[Music] Hey G and do those of us like our spirituality with a twist. So we have gotten to the tail end of like a major project. Uh Daniel, we did it. We said we were going to talk about Yes. Daniel's getting his boogie on. Can't see it.

Thank Eric. Thank you for always saying that to our our our audio listeners, by the way.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I got to keep the audio listeners in tune. Yes. It wasn't exactly like the what's the old Trump joke about like it looks like I'm dancing like I'm jerking off two dudes at the same time. It's not the old trumpet. It wasn't that. It was like a little bit more like a slow boogie.

Yeah.

Um there wasn't enough action going on

to satisfy anyone.

Sorry.

In that way. But um uh yeah. So we got to the end of this big thing on we want to talk about cult psychology. We wanted to do a whole slew of episodes which we did. Go us. We talked about social psychology, psychology of conformity. We talked about uh the great sociologist Emil Durkheim. So there's episodes on that stuff, right? And then we did Max Faber and his whole idea of different times, different kinds of like I know authority and stuff. So we got to the end of all of this. Certainly episodes you can check out if you want to like follow through everything we've been up to. And at the tail end, you know, we wanted to do like a little summary episode to share our final maybe closing thoughts. Yeah,

I'm sure these things are going to keep coming up in different ways as we go forward, however we choose to keep on with this in different ways. But so we wanted to just talk about the theme of today's episode, which is something like, is everything a cult? That's the question of today's episode. Before we get into the details of it, um, if you could do what everyone always asks you to do and and anytime you ever listen to anything like this, which is to, uh, like and subscribe, maybe leave a little review if you're inclined to, maybe share an episode with a friend, all that stuff really helps us out.

It's a flooded podcast space, but we're trying to get out there and hopefully share thoughtful stuff with folks. Sorry. Yeah.

Yeah. No, it does, Eric. And and actually there, you know, I I we'll see what comes up, but there has been a couple reports of some um I don't want to say like subscriber farming potentially happening, which is a real scary thing because it it delegitimizes the the channels that have actual listeners and and actual I don't want to say content because everything, you know, content is content, good or bad or indifferent, but actual engagement from people. So um you know I know everybody has all the people always asking them to do that but it does help. So uh if you can do that it definitely it definitely helps us. So thank you in advance.

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks so much. All right. So the thing that hit me at the end of all this and I like as been happening with these episodes we know we talk with one another but you know as we're thinking about them during the week I know we have conversations with other people and a lot of stuff turnurning around and especially when we got to the vapor stuff and we said this a couple of times. I was, I think, a little bit more affected by that than I thought I was going to be. There was more in there than I was really planning on there being. And I had a lot of conversations with people and it really raises this bizarre question of like to what extent, you know, is everything a cult? Like that question really does come up.

So, okay, let's explore it a little bit. These might be things we'll look at the future. So, you know, I tried to do research around these things. One thing I looked at was uh Dr. Steven Hassan, Hassan, not sure how his name's pronounced, h a s an. And uh he wrote a book called The Cult of Trump. And he's kind of an expert on cult psychology overall. So I'm in the midst of doing my perusal of that. And maybe I'm going to use some of what he says as a basis for what we'll talk about in future episodes, especially if you want to think about how do people get out of these mindsets, right?

Um because that's his expertise, you know. And I also was looking at Dr. day uh not doctor Jane Bordon who wrote a book called cults like us and this question comes up of like to what extent is are things just cults and overall and then what does that mean for a little podcast like ours? So I'll just I wasn't even sure how to get the conversation started but I think I'll share like uh Dr. Hassan's what he calls his bite model and it was so interesting as I was thinking about it. So he uses that as kind of an acronym B I T right for how cults try to control people. But the thing about it well let me share it and then we can have our reactions to it. So the B in that stands for uh trying to control people's behavior.

The I in it stands for trying to control people's information. The T in it comes from trying to understand trying to control people's thoughts. I almost had a forian slip and said understand but it's control. And then the final piece is trying to control people's emotions. So he calls it the bite model. And as I was thinking about that and this is one of his main things he goes through to try to think about how do people start to like learn how to exercise control over others.

And the wild part for me again not knowing totally how to start this conversation but I was Oh yeah go ahead.

What was the I again? Behavior.

Information.

Information. And then do it one more time. behavior.

Yeah. So, it's behavior, uh, information, y,

thoughts, and emotions.

Okay.

That you try to control people through these routes. But I couldn't help thinking, you know, in terms of everything we've been talking about, well, I was like, my parents weren't Catholic, but I was, you know, brought to the Catholic Church through my grandparents, right? And I might be there sometimes once a week, a couple times a week if they decided to go on a Wednesday. And again, I'm just using that as an example, not trying to give any particular grief even to Catholicism or anything, but it was like, okay, yeah. Are people trying to control my behavior? Yes.

Yes. Are they trying to control the information that I use to internalize my world? Yes.

Yes.

Are they trying to control my thoughts? Absolutely.

Are they trying to control my emotions? For sure.

So, you get to this weird thing where you're like, okay, you know, and we could talk about the religious aspect of it. I also go through Dr. Sons and I think Jane Bordon agrees the different kinds of cults that there are. But you know, even getting just to that point, I was like, well, okay. Yeah. So really, like if you look at it and this is a big deal for our podcast obviously because we care about this a lot.

We were just talking about freedom off mic and the high value of freedom that we place right in our individual lives, our spirituality and what we're trying to do here. real champions of like personal freedom

and uh you know the whole idea like yeah like people are trying to do this all the time actually you walk through the world and people are constantly trying to control your behavior your access into information your thoughts and your emotions it's happening constantly

you know so you're constantly under the potential um exercise of people trying to like u impose cultlike authority on you like all the time right

yeah respond to first. Yeah, let me let me throw it back to you. Get your feedback on it.

Yeah, it's a mechanism of control. These are all these are mechanisms of control in general, but if I can, you know, I I like this and but what I think when I you know, again, I'm going to go back to social media consumption and then we'll just make it broad and we'll say media consumption including leg you know what we call legacy media as well as you know independent media. It's if everything else starts in my opinion with the information and the reason for that is because information technology is the technology of today you know and so the way in which that you get to people is via their phone or via you know their their consumption of some kind of media. radio not so much but still you know this kind of consumption and if you can

it was a big deal in the Russia limb era and like you know those kinds of things right anyways I didn't mean to like jump on it but it has been historically a big deal probably still isn't for some people who are in those areas where matters to them

right

but but you change the way that people or you influence the way that people receive their information then you will inherently change their behavior or then you I'm sorry you'll change their thoughts then you'll change their emotion And then their behavior is sort of like the the external manifestation of this internal process of this internal, you know, washing. I won't say whitewashing, but I'll say washing over of somebody because we do consume way more than we ever have. And the reason that is is that we are far more in my opinion separated than we have been previously. And so because of that, we still seek connection regardless of how much we think we don't need it. We are social creatures. You know, homo sapiens are a social species. And so we look to other people for everything. We watch movies that have stories about other people. We watch the news, which is stories written by other people, read by different people to tell us about other people.

You know what I'm saying? Like the whole thing is just about it's just about our own human interactions, you know, and decisions that people are making or not making. And so if that part can be controlled like for me that's the choke point on all of this that everything else works downhill from thatformational aspect. And so two things I want to say here is number one for people who take the time and listen to what we have to say. Thank you so much. You know we've been doing this now over 5 years and uh we really appreciate the audience feedback that we get. You know positive, negative or indifferent. it it's heartwarming to me that our conversations can influence other people in a different way that we can positively influence the information that they are receiving. So that's a very you know humbling aspect uh from from myself and then number that's number one and then number two as a as a warning because now is you know the war you quote unquote war looks very different now than it used to right and I'm only going to I'm not going to talk about actual war with like bombs and guns cuz that's pretty much looked the same for how it's looked for the last probably 40 or 50 years but the sort offormational war for people's attention your attention is the most valuable resource at this point, not Bitcoin, not gold, you know, not whatever else is, I don't know, lithium, you know, at this point, some important metals, your attention because that is what drives all of the media that is out there. That's what everybody is wanting. They're wanting clicks. They're wanting views. They're wanting engagement. So, they tug at your emotions by messing with the information that you get, by working against the thoughts that you might have on a different topic in order to change your behaviors. And you just have to be pay very close attention to where you what you give away in terms of your power by giving your attention to different things because that's going to influence other things that you see and then it's going to influence the way that you obviously think and and behave after that. So those are my two pieces.

I think like the uh you know the Dr. Hassan does talk about this idea or Hassan does talk about this idea of uh he acknowledges you know that you don't need to get people into the same space anymore to make a cult out of them. You can make a cult out of them like at a distance. Yeah. Right.

And I don't know what that means in terms of some of the other ideas we've thrown out as we've been trying to do this whole long series like mechanistic solidarity. I can create like this is like a Neil Durkheim idea. But you know the fact that people you can crowd people in groups where you kind of make this conformity of ideas this mechanistic thing. Everyone's kind of like a similar looking gear in the machine, right?

And you can kind of enforce a kind of a conformity, right? and a kind of a mechanistic kind of way of bonding people together by, you know, like

kind of trying to gear them to all think the same way and then glob them together, right? And now you you don't need to be in the same space to do that anymore, right?

You can do it like from a distance, right?

For whatever that like will totally mean.

It still raises like

weird questions. I guess you should do the five types of cults and then maybe we'll go back to the weird questions. Okay. So, the bit of the teaching part of this particular podcast episode will be the bite model. Seems kind of handy to think about.

And like maybe you take it out and you start thinking, okay, who is trying to control my behavior? Who is trying to control my information, my thoughts, and my emotions? You that's how people are going to try to exercise authority over you. The other thing that is like what are the different kinds of cults? And I think are two authors I've been using as the references for this little part. Again, the ubiquitous isn't the deepest dive into the materials. Maybe we'll come back to that some other time. But there is this idea there are five types, right, that they kind of bring up which will again raises this question of like how ubiquitous is this phenomenon? I think you and I agree it's a lot, but other people can think for themselves about this.

So they talk about religious cults. There is kind of a funny thing in that like if you went back to the original meaning of that word cult, anything that was a religion could be called a cult before that got to be like a negative term,

right?

A porative term, right? Everything was a cult. We talk about mystery cults from old Greece and Rome that's not necessarily like slamming them, right? And so yeah, then anthropologically as I've talked to our resident anthropologist,

Ryan K. Davenport, RKD. the RKD um the notorious RKD. So we've gone through and uh like he says like yeah every religion starts as a cult. There's no other way,

right? So you know that idea is out there, right? Religious cults. Um okay, got it. Then we can talk about political cults.

That was one of the prompts for this episode to ask questions about what's happening in the political sphere and where our cults are at, how the cults combine or something. Um then where it gets a little bit more interesting is like and maybe counterintuitive or maybe not as obvious more subtle would be the idea of commercial cults, right? That a lot of commercial enterprises are kind of cults too,

especially these sort of um multi-level marketing scheme things get brought up a lot in this that they're cult. So

yeah, doerra and Young Living for sure.

So what's I don't know if I know those two. Okay, tell me give me just a little context on we have to do a whole thing about that. But okay, so what are they about?

These are um essential oil companies both uh both out of Utah, both coming from, you know, having Mormon beginnings, you know, for sure. People who are into them are known as oilies, you know.

Oh, I didn't I didn't know that.

Yes. Yes, that is. If that's offensive, that's just what it is. Um, but the goal is for you to, you know, there's a couple a couple parts. One is obviously to get you to sell the product, but more importantly, as all MLMs work, mid-level marketing, is for you to get other people to work underneath you. And then the same thing flips and it's like, well, they need to get three people working underneath each of them. And so, if that happens, then you'll have 10 people working underneath you and you get a fraction. And it goes up and and up and up and up. Now, I do know somebody who is in there and they man they make a lot of money, man.

If you get to the top of the hierarchy.

Yeah. I mean, they're they're doing well over 100K a month.

Oh, okay.

Mhm.

And so, their goal at that level is to how can I start a new business with essential oils as a piece of the business. So, I'm not just selling essential oils. I need to sell an entirely different thing that have oils included into it. And so, yeah, it's a whole, you know, it's a whole thing. And so, but these people when they think about like when they're really in it, it's like, "Oh, you have headaches. Try our headache ease. It's a blend of uh bergamont, lavender, and uh rosemary. Uh put put one drop on each temple." And don't get me wrong, I like essential oils. I use them in the clinic. They're nice, you know, but like for them that's that's the it that's the it, you know, that's not the ick, that's the it for them for sure. I I've Yes. So there you go.

So my son knows a little bit about it because he was watching this show called YoungSheldon, which is kind of a spin-off of Big Bang Theory.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And the mom gets kind of roped in one. So at least my son is informed of what a multi-level marketing kind of scam is.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I think it's the dude from Seinfeld who played George. which I can't remember the name of the actor. Is it Jason Alexander?

Yeah, Alexander. Exactly.

Yeah. So, he plays the kind of Connie guy who's trying to get everybody involved in his multi-level marketing scheme in their little town in Texas trying to scam everybody as far as the stuff over here goes that uh Jane Bordon who wrote the cults like us book, right? And she definitely has this feeling of like man everything is a cult all around you once you sort of get that framing.

Sure. Yeah. She has the whole chapter and like it was interesting to listen to because I don't I can remember back, you know, I grew up in a kind of a crappy semi-ural suburb of Chicago and my mom almost getting roped into Amway.

Oh, Amway. Yeah, that's an old school.

Going back into the old school, right?

And this idea of getting sucked into these things. And I'm sure my dad would have been so pissed off at her because you have to buy a bunch of [...] probably

you do.

And then you have to sell it to other people. And Yeah. And my dad I'm sure would have been like there probably were some pretty wicked fights about that

and they didn't need a lot of reasons to argue. Um but in any case yeah it was like uh so she goes on about that and like I think there were even legal actions that were trying to be taken against them

like outlaw them at some point and then there's a lot of political shenanigans

and probably what we would call patrimonial authority if we went back to our vapor stuff. you know, you pay a little patronage to the leadership and you can find your way out of like uh the government shutting you down, which happened.

So, I mean, it was interesting to hear about it. You know, maybe we'll do something more about in the future. And then the one that like I didn't know too much about, just mention a couple of examples of these kind of commercial cults because sometimes it's a little hard to get your mind around it, but like uh as far as the extremes of it, there was something called Nexium. Did you ever hear of this thing before? I mean that's a prescription medication but other than that for

maybe I'm saying it wrong.

It's a proton pump inhibitor next

inhibitor.

So I maybe I'm doing it wrong. There was some commercial call and it was one of the women who was like part of the cast of Smallville the old Superman WB show. We were talking about

Superman earlier a little bit offline and she was like a major player in this thing

and there was like some kind of commercial cult and I don't know entirely what they were doing.

Okay. It had a little bit of like um Tony Robbins kind of a vibe to it or something.

Sure.

But it end up being like a lot of like weird sexual abuse within the cult and somehow I mean she got arrested I think for fraud or something. So it's a whole long story. Maybe we'll yeah

previews of episodes to come if we decide to talk about commercial cults more.

Yeah. Well learning about it and I was like hm interesting. You know

Young Living that's that's one of those oil companies. They had there's there's some of that in there you know children from under from the founder and oh yeah all kinds of stuff. We could do a dive on that one, Eric. That's that's that was

I didn't like know that in the Amway thing they sell all these classes and all this stuff that you're also supposed to pour money into these trainings. Like I wasn't familiar with that.

Well, yeah, because you don't know what you're doing. You got to get trained.

Yeah, but that's the reason. I think that's called a rationalization.

Some psychology around it.

That's right. But it was like tons and tons of money that you also dump into like training videos and like inspirational talks and seminars to hype you up and all that kind of stuff. Yeah,

I uh I was at this is this is a direct a directly related story. Uh I don't know how long ago was maybe 10 or 11 years ago. Uh I was playing football and I rode my motorcycle to the where we were playing. There was a huge storm that I didn't know was coming. And so I got caught in this really horrific storm. So I had to wait um at this restaurant that was in a strip mall, but my clothes were soaked. I couldn't I couldn't drive home. And that like So I had I walked over to the Target that was in this strip mall uh out in Carol Stream, Illinois. Carol Stream.

Mhm. So I'm walking through Target. I'm soaked. You know, the storm has passed. I'm looking for a t-shirt and this woman sees me and she made some comment or something about me and she was kind of hitting on me sort of and uh she's like oh you know would you like to uh to go out for coffee and I was like okay I'll be back here next week we can meet you know I know what time my game was so we met afterwards so I thought she was hitting on me wrong she worked for Amway and she's like you're just so confident and so good-looking you D I was like this is she's married with kids, you know. I like this is B. I'm like this is No. So, uh

smooth though. Smooth talking [...]

Uhhuh.

Now I have 15 flat screen TVs in my No, I'm just kidding.

The thing that was funny was not funny but related is that Dr. Hassan like he's interesting dude. The guy who wrote the trump the cult of Trump.

Yeah. um where like he was like I guess recruited into the Mooneyies

and so he was a follower of Reverend Moon for a while,

right? The old school kind of Korean cult and he got climbed up in that a little bit to where he was like kind of recruiter but he said the people who recruited with him like he described it he had just broken up with his girlfriend and he was feeling a little lonely and then these two kind of like attractive women came up to him and started chatting him up.

That's how it works.

And then you know it was like all of a sudden there you go. So, I knew a dude back in the day if you're just doing because the commercial call thing is like we don't always think about that,

You know, but I knew a dude who was uh like part of like this thing called the Landmark Forum. Do you remember that?

Oh, yeah. Landmark. Oh, yeah. I had somebody Eric literally, I'm not joking, she cried when when I would to tell me about how deeply important it was that I go with her to this thing. uh

cried real alligator tears.

You know,

lubrious alligator tears. Fake fake tears. Fake real tears.

Fake real tears. Yeah. Yeah. It's for real, man. I was And I was like, "All right. Well, I guess I'll go to one of these meetings."

Did you go? Did you go ever?

I went. Yeah, I went to one, you know.

What was it like? Cuz I had a guy back in the day in undergrad. You tried to get me to go,

you know? It's interesting. I I I want to say it probably ends up being something like Toast Masters where you you know you do some you you build some confident building type thing and then you're doing some networking and they have some psychological thing to get you hyped up. you know, but part of it is that you're supposed to call somebody who you have static with uh during the first 48 hours of the weekend and make up with them and, you know, have this kind of catharsis and so on and so forth that I mean, I didn't go to I just went to like the little intro meeting that was like an hour long, you know, and so they're trying to build a sense of like excitement.

That's like go to the first Scientology meeting though or something like that.

Yeah, totally. And then it's like

I want to say it's like 1,500 B at least. This is this is like 10 years ago. It's like 1,500 bucks for like a weekend. I'm sure it's more now, you know, but the people who are in it, they like it and it's a, you know, it's a vibe, right? It's a community, but it feels

I don't know. It feels p It felt pushy to me and I was like, I don't need I don't need this.

It definitely gets talked about, so maybe that's a separate episode, too.

Sure. Yeah.

But I knew a dude back in the day who was really into it. And I liked him as a person, you know, we were friends, you know, he's a dude I met in undergrad. I liked him. He was a good dude.

Yeah. Um, and then he eventually was like I I our friendship wasn't just about him trying to recruit me. Like that would have been awkward.

But he definitely was trying to get me to go. I was like, "Dude, I don't need it. It's okay. I'm not going to landmark for him. That's okay."

Anyway, those are the Yeah. Go ahead.

All of this shows just the importance of community, right? You know, we always we we we, you know, like to rope in our our Buddhist philosophy, right? The Buddha, the Dharma, and the SA, the SA being the community. And like it just goes and we've done episodes many different episodes on community over the years you know but even in even those three things right your your your spirit your the the teachings of reality or reality itself and then the people who are surrounding you who are with you in this lifetime. It just goes to show that like those things never leave um our life and our experience, you know, simple things like we need other people. And when generally, I mean, I don't know how it is for you, Eric, but when I, you know, when I see patients and and we end up talking about like sadness or depression, especially postpartum, you know, for women,

it's this loss of connection. It's this sense of feeling isolated. And as you know, which is why I always bring it up. It's like as the world becomes more and more isolated, we end up looking for community in different ways and so it's more attractive to people to join something that is established that there's a community around that there's energy behind but the we don't often question the intention of the community that we're joining. We just feel so good in joining it. There's people who share our beliefs and whatnot, but like they have a charter most of the time. They have a charter. They have an intention. They're a little business. They have a vision, they have a mission, and then they have a structure, you know. So, regardless of whatever community people are are are joining or thinking about joining, you know, it's just important to keep your mind open and your eyes even more open.

I think that's like a thing that like, you know, when you frame it that way, that sa idea. So, you know, these are kind of like basic Buddha idea, right? You have the Buddha who represents like the person who's sharing wisdom with you. And, you know, there's different ways that that can happen, right?

Different versions of the teacher. We've talked about an actual person or the things that are written by people or you know even like more personal things like your own experiences and your own

inner wisdom and spirit can be teachers. So you can make that bigger but okay that's the idea

you know dharma like the teachings that you're trying to learn and follow and then this sa idea and I guess like sa like when you frame it that way takes on a different meaning because it kind of acknowledges that people want to feel connected to other people.

Right. And then it becomes really important to think of like who are those connections? This has been a big deal in a lot of the episodes we've done too, of course, right?

Whether it's community of people or like who you operate with in your personal life too,

right? And who you're connected to are going to like have such a strong influence on you, right? Whether that's like

friendships or romantic relationships and those kinds of partnerships or you know, whatever it is, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's a good point like at some level you have to think about like you could think about like that and use that bite model almost in a funny way to say okay what does this person or what does this group want of me behaviorally

yes

what kind of information are they going to like let me what what information do I have to follow to be part of this program yes

of whatever it is right and how is that all going to be part of like how that's going to influence my thoughts and my emotions like what are people trying to do to me yeah

and that can be whether or not you're talking about like something like we're talking about here these cult things, right? Or whether that could be a community of people you're involved with. You know, do we call it a cult? Do we not call call it a cult? Or, you know, even in our friendships and our relationships, it's not a bad schema.

No. No.

And like even, you know, Dr. Hassan or Hassan, should I check this pronunciation ahead of time, talks about that you can get cults that are just like two people and they're a cult, right? And they, you know, like what's happening with that? And I do think then again this has been the big deal for us over the years of doing this like having some kind of like internal sense internal radar internal checklist of like who am I going to like have as being the most important influences in my world

right because they're going to control my behavior the information that I'm going to have available to me my thoughts and my emotions.

What were Eric? What were the other two the five types of of cults?

Yeah. So one was uh what he called psychotherrapeutic and educational.

Okay. So you can get people who are running like self-help scams.

Ah oh yeah those are very popular.

Those are very popular.

Even probably even more now. I mean I think we're we're seeing less of the the guru on the large scale. So uh what's that guy's name? The big guy who almost look like he has acromegaly.

Tony Robbins.

There you go. Yeah, maybe he does. I don't know. Um, uh, yeah, you're seeing less of those and more micro influencers.

I mean, they might have a large following on Instagram, but they're not to the the level of fame that Tony Robbins had

back in the day. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean that would just you know you're spending thousands and thousands of dollars to go to a week for a weekend you know to hear him give a a lecture essentially you know and so you have a lot of that but there's there's a lot of these you know oh do you listen to this influencer or that influencer you know so there's a there's a lot of this people are looking for help I mean essentially we're trying to help you know in a sense

yeah yeah I mean it's like and then you sort of ask these questions like are Buddhist things a cult or these things cultlike but I think if the primary goal is like human freedom. It's hard to say it's a cult.

Good. Right. I agree.

And then you then you get to this point where you're going like, well, I mean, that's the suspicious part if you want to get to be a Dowist or a tantrica or whoever, where you start going like, well, anything that's trying to dominate your behavior, information, thoughts, and emotions starts to take on that negative quality, right?

Can Yeah.

Yeah. Um I think the key word being dominate there.

Dom. Yeah. Yeah. Influence. Influence is a requirement for being a part of something because you are going to be influenced by it. But when

influence and domination that's kind of like the the line the line of demarcation of trying to work with you and then trying to control you.

But like do you consciously choose as you're saying like okay who do I want to be influenced by? Am I like open to be influenced by this group? Am I, you know, open to be influenced by this group of friends, by this relationship, by whoever? Am I open to that influence or not? You know, in a thoughtful way because

you have to acknowledge that. It's

that's a powerful statement actually. Um, all right. So, religious cults, politicals, commercial cults, psycho, uh, therapeutic or educational cults,

and then the last of these would be just purely charismatic cults would be number five on it. And that one seems like a little bit maybe vague. And he kind of acknowledges that you there's an overlap between these things, you know, that you might get charismatic figures that are ahead of political cults or religious cults and so on.

Right.

Right. But maybe some things are just based around like pure human

a certain kind of pure human charisma that people want to like attach themselves to or something. Right.

And I don't know. Oh, I was thinking about like your performers like if you're a Swifty or something like that or you're a little bit in the cult or something like that, you know, maybe. So, like those kinds of things.

I mean, how does how does she charge so much for those tickets,

I think like thousands of dollars to see see her sing some songs. I I think you know the like I think part of it with all of this to you know not play devil's advocate but to play the other side is that when when everything is a cult then obviously nothing is a cult you know and so it sort of loses some of its power of inclusivity in that in that use but I think it's when you're looking at a group and and we'll go back just a a few minutes to the conversation we just had about influence versus domination when it's trying to dominate you, when it's trying to influence you to do certain things, then you can look at that as a cult. But now cult has a negative connotation to it. You know, if we consider it like a a non for if we say something is a nonforprofit, we automatically have a little bit of like, oh, look at them. They're a nonforprofit. They still make money. They're still getting paid, but they're just, you know, so I think we have to just be a little bit, you know, cautious on how that word gets used for, you know, not that I'm not a swifty, but like the fact that we know what that is means that that that has a, you know, there's a language behind it. There's a group, there's a sa there behind their charismatic leader one, Miss Taylor.

It's a kind of a weird question, you know, and I get that that's a weird question. You like I've had conversations like anthropologically again with one Ryan K. Davenport about this. It's like well if you want to use something as a concept you can't define everything as it because then it loses its conceptual power. Right.

Correct. And I'm like okay and I'm with that up to a certain point you know anthropologically but another part when you get to the spirituality aspect of it

chin tantra spirituality with a twist you start going you know part of the idea behind a zen or a dowoism or a tantra or maybe even sufic things and so on is like how do you get yourself out of the thr of things that are trying to control your behavior information thoughts thoughts and emotions.

And how do you look at that really toughly?

And say, how do I get out from under it?

And it's then get to this weird kind of graze on like, would you say that Catholicism is a cult? We probably wouldn't use that word for it.

Okay. So,

but but it depends on how you want to do the framing, right? Like what point are you trying to make with the word, right?

So, I feel about it. Words are words and you're like you can use the words however you want, but I think the thing is like what are you trying to communicate behind that word? If you do call that a cult, then what you're really trying to say is like there's a way in which using the vapor idea. Yeah.

That you know that someone's going to use traditional authority to try to control your behavior.

So I have been fortunate as you have been Eric to do some traveling in this lifetime and a couple years ago I was in Italy. I remember I did we did a podcast uh when I was in Florence.

Oh yeah that's true. Yeah. Mhm.

And I don't know if it was that day or the next one, but we went to some underground catacombs, something like this, in in Rome, and they were talking and it was like a church that was really deep kind of underground, you know, and they were talking about some of the secret ways that people would communicate in order to denote that they were a Christian, you know.

Okay. And as we're having this conversation, I'm just remembering all of the ways in which that they would how when they would meet when they would talk about, you know, Christ and and how they would have to do it kind of on the sly because it was not the popular religion of that time. And yes, I did say popular because it is popular right now. Has been for some time, I will say. Um, but it

couple millennia going strong. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Still going. Uh but it wasn't popular at that time and so they had to kind of do things in secret. But like if you were looking at like if I was to say, "Oh, we'll remove all the labels." There are these people who are meeting in cemeteries at night and they have a secret code and symbols and language that they use to communicate with each other to uh solidify their community of people who share the same beliefs. That sounds like a cult, doesn't it?

You know, so that word Sounds like it could be even witches.

It could. Ooh. Ooh. Yes, that's right.

And they're talking about people, you know, drinking

or tantrics actually, to be honest. Like in the graveyard.

Yeah. Yeah. So, there's just so many things that are shared in terms of like what we consider cult behavior and who's a cult and who what's not a cult that like depending on where you're at on the on the spectrum of time, something that is popular now that was not previously was looked at as fringe before and now is more popular. And then if we look at you know ideas that you know erupt online you know six seven years ago were thought of as fringe conspiracy ideas now are fortunately or unfortunately far more mainstream and vice versa. [...] that was popular is no longer. I mean all of this talks to everything changes but I'm not going to

I mean like you know if you go to like we had on our guest uh Leslie right?

Yes. Leslie Garrett correct who just got married. Congratulations on that.

Who was just like uh you know got out of the uh Jehovah's Witnesses, right?

And like in terms of like studying this cult stuff, those were labeled cults in the beginning for sure.

And they just got bigger.

And once the cult gets to a certain size, you call the religion.

But that doesn't I mean from a like a certain psychospiritual point of view, that doesn't really change the meaning of it just because you happen to get bigger. I think the concept is the same. And it's funny for me because I get to go talk about Christian history. I know we'll wrap it up in a second, but I'm like kind of go making my way through this long audio book of this book called Name of the Rose, which was a movie made back in the day. Like it had Sean Connory playing this medieval detective. So it's set in a monastery in like the 1300s. And so they did a movie of it. Young Christian Slater is in if I remember the cast correctly. Kind of a nice

Slater. I know.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's in like the the Dexter reboot, like the young Dexter thing. Anyways,

so um Christian Slater,

he's kind of like the Shy Buff of today,

Yeah, he was he rocketed up and then something happened. I

know what happened to to our man, but nope. Didn't carry on.

Nope.

Didn't carry on my wayward son.

So, um but the book is kind of wild. that's written by this author named Alberto Ekko and uh and he was actual a scholar of like medieval Christian history. So you listen to the thing and there's these long passages of like what's going on in the Christian culture around the time that he just dumps into this otherwise it's kind of like a mystery story of why these monks are dying within this you know big abbey and um big monastery and so you I was like just curious like is this actual like true fact stuff and it is like he's just drawing on this background and you know long long way to get there but you know it's worthwhile reading the book if you find this kind of stuff interesting and what's really happening is like you're just laboring everybody a heretic,

so there's all kinds of Christian in uh Inquisition stuff going on,

you know, and they're just going, okay, well, this group is a heretic. And the reason they get labeled heretics, some of them is like they're saying that uh people should take vows of poverty and shouldn't have, you know, such a hierarchy and you know, all these things that we' be like, well, doesn't that sound like JC from the beginning?

Rich man through the eye of a like a camel through the eye of a needle. Wasn't that like a thing if I remember reading that book right? And those dudes are getting like their fingertips burnt off and they're getting burnt at the stake and like tortured and [...] and you're like, "Okay." You know, and why do you do it? Well, you just label that group a cult.

You say they're the heretics and now we're going to go after them or

So, like who's the cult?

In the end, it's a kind of a tough call. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe that's a conversation killer, conversation settler. Once you get to the point where you're burning people's fingers off the MC, they're like, "Oh, man.

There's really no place to go besides that."

I burned my finger on the lighter the other day. No, I think that, you know, the last thing I want to say probably is that like the, you know, we'll kind of like wrap with this the idea, the bite, right? The behavioral theformational controlling the thoughts and the emotions.

Well, just real quick on Daniel before I get you closer. If you take that and you also cross it with there's religious, political, commercial, psychotherrapeutical, educational, and charismatic, you're covering a lot of society.

Yeah. Yes, that's true.

You know, if you really spread it out, which I think is part of these people's points, too, you know, Jane Bordon and Dr. Hassan, this idea like, man, once you start framing it that way, you realize you're talking about big groups of people.

Who may be in the thrral of something like this. Anyways, sorry, but

No, no, no. You're good. Like, so

the sweep of it's big. All of that to that that kind of control. Again, we go back to our Buddhist principles. That's conditioning. This is exactly what this is. It's, you know, and I'm going to use it through the lens of the purview is going to be the informationational control, meaning what you see, how you see it, when you see it, if that's even possible. And then to control the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. This is conditioning you. That's what they're trying to do. And the way in which you or one of the ways in which that you set yourself free is to decondition yourself or maybe I could say recondition yourself. So we and we've done episodes on this before, you know, deep. I mean this is like the main theme of the whole podcast the main theme of the whole podcast that we come to over and over again which is why we do what we do why we talk about the things that we talk about because we're highlighting the external ways in which we are influenced so that we can have some say in what the influence has on us as opposed to being unaware of how things um evolve in life society and then individually because we are part of If you can see them and recognize them, then you can have some influence over them because the first part is is awareness is recognition. And so all of this is conditioning. Everything is conditioning. Our religion is conditioning. Our family is conditioning. Our gender is conditioning. Our school is conditioning. Our work is conditioning. Everything that we take in is conditioning. And so I'll I'll go back to the same thing that I said before, you know, about joining a group. Do you understand the intention of the group that you're joining? Do you understand the outlet, the media outlet that you're consuming or the influencer or the business or the religion? What is the intention? The intention that you are saying that you are signing up for that you are saying yes to. If you don't have some awareness of what that is, then you're not going to have much agency, you know. And I think at the end of it, at the end of all the things is that this authority is the removal of our individual agency to see what we want to see in society regardless of what that looks like. They're they're taking that our will that we are either lending or not lending and they're implementing it on other people. And if we don't agree, then we have to stand up to it. And if we do agree, then we support it. But at the end of the day, if we don't if we don't even understand what our own agency is, we're never going to be able to take control of it for ourselves.

I mean, I think that's what hit me about the bite thing as I was like thinking about this episode and I was kind of

listening to this stuff, you know, listening reading to this stuff as I was prepping it. I was like, well, wait a minute. This applies if you want to take this bite thing real

and serious. And you can make it in a more narrow thing to talk about like you know what the mooneyies are doing or whoever. But if you really want to take that thing seriously then there's all kinds of institutions.

And cultural factors and societal ideas going back to Durkheim. They're social facts.

Right. And what are they trying to do? Control your information. Control your behavior. Control your thoughts. Control your emotions. Like that's the fact of it. Right. Yeah.

And everyone like in that that can be acknowledged. And then you know if you want to talk about like there's different levels of what people mean by spirituality but if you go to like aspects that I think are certainly important like on an individual level to be able to feel like you're being some authentic version of who you are and I have to say Dr. Hassan uses that word a lot too. I I hear that language and I know that resonates on some level

you know on some level you have to recognize like

I better be in charge of my own behavior thoughts emotions and then what I'm taking in. Mhm.

I better be in charge of that. And if maybe if that helps anybody, you know, getting to the end of this little episode for today would be like like maybe you look closely at that and it's like, okay, to what extent am I free in my behavior?

Am I free in my ability to think freely and to take in different information? And is my conditioning holding me back and what I can do in my behaviors? My condition holding me back and what I can do in terms of my own freedom of thought,

right? My own freedom of emotion. and then being able to take in things and in a as a free authentic individual something like that.

Yeah. I mean

it's kind of a powerful tool.

Yeah. I mean if and look at like algorithms for social media. What what gets engagement is when you are bo when you're emotionally bothered by something. So most people's feeds are, you know, influenced by things that they they don't necessarily like because they see [...] and they like rage click it. You know, they're like, "Oh, this is bullshit." You know, they start looking at it. What? What? Come on. Oh, you know, whatever. That's that's playing right right to your emotions.

That's information playing right to your emotions. And then those emotions come back and they feed your thoughts of like right or wrong. This person is bad. I knew it. You know, now I'm going to say whatever I'm going to say and, you know, perpetuate this, you know, continual

get into some pattern of delusion psychosspiritually. For sure.

Correct. Yeah. But maybe like, you know, I don't think it's the end of spiritual accomplishment just to like do this question of authenticity, but I think it it's like it's certainly like a principal goal on an individual level and like something you need to get somewhere, right?

So, how do you reestablish that for yourself outside of these patterns of control?

Trying to control your your behavior

cautiously and the and uh uh awarely.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Well,

all right. Thank you, D.

That's good, man. That's good. That's good stuff. Uh Eric, as always, thanks for uh for rocking, driving the ship, man. You know, audience, thank you so much for listening. You know, like I said earlier, five years still going strong, still fully turgid. We're doing our thing.

Yep. Five years. Straight at it.

Straight at it, you know. Um but we appreciate everybody tuning in. You know, whether you're a new person or you're uh you know, been with us for a long time, we appreciate everybody listening. Uh please feel free to uh you know leave a comment anywhere where you're watching this or hit us up at uh the Jyn and Tantonra podcast on uh on the gram or if you want send us an email. We love emails uh jyn andtragmail.com or if you know us send us a text message and and and say wow that was interesting or wow you're an idiot. Either way it's fine. I don't it doesn't bother me you know. Uh but we love we love feedback from people. So, um, you know, and what people say does influence. We just I read a comment that somebody left on one of the YouTube videos just before this, um, episode started, and it it's definitely influenced our our conversation here. So, you know, our people's feedback is just as valuable as what we have to say. And so, we thank everybody for tuning in. For Eric, this is Daniel. We'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace.