We started Escaping Twin Flames on Netflix. I continue to be stunned by the amount of otherwise intelligent, capable people that will listen to some crazy person on the internet tell them what they should be doing with their lives and sending all their money. It's an interesting look into a cult of sorts where it seems the main perpetrator is just a guy obsessed with making money by taking advantage of people who then morphs into something else altogether. Two episodes down and one more to go
There's a second documentary about it, which covers a lot of the same stuff, but with a few different characters.
People really do generally struggle with being fully autonomous and are constantly looking for someone "in charge" who knows what the fuck is going on and what the hell to do.
The church occupies this role for a lot of people giving them an authority and social construct to guide their behavior and.decision making, which can be comforting even when it's oppressive.
A lot of people have moved past their parent's' version of church and are increasingly seeking more eclectic versions of the exact same thing.
Also, these days with influencer culture, being sucked into a culty community where the brand and the personality are synonymous had groomed an entire generation to accept that kind of worship community. The Netflix series, I believe, makes a comment about how online cults exploded during the pandemic.
Really, with a world filled with lonely, insecure folks plagued with self-doubt and imposter syndrome, it doesn't take a lot for a confident, charismatic person to gain control over people if they can demonstrate even mild evidence of a justification for their confidence and authority. Pair this with the systematic dismantling of faith in our existing governing systems and you have an army of people desperate for authority.
From there, it's a basic playbook of how to push people incrementally into behaviours that are increasingly insane. And that playbook doesn't reality need to be learned, it's innate to a certain kind of highly charismatic, highly persuasive person.
Some people who have these naturally persuasive personalities are ethical and feel enormous responsibility to be careful with what they advise people because they'll fucking do it, and that's a lot of responsibility and can have seriously stressful consequences. This kind of person doesn't assume that because people do what they say that what they say is the correct thing to do.
Others don't feel weighted down and instead seek conventional forms of power through running businesses or running for office, etc, and they often believe that they know best for the world, and the fact that people listen to them is interpreted as evidence that they do, in fact, know best.
Then there are folks who have no ethical concerns at all about controlling people and just try to max it out as much as possible until they either create a massive worldwide cult like Scientology, or commit enough crimes sloppily enough that they get sent to prison like Keith Reniere.
