Chapter Three: Janja Lalich and the bounded choice of the true believer
3.5 Boundedness
3.6.2 The soteric dimension: the transcendent belief system
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institutionalised but this does not detract from the personal and unique devotion that individuals have for their leader.
In Lalich’s words, charismatic authority “serves to lend legitimacy and grant authority to the leader’s actions while at the same time justifying and reinforcing the followers’
responses to the leader and/or to specific ideas and goals.”198
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She makes the further observation that cults tend to be “serious and different”201 from other groups.
Salvation is promised but conditional upon the group member’s commitment to a path of personal transformation. The path of transformation is unique to the group, prescriptive and ultimately based on impossible, unrealistic ideals. Typically, transformation occurs through the member’s strict adherence to the group norms and rules, self-criticism and the remodelling of self upon the group ideal, and a complete detachment from pre-cult thinking and behaviour. It is a process that is facilitated through intensive training and indoctrination programmes. Discipline and social sanction occur if members fail to exhibit appropriate beliefs or behaviours. The intersection of this dimension with the systems of control and systems of influence are evident in the various pressures that keep a member upon the path of transformation.
The transcendent belief system is fully actualised when it is internalised in the group’s members and specifically when it enables a conflation of the notion of personal salvation and the group’s goals.
In some groups, the methods used to indoctrinate members are overtly manipulative and forceful. Lalich writes,
The substance of the indoctrination programs in both groups was not unlike thought reform and coercive persuasion. In the DWP and Heaven’s gate, change processes were based on highly emotional and psychologically intrusive stages that involved the rejection of the past and one’s previous identity, a shift in values and the recoding of preferences, and the rebirth of a new self.202
The transcendent belief system is integral to the formation and evolution of the group as it articulates a unique promise of salvation; provides substance to the leader’s charismatic authority and shapes the transformation of the member into a true believer.
With the dimension of charismatic authority, the belief system makes up the core structure of the group.
201 Lalich, Bounded Choice, p. 227.
202 Lalich, Bounded Choice, p. 227.
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The third dimension of the framework, termed “systems of control” by Lalich, is concerned with the structure and daily operation of the group and includes such components as the organisational form, hierarchy, discipline, code of conduct and behavioural norms. She describes these components as the “network of acknowledged, or visible, regulatory mechanisms that guide the operation of the group. This includes the overt rules, regulations, and procedures that guide and control group member’s behaviour.”203
This dimension of the framework aims to create compliance and obedience within the group.
Lalich argues that, in general, cultic groups exhibit a pyramidal hierarchical structure: a top-down command structure that requires unconditional obedience. Decision making is strictly centralised with leaders being responsible for decisions affecting the organisation and the personal lives of members. There is a requirement for members to be totally, or nearly totally, submitted to the leader and the rules of the group. The charismatic authority of the leader and the transcendent belief system establish and confirm the leader’s “right of rule” over the group. A model of submissive, unquestioning obedience is promoted which applies social pressure on members to conform. It is disturbing to note that the type of obedience advanced though the interlocking the four dimensions in Heaven’s Gate and the DWP bore a striking resemblance to that observed in the classic Stanley Milgram’s “Obedience to Authority”
experiment204 – that is, orders from those in authority were followed without questioning, however harmful or irrational they may have been.
203 Lalich, Bounded Choice, p. 17.
204 Stanley Milgram, “Behaviour study of obedience”. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67 (1963), pp 371-378. Inspired by the question of whether leading Nazis like Adolf Eichmann could justifiably argue that they were just following orders, Milgram measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience. His experiment required volunteers to administer incremental electric shocks to another participant, with an alleged heart condition, if this participant made learning mistakes. The “slow learner” was an actor who only pretended to be shocked but in spite of personal misgivings, two-thirds of volunteers continued giving the learner increasingly painful shocks when prodded by individuals in white coats (representing authority figures) to do so. A conclusion drawn from this was that ordinary people in
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The groups that Lalich researched maintained rigid boundaries between themselves and the outside world, and between the group’s internal divisions. Security was stressed due to the paranoid ideation promoted by the group’s belief system. Movement and communication beyond the group was tightly controlled and collectivity was promoted by the pooling of money and resources, and living communally. Internally, a plethora of rules and regulations resulted in a highly regulated and tightly controlled daily existence for members. Access to information was restricted and based on a “need to know”
policy. Particular areas, buildings and topics of conversation were off bounds for members.
Personal control was further applied by new members being required to take on new names and being instructed to refrain from speaking about their personal backgrounds or emotional matters. Punishments and sanctions were imposed for violations of the rules. Rule-breaking and backsliding were identified through self- and peer reporting. In time, life within these groups became rigid, legalistic and introspective which had the effect of moulding members into rigid, dogmatic and single-minded individuals.
The effect that systems of control have on members and the interconnectedness between control and the other dimensions are explained by Lalich:
[It was]... practically impossible for members to see any way through the boundaries of the system. Rules and regulations hardened into a numbing and oppressive reality. These institutionalized systems of control were justified in each group by its overarching transcendent belief system. Members understood them to be the right of charismatic leadership and accepted them as such.205 3.6.4 The social controls dimension: Systems of influence
The final dimension of Lalich’s framework deals with the pressure social influence exerts on group members, inducing them to model their behaviour on an ideal of the transcendent belief system. Leaders or model members are esteemed leading to a general striving after these behaviours. However, the ideal is unrealistic and impossible
particular situations where they feel they are advancing some common good (like scientific progress) or ideal, and when instructed to do so by an authority figure, may engage in reprehensible acts.
205 Lalich, Bounded Choice, p. 230.
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to attain for any length of time, and the pressure to conform to it causes members to constantly feel inadequate and thus live with a continuous self-critical monitoring. This personal focus prevents criticism of the system or its truths. Lalich observed the following in Heaven’s Gate and the DWP:
Adherents were expected to reject their former lives and interests, shed their pre- group identities, and take on a new group-moulded identity. They were to have no loyalty other than to the leader and the group, and no interests other than working toward group-approved goals …the object is the moulding of identities in the image of the leader.206
As discussed above, this identity shift is a fundamental aspect of the personal transformation required for salvation. In the DWP and Heaven’s Gate the transformation was aided by the strict moral code and rigid daily discipline (systems of control), which promoted collectivity and conformity with the leaders’ demands.
Members strove to be crew-minded, to be a cog in the machinery of the group, to be a corporate actor. Whatever strictures members experienced in terms of their personal freedom as a result of this transformation they were able to rationalise as being required by the transcendent belief system. Moreover the belief system of both groups underscored the notion that personal transformation was something individuals could freely choose or reject. As Lalich notes,
This was an important aspect of securing members to their mission, for they clearly believed that they were the agents of their own transformation. They had made the commitment to change. No-one was doing this to them; they were doing it to themselves – sometimes contentedly, sometimes begrudgingly – and they understood that it would not be easy.207
Social pressure, expressed through an encouragement of members to act altruistically towards other members, identify with successful members, share important experiences, and allow control to rest in someone else, encouraged individuals to make the psychological shift of identifying with the leader and group. Ultimately, the systems of
206 Lalich, Bounded Choice, p. 230.
207 Lalich, Bounded Choice, p. 231.
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influence aim to create conformity, mutual dependence and self-renunciation.
“Eventually, life outside the cult becomes impossible to imagine.”208
The reality is that members of cultic groups are not making a free choice from any number of possible choices in moulding themselves in the likeness of the group and its leader. They are influenced by subtle but powerful psychological and social forces in the group to conform to the ideal of the group, to do what is required for salvation. It is also clear that when all members of a group have identical outlooks, a situation of optimal control exists for those in authority.