My Childhood in an Apocalyptic Cult | Hacker News Reader

My Childhood in an Apocalyptic Cult

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132 pointswallflower29 comments

Most of Christianity (and quite a few other religions beside) is apocalyptic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypticism

The big difference is that the smaller cults tend to place their 'due date' a lot closer by, this in turn requires extreme (peer) pressure on the followers to keep them from doing what their common sense tells them to do (to get out).

Cults are horrible. Religions are typically marginally better but they still play the same tricks on people.

The biggest problem is that if the prophesied end does not come about as predicted that some of these will not shy away from bringing it about all by themselves.

Science is also apocalyptic. The universe will end. Religions just intuited this earlier.

Not in the same sense, I think.

Apocalyptic religions want an apocalypse, and followers arrange their views to fit. Note how often the date just gets revised when it misses. If I understand rightly, early Christians expected Jesus to return while they were still alive, and quite a lot of modern Christians expect the same thing, dozens of generations later.

The apocalypses that science predicts [1], though, are narratively unsatisfying. A bunch of bad things will happen, but most are so far in the future that it's hard to imagine that humans will be around for them. It's just not about us. In contrast, the science-y things that people seize upon in an apocalyptic way are generally un-scary to people who can do math. E.g., planetary alignments, the LHC.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_the_Earth

Not necessarily. There are theories that the universe will collapse back to cause another big bang. However there are also theories that entropy will simply end up distributing all usable energy equally over all space, resulting in a universe that still exists where however nothing can happen anymore. The latter is a very drawn out kind of end, but in no way apocalyptic, as nothing is destroyed. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe

A good friend of mine also grew up in the same group, and is currently crowd funding a documentary about her experiences, as well as other cults in the US. If anyone's interested, you can check it out here. http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/happiness-is-submission-to...

The article links to an image of what 'Flirty Fishing' is about. Following that link you can find more graphics produced by the cult leader. This gives a good idea of what the cult is about:

http://www.xfamily.org/index.php/Category:Family_Art

They were not alone in promoting the 'free love' angle. Orange people thought they were in on the same deal, some flavours of Mormonism have the same deal, just so long as you are male. "The devil hates sex but God loves it!' has a certain appeal to it for young recruits...

This is the specific one referenced in the article[0]

[0] http://www.xfamily.org/index.php?title=File:America-the-whor...

Recent New Yorker article about the Branch Davidians at Waco:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/03/31/140331fa_fact_...

Quite interesting. It's fortunate that she didn't end up abused. Sad to see that other cults like the Church of Scientology keep preying on vulnerable people, though.

It's most definitely abuse of a most insidious kind.

My mistake. I meant "sexually abused". Obviously, growing up with little education, brainwashed and expecting to be shot by "the system" is definitely being abused.

Oh, fair enough.

I think the horrible cases of institutionalized abuse that make it to the media blind most people to the fact that the majority of cult followers, perhaps even leaders, are well-meaning people who care for their loved ones and want to do the right thing.

There's a fine line between each manifestation of batshit so I'm not so sure that's valid.

Edit: for the downvoters; I'm not tarring everyone with the same brush but can you truly trust a person's intentions who exhibits completely irrational behaviour? It's illogical.

I think most people would agree that the majority of cult members are, in fact, victims. However, since cults encourage the members to cut contact with the outside world, this mechanically facilitate behaviours prohibited by society at large, such as sexual abuse, corporal punishment, forced labour, etc. I don't doubt many of the abusers have managed to convince themselves that they're doing for the greater good, but then again, so do abusers outside of a cult.

I believe that many of the thought processes enforced by charismatic cult leaders (respect the elders, listen to the elders / leader in all things, avoid thinking for yourself, submit to god - through me) are designed to create docile followers - open to exploitation in any number of ways (get them to sell their old belongings, hand over their savings, open their legs..).

These vulnerable people can and will be exploited by anyone with the will to do it, whether it's the leader or another elder that does it.

What does it matter whether they are "well-meaning"? If you cut off children from education, contact with other family, and generally fail to prepare them do deal with society it really doesn't matter if you believe you are doing the right thing, because you're not, period. Of course what is "the right thing" is subjective so the extent to which this can and should be enforced is limited.

As for abuse, it's clear that whether something is a cult has little to do with it, given horrible cases such as from the catholic church. It's plain to me that it is caused by the fact that the perpetrators can hide behind the institutional authority given to them. When you give people opportunity, there will always be bad apples grabbing their chance.

> As for abuse, it's clear that whether something is a cult has little to do with it, given horrible cases such as from the catholic church. It's plain to me that it is caused by the fact that the perpetrators can hide behind the institutional authority given to them. When you give people opportunity, there will always be bad apples grabbing their chance.

Sure. You get sexual abuse in the army as well. But obviously, the fewer controls you have the easier it is. As you say, "when you give people opportunity, there will always be bad apples grabbing their chance." In a closed society with little supervision, it turns out there are a lot more opportunities for breaking the rules, and a lot less risk of retribution.

Children of God is now known as The Family International.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_International

Curiously, the Wikipedia page makes no mention of the 1993 apocalypse prophecy that failed to materialize.

The part about "loving Jesus" was particularly disturbing. Though one thing that differentiates at least the current incarnation of the cult from other similar organization is that, according to wikipedia, "Members of TFI are encouraged to maintain friendly relations with relatives who have left. However, they have also been discouraged from associating with relatives who are considered enemies of TFI and who have frequently appeared on television programs around the world to denounce and speak out against the group."

This sounds at odds with the testimony in the article.

Interesting. The Moonies ships an army of Korean boys and girls to the US to solicit money from college students, old people and generally anyone that will look at their flipover clipboards with pictures of impoverished people. [0] It also owns a great deal of wealth and businesses [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonies

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unification_Church_aff...

They had a lot of power in my country, and own an impressive mansion as their headquarters (they open it to the public on a national holiday, it's beautiful).

It seems to be on the decline here, they used to own a major newspaper, a Radisson hotel (in the emblematic independance plaza), and several other companies:

http://www.elobservador.com.uy/noticia/231655/el-declive-del...

From my readings, I don't think it was a central doctrine. Here's the relevant writing from Berg: http://pubs.xfamily.org/text.php?t=156

He seems uncertain about it and couches it more as a possibility. The prediction is actually a timeline of world events involving the Antichrist that begins in the 1970s, so they would have known decades in advance that it wasn't coming true. Certainly by 1986, when Flor Edwards says she was thinking "I would be twelve when the world ended [in 1993]", they would have noticed that the Antichrist hadn't created a one-world government as predicted.

The story is fascinating but I also wasn't aware of this site and I quite like it.

Agree, other than the insta-popup begging for a social media like.

I'm a survivor of that cult too. Here's a blog article I wrote about the world's worst aviation disaster and the beginnings of Flirty Fishing (religious prostitution) in Tenerife with pictures of cult leader David Berg and his first FFers. The cult tried unsuccessfully to bury the documents that expose this. You can see one of those documents and links to others in the article below.

"Secret letter claims Family International leader caused deadliest air crash in history"

http://chainthedogma.blogspot.ca/2011/11/secret-letter-claim...

If you like this you might be interested in:

    Enlightenment Blues:
        My Years with an American Guru
    by André Van Der Braak

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2134031.Enlightenment_Blu...

(disclosure; I'm a friend of André's)

I'd also recommend the copyright-suppressed book *Life 102: What to Do When Your Guru Sues You": http://www.amazon.com/Life-102-What-When-Your/dp/093158034X

The author, who had written tech books, got sucked into an LA-based cult. When an old friend suggested he try antidepressants, he woke up and got the fuck out. When he later fell sick, the cult sued him over the book and got the copyright to it.

It's not a perfect book, because the author was clearly still struggling to come to terms with his experience. But I think that makes it even more interesting.

I recommend the book "Combatting Cult Mind Control" by Steven Hassan. He was in the moonies and talks about his experience leaving the organization and now he helps other escape from similar cults.

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