What Counts As A Cult?

Ross Douthat wrote a recent column noticing how “the cult phenomenon feels increasingly antique, like lava lamps and bell bottoms.” Drawing on the thinking of religious historian Philip Jenkins and entrepreneur Peter Thiel, Douthat argues that the decline of cults “might actually be a worrying sign for Western culture, an indicator not only of religious stagnation but of declining creativity writ large”:

The implications of Jenkins’s argument are specific to religion. Cults can be dangerous, even murderous, but they can also be mistreated and misjudged (as Koresh’s followers were, with fatal consequences); moreover, spiritual experiments led by the charismatic and the zealous are essential to religious creativity and fruitful change. From the Franciscans to the Jesuits, groups that looked cultlike to their critics have repeatedly revitalized the Catholic Church, and a similar story can be told about the role of charismatic visionaries in the American experience. (The enduring influence of one of the 19th century’s most despised and feared religious movements, for instance, is the reason the state of Utah now leads the United States on many social indicators.)

Thiel’s argument is broader: Not only religious vitality but the entirety of human innovation, he argues, depends on the belief that there are major secrets left to be uncovered, insights that existing institutions have failed to unlock (or perhaps forgotten), better ways of living that a small group might successfully embrace.

Suderman argues that Douthat probably “understates the ways in which semi-cult-like behavior has come to infuse daily life and mainstream culture”:

Yes, there are probably fewer cults in the aliens-and-messiahs sense, but there are more subcultures, in a wider variety, than ever before, more regimented lifestyle trends and minority beliefs about how to improve personal productivity or fitness, about how to become a better person and live a purer, more interesting, more connected and compelling life. Some of these subcultures remain distinctly fringe (dumpster-diving freegans, gently quirky bronies, furry fans, Juggalos [seen in the above video), while others are embraced, to varying degrees, by the mainstream:

At its height, Occupy Wall Street was as much an alternative lifestyle and belief community as a political movement. What is Crossfit if not a ritualized system that offers its highly dedicated, tightly-knit cells of followers a better and more meaningful existence?

None of these are cults in the specific sense that Douthat describes, with gated compounds and secret songs, but they are all experiments in behavior, taste, and belief intended to help adherents find meaning and connection in their lives.

In response, Douthat wonders if these subcultures really can take the place of religion:

I’m only slightly exaggerating when I say that this raises the most important question facing Western culture and society right now. Suderman is right, I think, that these “individualized and custom-tailored” forms of association are where creative/questing/artistic/religious impulses are increasingly being channeled, thanks to the internet and various broader economic and social forces; what’s more uncertain, to my mind, is whether they really encourage the kind of intense, enveloping commitment that I tend to think that deep creativity (among other goods) requires.

To the extent that like-minded people finding one another in ways that weren’t previously possible are creating cultural experiments that are as immersive, if not more so, than anything in the human past, then Suderman’s case for optimism makes a lot of sense. But to the extent that these experiments are more, well, dilettantish than past cultural groupings, more like hobbies than real commitments, more of a temporary identity that can be shaken off the moment it no longer completely pleases, they seem more likely to skim the shallows of creativity (to borrow an image from one of online culture’s more persuasive critics) than plumbing the true depths, more likely to cycle through pastiches and remixes (often fun and entertaining ones!) without stirring up something fully-realized and new.

(Image from the cover of Leander Kahney’s book Cult of Mac)