded in the 60s.

Alternative forms of living popped up in the 60s and 70s, but it seems like by the 70s everything started to fall apart and America went back to being ultra conservative in the 80s.

Cults still exist today, but they mainly exist online. I would argue there are both liberal and conservative cults now. I also don’t think there is any real difference between cults and organized religion.