The author alluded to it, but I really think the BITE model of authoritarian control[0] is something everyone should know about. BITE stands for Behavioral, Information, Thought, and Emotional, which describes the 4 categories of controlling behaviors used by authoritarian groups (from religious cults, to the Maoist movement in post-war China, to multilevel marketing schemes). They really are surprisingly consistent, from controlling what members wear or how they cut their hair and encouraging sleep deprivation on the Behavioral side, to discouraging access to external sources of information, punishing people for asking questions or engaging in struggle sessions to get people to confess to false beliefs, and isolating people from the other people in their life that may love and care for them.
Not everyone or every group that exhibits some of these behaviors is going to be a cult. But the warning signs are something everyone should be aware of.
Never read Michael Lewis's book about SBF. It's so bad it permanently ruined him as an author in my mind, I doubt the verity of any of the other books he wrote as a result of it.
It really revealed how much he relied on the gift of hindsight when writing his earlier books. Nothing wrong with that per se, but it's something he should have been aware of when doing a book on an ongoing event.
Lewis has a weakness for characters with lots of chutzpah and self-confidence. Morry Taylor, SBF, John McCain, numerous Wall Street guys—he seems to lose perspective when he writes about them.
Underground, by Murakami, was one of the better books I've read. It mostly covers victims, but the later chapters are interviews with various members of the Aum cult. It does a pretty decent job of presenting the psyche of the type of person who joins, stays, and some that leave. Although mostly relevant for what he calls the "Japanese psyche" I still found it very insightful.
No one has mentioned Ishmael from Daniel Quinn, where they theorize how modern culture is a cult (has it's own mythology) ingrained to hate or antagonize indigenous cultures, and how even our founding stories (Adam and Eve) are probably adapted from earlier stories from indigenous peoples.
"Seductive Poison" is a good one. It's a story about the "Koolaid suicide" cult. It's one lady's story about how she got indoctrinated, abused, and ultimately escaped from Jonestown. It's told from her perspective, and really does a good job of showing how a seemingly reasonable person can get wrapped up in that.
Not exactly a cult, but... "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe. Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters. It sounds like fun, until it doesn't so much. Soundtrack by The Grateful Dead.
If you haven't read it already, Fads and Fallacies by Martin Gardner is a great book. A bit more focused on pseudoscience than on cults but Scientology comes up for instance.
I'm still trying to grasp the dual nature of "cults".
These organizations can be an amazing vehicle for personal and spiritual transformation, and yet can be so dangerous and destructive if you let them override your personal judgment and recognition of what you actually want in life, and preventing you from looking outside...
I was in one such organization. I initially felt that my life improved greatly... but in the long term the "cultish" aspects ended up having negative effects on me (for one I got into debt thinking it would help me, and thinking that I "needed" them and couldn't see possibilities outside. At my "lowest" I remember walking into a library and being afraid of picking up any books not suggested by them )
Many people, coming from such "cults", report how early-on the techniques and teachings really helped them (which is what got them hooked). AND ALSO plenty of people stay their whole lives because they continue to find them highly beneficial! ... but not everyone
Something I came to understand is that different people have different spiritual and life paths -- and so the one-size-fits-all approach of these organizations might not be appropriate for everyone.
Yet, they basically tell you to "trust the process", to effectively suspend judgment (which actually kind of makes sense -- if you assume they indeed have "a path" very different from what you have done your whole life, maybe your current judgment might indeed not be able to grasp it...) But if you are too "open" to every single thing the leader says, you might absorb ideas that are not good for you based on who you are and where you currently are in your life (or in some cases ideas that are not good for anyone lol) -- this is especially true if you can't directly talk to the leader to clarify.
Confusingly, many of these realizations I had echo certain "teachings" I have heard within the organization, even though apparently contradicted by other teachings or attitudes. "Ultimately you should listen to your self; use your discernment; do what feels right" but then also implying that you should be doing all the things they tell you to do, and if you're not successful it's because you're not doing enough and making you feel guilty (and there is a lot of things you're "suggested" to do; practically impossible to be doing everything). "You should learn from everyone" but also --> heavily implying that you shouldn't read books or listen to teachers that weren't vetted by the group, lest it lead you astray.
Overall, I think my time in this group was important to my life journey, and that I was transformed in positive ways and learned a lot, but that I "overstayed my time" and should have looked at other things way earlier, and that there are things I have yet to learn that are best learned from other sources. I still think there was a lot of very positive things in that organization, and thinking maybe one day I might rejoin -- just I would need to be very careful and intentional about what my goal is for doing so.
Maybe HN is not the best place to ask this, but are there books that explore these "cults" from a more neutral or "dual" angle like this? Could it be possible to create such a spiritual-adjacent group providing a lot of the benefits of a "cult" without the negative aspects?
In any case, some of the books posted here look interesting and I'll look into them.
I'm sure these are all entertaining and engaging and reveal some exciting insider details, but it's worth keeping in mind that memoirs like these are closer to fiction than most things we think of as "nonfiction".
They're individual testimonies, often nearly impossible to verify, and written in an era where "autofiction" and "creative non-fiction" are mature commercial genres with their own tropes, standards, forms, and conceits.
If you're intellectually curious about "cults, scams, and schemes", there's a whole other -- drier but more earnest -- world of nonfiction to be found in places like JSTOR or the catalogs of academic presses.
As an academic, I wouldn't like to state papers are any different in regards to reliability of sources. They will just be testimonies and author viewpoint.
I can also recommend the book Mindfuckers - a source book on the rise of acid fascism in America. Each chapter is about a different cult from the 60s and 70s including one on the Manson's. Super interesting read.
I hope to release a book on how this all has evolved.
One side is the technology of artful misleading, which is usually much stupider than it sounds.
And another side is a forbidden taboo to speak of. An occult secret that lives like a cancer within us.
Through a sustained art of Power human minds may entangle and manipulate each other at any distance. Counter intuitively, this “esp” is merely consciousness entangled. And some have great skill and others delusional cargo cult “gifts.” Those “gifted” rather than rigorously formed are played in games by their handlers who they themselves cannot perceive perched in their own minds (big spacious brains and all.)
This is how the CIA Stargate programs and those since have largely worked. Overt participants are gamed by handlers who can see in everyone’s minds. It are for those who can “mind trip” to a degree, that functional awareness gradually forms. The basic neurological feedback of being messed with by such “Power” is what causes its development.
It is not that some are “psychic”, it is that all minds may be entangled and some have decades of development “screwing around” in the backs of minds. Their own and others.
The modern occult mindfuck is that consciousness has been hacked.
No literature list on MLM scams can be complete without Bridget Read's meticulously researched 2025 book "Little Bosses Everywhere".
The author alluded to it, but I really think the BITE model of authoritarian control[0] is something everyone should know about. BITE stands for Behavioral, Information, Thought, and Emotional, which describes the 4 categories of controlling behaviors used by authoritarian groups (from religious cults, to the Maoist movement in post-war China, to multilevel marketing schemes). They really are surprisingly consistent, from controlling what members wear or how they cut their hair and encouraging sleep deprivation on the Behavioral side, to discouraging access to external sources of information, punishing people for asking questions or engaging in struggle sessions to get people to confess to false beliefs, and isolating people from the other people in their life that may love and care for them.
Not everyone or every group that exhibits some of these behaviors is going to be a cult. But the warning signs are something everyone should be aware of.
[0] https://freedomofmind.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/The-BIT...
Never read Michael Lewis's book about SBF. It's so bad it permanently ruined him as an author in my mind, I doubt the verity of any of the other books he wrote as a result of it.
It really revealed how much he relied on the gift of hindsight when writing his earlier books. Nothing wrong with that per se, but it's something he should have been aware of when doing a book on an ongoing event.
Lewis has a weakness for characters with lots of chutzpah and self-confidence. Morry Taylor, SBF, John McCain, numerous Wall Street guys—he seems to lose perspective when he writes about them.
Underground, by Murakami, was one of the better books I've read. It mostly covers victims, but the later chapters are interviews with various members of the Aum cult. It does a pretty decent job of presenting the psyche of the type of person who joins, stays, and some that leave. Although mostly relevant for what he calls the "Japanese psyche" I still found it very insightful.
No one has mentioned Ishmael from Daniel Quinn, where they theorize how modern culture is a cult (has it's own mythology) ingrained to hate or antagonize indigenous cultures, and how even our founding stories (Adam and Eve) are probably adapted from earlier stories from indigenous peoples.
"Seductive Poison" is a good one. It's a story about the "Koolaid suicide" cult. It's one lady's story about how she got indoctrinated, abused, and ultimately escaped from Jonestown. It's told from her perspective, and really does a good job of showing how a seemingly reasonable person can get wrapped up in that.
If we are talking about scams an obvious one is Bad Blood, about the Theranos scam.
Not exactly a cult, but... "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe. Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters. It sounds like fun, until it doesn't so much. Soundtrack by The Grateful Dead.
If you haven't read it already, Fads and Fallacies by Martin Gardner is a great book. A bit more focused on pseudoscience than on cults but Scientology comes up for instance.
I'm still trying to grasp the dual nature of "cults".
These organizations can be an amazing vehicle for personal and spiritual transformation, and yet can be so dangerous and destructive if you let them override your personal judgment and recognition of what you actually want in life, and preventing you from looking outside...
I was in one such organization. I initially felt that my life improved greatly... but in the long term the "cultish" aspects ended up having negative effects on me (for one I got into debt thinking it would help me, and thinking that I "needed" them and couldn't see possibilities outside. At my "lowest" I remember walking into a library and being afraid of picking up any books not suggested by them )
Many people, coming from such "cults", report how early-on the techniques and teachings really helped them (which is what got them hooked). AND ALSO plenty of people stay their whole lives because they continue to find them highly beneficial! ... but not everyone
Something I came to understand is that different people have different spiritual and life paths -- and so the one-size-fits-all approach of these organizations might not be appropriate for everyone.
Yet, they basically tell you to "trust the process", to effectively suspend judgment (which actually kind of makes sense -- if you assume they indeed have "a path" very different from what you have done your whole life, maybe your current judgment might indeed not be able to grasp it...) But if you are too "open" to every single thing the leader says, you might absorb ideas that are not good for you based on who you are and where you currently are in your life (or in some cases ideas that are not good for anyone lol) -- this is especially true if you can't directly talk to the leader to clarify.
Confusingly, many of these realizations I had echo certain "teachings" I have heard within the organization, even though apparently contradicted by other teachings or attitudes. "Ultimately you should listen to your self; use your discernment; do what feels right" but then also implying that you should be doing all the things they tell you to do, and if you're not successful it's because you're not doing enough and making you feel guilty (and there is a lot of things you're "suggested" to do; practically impossible to be doing everything). "You should learn from everyone" but also --> heavily implying that you shouldn't read books or listen to teachers that weren't vetted by the group, lest it lead you astray.
Overall, I think my time in this group was important to my life journey, and that I was transformed in positive ways and learned a lot, but that I "overstayed my time" and should have looked at other things way earlier, and that there are things I have yet to learn that are best learned from other sources. I still think there was a lot of very positive things in that organization, and thinking maybe one day I might rejoin -- just I would need to be very careful and intentional about what my goal is for doing so.
Maybe HN is not the best place to ask this, but are there books that explore these "cults" from a more neutral or "dual" angle like this? Could it be possible to create such a spiritual-adjacent group providing a lot of the benefits of a "cult" without the negative aspects?
In any case, some of the books posted here look interesting and I'll look into them.
I'm sure these are all entertaining and engaging and reveal some exciting insider details, but it's worth keeping in mind that memoirs like these are closer to fiction than most things we think of as "nonfiction".
They're individual testimonies, often nearly impossible to verify, and written in an era where "autofiction" and "creative non-fiction" are mature commercial genres with their own tropes, standards, forms, and conceits.
If you're intellectually curious about "cults, scams, and schemes", there's a whole other -- drier but more earnest -- world of nonfiction to be found in places like JSTOR or the catalogs of academic presses.
As an academic, I wouldn't like to state papers are any different in regards to reliability of sources. They will just be testimonies and author viewpoint.
I can also recommend the book Mindfuckers - a source book on the rise of acid fascism in America. Each chapter is about a different cult from the 60s and 70s including one on the Manson's. Super interesting read.
I hope to release a book on how this all has evolved.
One side is the technology of artful misleading, which is usually much stupider than it sounds.
And another side is a forbidden taboo to speak of. An occult secret that lives like a cancer within us.
Through a sustained art of Power human minds may entangle and manipulate each other at any distance. Counter intuitively, this “esp” is merely consciousness entangled. And some have great skill and others delusional cargo cult “gifts.” Those “gifted” rather than rigorously formed are played in games by their handlers who they themselves cannot perceive perched in their own minds (big spacious brains and all.)
This is how the CIA Stargate programs and those since have largely worked. Overt participants are gamed by handlers who can see in everyone’s minds. It are for those who can “mind trip” to a degree, that functional awareness gradually forms. The basic neurological feedback of being messed with by such “Power” is what causes its development.
It is not that some are “psychic”, it is that all minds may be entangled and some have decades of development “screwing around” in the backs of minds. Their own and others.
The modern occult mindfuck is that consciousness has been hacked.
I quite like The Cult of Trump due to the relevance to current events.