Cults

American Author and Journalist Tom Wolfe claimed, “A cult is a religion with no political power.” In modern English, the term cult is used about a social group that is defined by a group or sect bound together by veneration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc. And in Latin the word cult is derived from the word Cultus meaning to till or cultivate, the word was used to describe sacrifice and offerings used to cultivate favor with the gods, and in time came to refer to any unorthodox religion. Towards the end of the twentieth century, the term cult started to carry a negative connotation because of the horrifying events that took place in Jonestown. The way the public viewed cults transformed from innocent community groups that gave outsiders with like-minded ideas a chance to connect to others like them, to groups of people that did not agree with society’s values out to terrorize the public. Cults have become dangerous and need to be more closely regulated by the government because they are a threat to society, they exploit their members, and they create unsafe deprogramming therapies.   

The Jonestown tragedy that took place is 1978 was carried out by the cult known as The Peoples Temple of the Disciple of Christ. The Peoples Temple was created and led by Jim Jones in 1955, Jones was a very charismatic man who advocated integration attracting a lot of African Americans. The Peoples Temple started with pure intentions, but as the church gained popularity, Jones gained power. He slowly started to manipulate church members by convincing them he was more powerful than god. After he would gain their trust, he would exploit them for his own selfish needs. Jones convinced everyone in the church to move to the middle of the jungle in Guyana and start their civilization called Jonestown. One day a congressmen decided to visit Jonestown and see what is going on. Jones was afraid of what the congressman would see, so he ordered one of his followers to kill the congressmen and everyone that came with him. After they all died Jones became fanatic and called for a meeting in the pavilion he told everyone, “If we can’t live in peace, then let’s die in peace.” and ordered everyone to drink Kool-Aid mixed with poison. On November 18, 1978, 909 people drop dead as well as Jim Jones who shot himself in the head as seen in Figure 1. 

Fig. 1 “Jonestown Tragedy” 
“Jonestown Massacre.” HuffPost, 
images.huffingtonpost.com/2015-11-18  -1447868918-8280142-jonestown-thumb.jpg


First, cults pose a giant threat to society functioning properly because of their use of violence. Cults were not always seen as a threat until the Jonestown tragedy. This event was very controversial so the media was quick to give the story lots of coverage. Because there was so much exposure of the mass suicide it caught the public’s attention and started to create a widespread fear of cults. According to online research published by the London School of Economics and Political Science, “By the 1970s, and particularly after the Jonestown tragedy in 1978, there was an increasing number of demands made to local, national or international authorities to do something about the movements.” The Jonestown tragedy was a wake-up call to the public because it showed how truly destructive cults could be. After Jonestown people started calling for action to be taken against cults and as a result Cult Watching Groups were formed. The London School of Economics and Political Sciences research notes that watch groups’ purpose was, “to both create and meet demands for information about cults.” These watch groups provided awareness and unbiased information on cults to the public, but because these groups were not enforced by the government, it did not stop cults from committing further acts of violence.

Cults not only pose a threat to society, but they also pose a threat to the followers in the cult. While followers should be held accountable for their actions, it is hard to blame them completely because they have been brainwashed by their cult leaders. A big fear a lot of parents have is that their child will get “stolen” by a cult. When someone is “stolen” by a cult it means they have been brainwashed to lose a sense of their morals and beliefs in exchange for their cult’s morals and beliefs. Once the cult has brainwashed their followers, the cult will use their follower’s dependence and need for the cult to exploit them by getting them to do things they would never ordinarily have done. Being able to control someone’s mind seems impossible, but cult leaders have mastered techniques to get followers to stay loyal to the cult. Psychiatrist Mark Banschick observed, “that cult leaders employ mind and behavioral control techniques that are focused on serving followers’ connections to the outside world.” The critical part of this technique is the serving of followers’ connections because by cutting ties to the outside world it leaves members with no outside contradictory opinions to compare to the cults beliefs leaving followers to have no reason to question what they are being told. The brainwashing techniques that cults use cause people who were once normal to do horrible things and the government needs to take action so that no more people get exploited. 

Deprogramming is the process of replacing the learned behaviors that a cult taught its members with the mindset that they had before joining the group. The idea behind deprogramming is appealing to parents of cult followers and cult followers looking to assimilate back into society. While deprogramming sounds like the optimal solution, it has a history of using violent and illegal means to get cult followers to rewire their brains back to normal after being brainwashed. There are two types of deprogramming, voluntary and involuntary. Voluntary deprogramming is when a cult member has left their cult and seek help themselves, and involuntary deprogramming is when a cult followers loved ones kidnap them and force them to get help. Robert L. Snow the Author of Deadly Cults wrote, “Potentially, the deprogramming could turn out to be as bad or worse psychologically as the alleged abuse within the cult”(Snow 176-177). A lot of cult members who were forced to deprogram leave the sessions with PTSD and an inability to assimilate back into society, leaving them to turn to alcohol, drugs, and in severe cases suicide. If the government put more resources into the research of cults, they could learn to properly to deprogram members without the consequence of psychological trauma. 

 More laws regulating cults need to be enforced by the government to stop the terrorization of the public, end the exploitation of followers, and create effective deprogramming therapies. Cults have some traits that resemble the structure of religion, but the destructive behavior that cults encompass stops them from being politically recognized. Not all cults are bad, but the majority of them use brainwashing and violence which led the public to call for action to oversee cult practices. While there have been organizations that have done research on cults to try and better understand them and educate the public on both the positives and negatives of cults, the only solution to ending the threat towards society, exploitation of members, and unreliable deprogramming therapies is getting the government to put resources and time into investigating cults. 

Work Cited

Barker, Eileen. “What Should We Do About the Cults? Policies, Information and the 

Perspective of Inform.” The London School of Economics, 2006, eprints.lse.ac.uk/50880/1/Barker_What_should_we_do_2006.pdf.

“Combatting Cults.” Deadly Cults: the Crimes of True Believers, by Robert L. Snow, 

Praeger, 2003, pp. 176–177.

Delgado, Richard. “Investigating Cults.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 27 Dec.

 1978, http://www.nytimes.com/1978/12/27/archives/investigating-cults.html.

“Full Episode: Cults, Explained | Netflix.” YouTube, 18 Oct. 2019, 

youtu.be/6NWIfiV1_XQ.

“Jonestown Massacre.” HuffPost, 

images.huffingtonpost.com/2015-11-18-1447868918-8280142-jonestown-thumb.jpg.

Necessity of Vaccines

By: Craig Erwin

It’s a typical Monday morning, you watch your child step on the school bus as you wave goodbye.  You don’t realize that the next time you see them, they will have a contagious, fatal disease. This is the risk that parents take when they exempt their children from vaccines for religious or philosophical reasons. Such exemptions not only hurt the individual but also impact communities, both local and worldwide. Vaccines were created in response to devastating outbreaks of harmful diseases, such as Polio, Tinnitus and Tuberculosis. They were effective in minimizing or in some cases eradicating epidemic outbreaks.  However, the recent anti-vaccine movement has correlated with outbreaks across local and national communities.  Exemption, or opt-out forms make it easy to exempt a child without thought or documentation. With limited medical research to denounce vaccines or direct evidence of religion denouncing vaccines (other than Muslim), vaccines need to be mandatory for all children attending public school. Parents have an ethical responsibility to keep their children safe and healthy. When they decide not to vaccinate their child they are not only ignoring their parental responsibility but also their responsibility as public citizens. Just as the impact reaches past the individual child, the benefits of vaccination extend beyond health to the economy. 

In 1985, 2.1 million people died because of measles (“Measles Data”).  In contrast, from 2000-2017, the measles vaccine resulted in an 80% decrease in deaths or  21.1 million deaths prevented (“Measles Data”). However, with an increase in the anti-vaccine movement, the CDC reported 704 cases of measles in the United States since the beginning of 2019. 71% of these cases were in unvaccinated persons and 98% occurred in U.S. residents (“Measles Data”). Although 29% of those infected had the vaccine, due to their weak immune system, they were infected upon exposure.  A person’s choice to not vaccinate their child may be fatal for a child who has been vaccinated. A fatal disease that is preventable becomes contagious and possibly epidemic. Vaccines are recognized worldwide for their role in terminating high death rates but without 100% participation, deaths caused by these preventable diseases will continue to rise. 

One factor contributing to the anti-vaccine movement may be the ease of the opt-out forms in some states.  In Virginia, the Department of Health requires eight different vaccines. Attendance at a public or private elementary, middle or secondary school, child care center, nursery school, family day care home or developmental center requires documentary proof of adequate immunization.  This documentation is extensive and includes the prescribed number of doses, dates and physicians. Despite the apparent health importance that schools place on vaccinations, the opt-out forms are a half-page with no required external documentation regarding the rationale for the exemption.  The ease and brevity of the forms normalize without thought the individual and public impact of not vaccinating. The health risk of not vaccinating a child is too high for such an easy opt out form. The risk to student and system demands a more thoughtful, rigorous and accountable process than a half-page form. 

Parents and school systems share the same responsibility, keeping children safe and healthy while under their protection. Opt-out forms for vaccinations essentially introduce the threat into the very system that they are trying to protect. Elementary school students have immature immune systems and when exposed to these fatal diseases they are at a high risk of being infected. Therefore exemptions from vaccinations should be closely regulated and rigorously evaluated.  

A significant percentage 80% of student exemptions are based on religion (Pelčić, Gordana).  However, the only religion as a whole that opposes vaccinations are Muslims.   Islamic religious authorities have declared vaccines to be unacceptable since vaccines contain pork-derived products (Pelčić, Gordana). In Islam, consuming pork is forbidden.  Most other religions support vaccinations because they are beneficial to prolonging health and prosperity. Unless declared by the religion’s governing body, such as in Islam, religious exemptions should be prohibited. 

There is also the philosophical exemption. The primary argument for the philosophical exemption is that vaccinations are unsafe and there is minimal research to support the effectiveness of the practice. Data does not support these arguments.  In fact, vaccines are among the safest products in medicine. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention once a vaccine is licensed, the Food and Drug Administration, CDC, National Institutes of Health, and other federal agencies routinely monitor its use and investigate any potential safety concerns. The United States has the best post-licensure surveillance system in the world making vaccines extremely safe. The only time a vaccine is unsafe for a child to receive is when the child has a predetermined weak immune system. To insure that the child’s immune system does not pose a risk, doctors conduct tests on the patient before administering vaccines.  Science and research supports the safety and efficacy of vaccines, undermining the argument for philosophical exemption.

Others may argue that vaccinations are too expensive.  The most obvious counter argument is that a child’s life or health does not have a price tag.  In terms of numbers, the CDC reports the average cost to fully vaccinate a child with private insurance from birth to 18 years is $2,192 (“Measles Data”). Although this cost seems steep, treatment for these curable diseases is in the tens of thousands.  For instance, the average hospitalization bill for a baby with dehydration from rotavirus (a relatively simple problem) is $3,000-$5,000 (McCarthy, Claire). The hospital bills alone will account for the vaccinations, but that doesn’t include lost income during care for the child or the loss of potential life of the infected persons.  The average hourly wage in the US is approximately $26 (McCarthy, Claire). That means that every day off to care for a sick child is a loss $208 in wages as well as lost productivity (McCarthy, Claire). The economic argument for vaccination exemption is not financially sound and may in fact jeopardize one’s financial future through lost wages and productivity.   

Many people argue that they should have the freedom to make the decision to vaccinate or not vaccinate. Religious and philosophical exemptions provide this freedom.  They believe that mandated vaccinations without exemptions imposes government constraints and infringes on individual freedom of choice. By making vaccines mandatory they believe the schools are taking away the freedom to make life choices. Exemptions take away others’ rights to a safe, healthy and protected environment.  Exemptions are not based on objections by orthodox religions (except for Muslim) nor are they supported by medical research. In a cost benefit analysis, the benefits of the health and lives of children and the safety of the public outweighs the cost of individual choice associated with exemptions. 

Haemophilus influenzae type b disease – reported number of cases and incidence rates, Canada, 1979-2010

This graph shows that after the vaccine PRP-D was introduced the reported number of cases of Haemophilus influenzae decreased drastically.

For additional information visit on vaccines visit here.

To see my work cited page visit here.

Demolishing Connection

The birth and the development of the Internet bring people into a new era. It has changed people’s lifestyles. People who lived 30 years ago would never have thought they could travel around the world without leaving their houses. It’s also hard for them to imagine that they could make friends from all over the world without going abroad. The limits of distance and time are easily broken by the Internet through the rapid information flow. The Internet is a medium of information transmission, and people can freely exchange and share information through it. Because of this, the Internet has created a stereotype for most people: The Internet has opened people up. However, Maria Kannikova, a psychology columnist for the New Yorker, argues that the Internet has an alienating nature. People prefer to stay at home rather than go out. In 1998, Robert Kraut’s study showed that happiness and social connection of people continued to decline during the first year or two of using the Internet. It is essential to realize that the Internet is a network of knowledge and information, not a network of people. The Internet has reduced the connection between people and people.

With the development of the Internet, people have more ways to communicate, but people are starting to drift apart. Friends are considered proof of human contact. The initiation of the Internet has not reduced the distance of feeling between real friends, but hindered their communication. The Internet also makes it difficult for people to make bosom friends. In 1985, the number of close friends per person was 2.94, with only 10 percent people reported that they had no one to communicate; by 2004, the number of close friends per person was 2.08, with 25 percent people said they didn’t have any friends to chat (Jerry Burger 2007). In those 20 years, the Internet has developed, which is the most significant change.

One of the most significant changes the Internet has made is undoubtedly a change in the way we communicate. No longer do people have to wait more than a dozen days to receive a letter, or sit by the phone waiting for a call from a close friend. Now people can receive the message in a matter of seconds with e-mail or other social media. It seems to make it easier to communicate with friends. However, Internet obstructs communication with friends in the real world.

 Online communication is no substitute for face-to-face contact. The reason is that through the Internet, people can only convey information, but not show their real feelings to their friends. David Myers (2017) has shown that non-semantic words make up 70% to 80% of human communication. When using the Internet; however, almost all of this non-semantic information is lost. A lot of people have had the experience that they wanted to talk a lot with their friends. However, when they used the Internet to send a message, they just sent a short sentence with an emoji. The person cannot understand the mood of the person who carries the message through the Internet, so they cannot communicate well and probably will make some misunderstandings. The words that are delivered over the Internet lack passion and warmth. Over time, people have replaced many of the meaningful conversations by purposeful sentences. As Sherry Turkle (1989) says:

In fact, that we communicate in a new language of abbreviation in which letters stand for words and emoticons for feelings. We don’t ask the open-ended, “How are you?” Instead, we ask the more limited “Where are you?” and “What’s up?” These are good questions for getting someone’s location and making a simple plan. They are not so good for opening a dialogue about the complexity of feeling. (p.16)

The Internet can quickly decrease thousands of miles for people who are in a different country but it would be a lot difficult to maintain the relationship among individuals in the long term.

The reason for isolation among people is not only the lack of emotional connection with people when they communicate through the Internet but also the fact that they spend so much time on the Internet that they ignore the real world. With the development of technology, the Internet has become more like a second world, and people spend much more time on the Internet. The latest Digital 2019 report shows that in 2019, each person spent about 6.42 hours a day online. The longer people spend online, the shorter they can spend with their real friends. How much time do people have left to connect with their friends, despite the time they spend online, sleeping, working, and eating. Almost none. In recent years, it has not been uncommon for people to become so addicted to the Internet that they ignore anything else surrounding them For example, when going out with friends, all of them focus on their phones and hardly pay attention to regular conversation in real lives. When people spend most of their power and time online, how much of their connection remains, probably very little.

The Internet not only affects the relationship with real friends but also makes people challenging to make actual friends. Because of the anonymity of the Internet, people are used to showing their perfect side on the Internet, which makes communication between people lack of authenticity. Also, people don’t spend a lot of time and energy on the Internet to maintain a relationship. Besides, the virtual nature of the Internet makes it difficult for people to identify with groups on the Internet.

People have difficulty showing their true selves on the Internet, which makes it difficult to make actual friends online. One of the biggest misconceptions many people have about the Internet is that meeting more people on the Internet helps to make more friends. Here is a problem that what is the definition of a friend. In other words, is the friendly people make online is the actual friend. Friends aren’t just people you like to talk to, and they’re also people who can give you a hand when you’re in trouble. Most people who interact on social networks are merely nodding acquaintances, say-hello friends, who lack the real heart to heart and spiritual connection. So many people in the friend’s list, but they can only be called acquaintances rather than friends. They seem familiar to you and can chat together but does not really closed enough to talk to each other heart to heart. The main reason why it’s hard to make real friends online is that people are used to expressing their good side online while hiding their lousy side. Social Media, such as Facebook, allowing people to create a virtual model of what it is a perfect person. Because people don’t have to experience the embarrassment that happened in real life, such as being tongue-tied, unable to perform, lousy posture, falling off makeup, etc. They can carefully embellish each photo, edit each paragraph of text, show a perfect self. But this leads to distrust between people and people. Because of the virtual and anonymous nature of the Internet, people cannot be sure of the authenticity of the people they are communicating. Consequently, it is challenging for people to make actual friends with a cautious and distrustful attitude.

Furthermore, people cannot spend much time sustaining a relationship on the Internet. Every day, people communicate with large numbers of people through the Internet. The more people come into contact with, the more time they need to spend in maintaining a relationship. However, there are only limited hours in one day, and people need to compress the time they spend with each other to maintain contact with so many people. As a result, most interaction on the Internet is necessarily shallow and superficial. Also, spending a lot of time on the Internet will keep them away from their original friends in the reality. As a result, you don’t make new friends yet, and you may even lose real friends.

People hardly have a sense of group identity on the Internet. They can expand their relation circles on the Internet at first, but over time, their relationship circles may shrink due to their wasting too much time on the Internet. The reason is that people can freely participate in the group of interest through the Internet, but also can stop at any time. It’s hard for people to identify with this group. They don’t have to take responsibility for it. It is easy for people to join the circle, but it’s hard to maintain stable relationships. When interpersonal communication is no longer required by the efforts of both sides, but by a person’s subjective interests, communication lacks Each other’s expression of sentiments. In a word, it’s hard to make actual friends on the Internet.

In the age of the Internet, there is no denying that the spiritual world of people has become richer. The Internet itself is just a network for sharing information, and it does bring the world closer together. But the connections between people are dwindling. People fall into a pattern of lack of depth, lack of interaction, and lack of emotional connection. People need to rethink how they treat others. People should not be limited to make more friends, but to carry out more in-depth emotional communication. The Internet is just a place for sharing information and entertaining, and it can’t change the connection between people. The real reason is the change in the mentality of people. People should slow down the pace, spend more attention on the other person.

Works Cited

Maria, Knnikova. “How Facebook Makes Us Unhappy.” The New Yorker, 10 Sep. 2013, https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/how-facebook-makes-us-unhappy. Access 16 Nov. 2019.

Kraut, Robert, et al. “Internet paradox: Asocial technology that reduces social involvement and psychological well-being?” American psychologist, Volume 53, Issue 9, 1998, pp.1017-1031.

Miller, McPherson, et al. “Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion    Networks over Two Decades” American Sociological Review, Vol. 71, No. 3.,    2006, pp. 353-3754

Jerry, Burger. “The Humanistic Approach.” Personality, edited by Dan Moneypenny       and Erin Miskelly, 2007, pp. 321-357.

Henry, Sherry. “Introduction” Alone Together. Heywood, 1989.pp. 1-23.

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started