The Man Who Saves You from Yourself (2013)
This is a long article with a lot of items to discuss, but my take is that its "easy" to "brainwash" people because a lot of what's being offered is actually good, but, of course, used cynically and for social control.<p>The Hare Krishna kid didn't know it before, but he now realizes that meditation helps with his social anxiety. Except now, he's in bed with the Krishna's, instead of finding a personal and secular path to meditation. The girl in the Christian cult discovered the power of community and forgiveness. Funny how white centric these articles are. If a kid becomes a Krishna its suddenly a bewildering thing, but if a kid joins a gang on the south side of Chicago, we just shrug. Both these things have a lot in common; society, family, etc not providing what they should and not projecting those values to kids.<p>I think religiosity and cults rise when secular society fails at something.  We're not telling kids that meditation can help them. We've not telling them that maintaining personal relationships is actually hard work and forgiveness even harder.  Perhaps nowadays we are. I see a lot of what religion offers distilled into non-faith based practices. You can meditate without knowing the first thing about the buddha.  You can engage in a personal spirituality without feeling guilted to show up for social functions (that only seem to empower the leaders of congregations).  You can explore consciousness with drugs, lucid dreaming, or just via one's informed imagination, etc.<p>Empowering individuals to discover information on a personal basis is what the information age is all about. There aren't anymore gatekeepers.  I imagine this keeps cult activity low, not to mention a lot of cult stereotypes are from the 60s and built upon mindless baby boomer excess and dramatic parent attention baiting like 'dropping out of society.' Not only are we in the post-cult age, we are entering the post-religion age. I don't see too many gen-x'ers and gen-y's dying to get up early to go to church to be sermonized by the ravings of 1st century zealots.  I don't see how that's remotely in their interests.