However, the harvest fields of young hearts and minds found in university communities and beyond have always been one of the softest of targets for their proselytization. An older article we did some time ago has noted how cults recruit freely in such places to great effect and impact because of how readily the young men and women, caught at a time of transition in their lives from young student adulthood , never quite see what is coming when a friendly bunch of people sing a song of belonging and inclusion all pulling together under a shiny idealism.
Such college- aged recruitment of young men and women is one of the most hidden of things in society. It happens, but there's rarely any warning or caution put out about it, despite what horrors it personally brings. What's all too well known about them is how readily the appealing lure of cultic community seems to attract too many recruits who uncritically accept what they say and jump into involvement .. usually through the most innocuous of avenues like outings, parties, gaming and food fests held not far from the college campuses themselves. As our article indicated:
As we are all too familiar, people are basically insecure creatures who will spare no effort to find the means to satisfy their need for personal security through personal fulfillment. In short, they will seek "the itch for their scratch." Cultic groups target people struggling with such issues with their astonishingly effective means of personal recruitment based upon meeting those needs, thereby gaining significant means of leverage and control over them. And their recruitment is usually as successful as their group's ability to foster that instant sense of rapport and community with those they seek to convert. It is this kind of immediacy in purely relational issues that most powerfully influences the seeker. Their payoff - facilitated by the recruiter's personal contact - is a carefully controlled outpouring of positive regard by the collective group aimed to impress upon them how valued and cared for they are: this is done in three ways
Immediate Importance - the prospect is affirmed to the extent that they are made to feel essential and important to the success of cause they are confronted with - since it is how those needs and their fulfillment will be met ..
Instant Intimacy - the prospect is provided with a high degree of almost instantaneous caring and sharing with other group members who unhesitatingly make themselves available for the development of deep, close relationships ..
Interactive Introduction - the prospect is brought into (and caught up with) a community of people who have a vibrant social life totally centered around their collective involvement with the revelation or philosophy that the group holds is the "truth" that will save the world ..
In short, this is what we call fast food fellowship. It is quick, delicious and satisfying and can be obtained easily from the right places relatively cheaply. There are no shortage of franchises to choose from. The menus differ to some extent, but the fare is the same. And ultimately, no matter how tasty, the diet is imbalanced and unhealthy and leads into a real rut that is very difficult to get out of! Another terms used by cult researchers to describe this phenomenon is "love bombing".
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Check out how this same frivolity translates into the kind of recruiting gambits that many cultic movements engage in which focus on broader audiences in our podcast "Target Practice" in which four survivors of four different cults explain how cults will cling to their intended targets so convincingly and how they became involved.
Cultism is a transformative nightmare only one hope away.
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