The Fear of Cults and the Courage to Think
Article By Gilad Sommer
The word cult comes from the Latin colere, meaning to cultivate—a root it shares with words like culture and agriculture. It originally referred to tending, especially in the sense of worship, as in taking care of the gods. Up until the 19th century, cult carried no negative associations. It was commonly used to describe religious practices, including mainstream ones such as Christianity—think of the “cult of saints.”
In the 19th century, however, the term began to shift. In the United States, mainstream Protestant groups began applying cult to fringe Christian movements such as Mormonism or to spiritualist and esoteric groups that fell outside traditional religious categories. It was a way of labeling the unfamiliar or the nonconforming.
But it wasn’t until the late 20th century that cult took on its now-toxic meaning. The media frenzy surrounding events like the Jonestown massacre (1978) and the Waco siege (1993) created a modern myth: the isolated, mind-controlled group led by a manipulative, dangerous guru. These stories sparked moral panic—and spawned the so-called anti-cult movement, which, ironically, often employed the same psychological pressure and absolutist thinking it claimed to fight against.
To be clear, manipulative and dangerous groups do exist. Historically, these were called sects, and they deserve serious concern and scrutiny. However, the modern usage of cult has become a weapon, often used to shut down perspectives that challenge mainstream thought, whether religious, political, or philosophical.
This is troubling in a society that claims to value freedom of thought. Anything that steps outside dominant cultural narratives is immediately suspect. By today’s standards, the philosophical communities that shaped Western civilization—the Pythagoreans, Plato’s Academy, the Stoics—might well have been dismissed as cults.
Why are we so quick to fear committed groups with strong ideas? Perhaps the real fear lies not in them, but in us—in our own untrained minds. We are afraid of being brainwashed, because we have not learned how to develop and master our minds. Lacking intellectual discipline, we see danger in conviction. But those who have cultivated strength of mind do not fear hearing different perspectives. They trust their ability to weigh ideas and judge for themselves.
Philosophy, once a noble path toward such clarity and discernment, has largely been reduced to an academic or elitist pastime. Yet the original meaning of philosophy—the love of wisdom—calls us to something much deeper: to know ourselves, to strengthen our minds, and to live with purpose.
New Acropolis, an international school of philosophy that aims to revive this classical tradition, offers one such path. Yet ironically, it too has sometimes been met with suspicion, largely because of the same fear-based mindset that equates the unfamiliar with manipulation. And while caution is wise, suspicion without inquiry is not. Ironically, it is exactly because of our fear and our unwillingness to do anything about it that we are being constantly influenced—brainwashed, even—by social media, advertising, and the algorithmic echo chambers.
So what’s the solution?
We can either avoid what we fear, or we can cautiously dare to engage with it. True freedom means taking risks: to think differently, to learn from others, and yes, sometimes to make mistakes. But it is far better to err in the pursuit of truth than to live safely in a prison of our own making.
Image Credits: By Ivan Bertolazzi | Pexels | CC BY PD
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By Ivan Bertolazzi | Pexels | CC BY PD
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