8 more mind control techniques both churches and cults use

8. The call to action is to entrench yourself in the group and base your life on its doctrine.

Church can be a lot of fun, and you can experience a lot of genuine moments of happiness with the people you love, but the Sunday morning agenda always centers around the sermon. The point of the sermon is to deliver a message, and the message is that you need to base your self-worth on your membership in the group and demonstrate obedience to the group's ideology. You're told this will bring you closer to God. Mostly it brings you closer to the group and the offering plate.

9. The charismatic leader manipulates your emotions

Charismatic leaders will try to mesmerize you with the way they dress and talk. They guilt trip you. They make impossible promises and horrific threats. They get the crowd worked up into a vulnerable, irrational frenzy right before they deliver an ultimatum.

10. You're pressured to take your commitment to the next level

The point of every cult service is to build up to the moment where the charismatic leader makes a call to action. The call for action is to either give money, take your commitment to the cult to the next level, humiliate yourself or at least honor those who do. This is brazen manipulation, and it works. Creepy cults leaders know that, and quaint suburban pastors know that.

11. You're encouraged to humiliate yourself and mimic others

If a cult leader can convince his flock that he has more spiritual authority than them and they are unworthy in the eyes of God, then his control over them is almost guaranteed, Then the followers will have total trust in their leader when he tells them that the only path to salvation is to do whatever the cult asks of them.

12. You're asked for money, and your worth is tied to the amount of money you give

Most church leaders don't expect every member of the congregation to devote their lives to the church like a hard core cult. Many preachers are happy if they can just get everyone to put money in the collection plate every week. That's as unethical as selling people fake lottery tickets.

If anyone asks you for money...they probably just want your money. If they demand money from you and threaten you and your family for not paying up, then you're can be even more sure they just want your money. If the person asking you for money is wearing a suit that cost more money than what you're wearing...then don't give that person any more money.

13. Socializing with the in-crowd

The most effective way to control the minds of a group of followers would be to lock them in an isolated compound together where the charismatic leader could control every aspect of their lives like the military does to its members. In suburbia that's just not possible. So the trick is to keep your in-group together as much as possible and get them to willfully ostracize themselves from the rest of society as much as possible.

I'm not saying that if you hang out with your bowling buddies when you're not bowling then that means you're forming a cult. But when a charismatic leader organizes constant events that keep his donors together...you can predict the outcome.

14. Using indoctrination techniques in your own time and policing your peers

The amount of Coca~Cola advertisements you've seen in your life attests to how quickly the effects of manipulation can fade and thus how important it is to constantly top-up your message in your victim's short term memory. One way television commercials do this is by getting a jingle stuck in your head. If you walk around all day repeating the advertiser's custom-designed message in your head then you're doing the advertiser's job of reminding you of the message. Churches tell you to read the Bible constantly and to fill your house with Biblical themed merchandise. If they can get you to eat, sleep and breath church doctrine then you'll become your own snake oil salesman. Then you'll do the charismatic leader's job of manipulating you for him.

15. Recruitment

Cults need a constant stream of new victims in order to finance the charismatic leader's lifestyle. So...if you run into an organization that is constantly having recruitment drives to get people to come listen to an infomercial where they're asked to give money at the end...don't go there. You know what's going to happen, and it only ends well for the charismatic leader...assuming he doesn't get too drunk on power and do something crazy.

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