Should society start figuring out how to formally deal with cults, since reality can be endlessly denied with catastrophic results?

 

Should society start figuring out how to formally deal with cults, since reality can be endlessly denied with catastrophic results?

I was in Scientology for twenty five years.

A portion of society has made great efforts and in some cases terrific progress in understanding cult's and particularly how to help cult members who are considering leaving cult's or ex members who wish to understand what happened to them and recover from being in a cult.

The portion is a very small group of experts, perhaps fifty to a couple hundred people. If we are lucky I may be off by an order of magnitude, meaning a factor of ten, and there might be up to a couple thousand people who are very knowledgeable and good at helping people to leave cults and to further recover, but I have seen evidence the number is at least fifty to a couple hundred people.

I am fortunate that several of these people have helped me to leave Scientology after twenty-five years and to recover.

I think Jon Atack is possibly one of the most successful people ever in this regard, as HR has reportedly helped around six hundred people to leave or recover from being in Scientology.

The cult experts Rick Alan Ross, Steve Hassan, Alexandra Stein, Daniel Shaw, Janja Lalich, Madeleine Tobias, Margaret Singer, Robert Jay Lifton, Jerry Whitfield, Hana Whitfield, all come to mind for me. I can dig up other names given enough time.

I have even helped some people to leave or recover from Scientology, but far fewer than many other people have.

The issue is that the government and industry drastically underestimate the threat cults pose and generally don't understand what cults are, what they do, how numerous and widespread they are and how to deal with them. So, no government or major corporations to my knowledge are really taking on cults in an effective manner.

Some governments investigate or monitor or rarely outlaw cults but this is not what they necessarily should be doing.

They really should have government officials getting education on cults from cult experts and people who study human predators as well.

In my opinion they should evaluate cult experts and take the best ones and use them as part of training both government officials and agents who will deal with cults and developing extensive curriculum for regular people to understand cults, human predators, psychological vulnerabilities we have, and abusive relationships.

By teaching people about these topics we can better prepare people for the very real dangers that cults bring.