What kind of person joins a cult? It might be hard to imagine what would lead someone to join a group like the Manson Family or NXIVM, or who would bequeath their life savings to a zealous leader or commit crimes for such a group. But these might be the wrong questions to ask, says UC Berkeley Professor Poulomi Saha.
“Nobody joins a cult,” Saha explains. Rather, they join what they believe is a really good thing. “We call it a cult when it goes bad.”
That good thing — a system of belief that is incredibly powerful to those who subscribe to it — becomes a cult when there’s harm involved, says Saha. Such groups often feature a culture of secrecy, a fear of social backlash and judgement among members, and charismatic leaders who claim to have access toasingular truth.
An associate professor of English, Saha designed and teaches a course on cults in popular culture. Students examine what it is about cults — or “intentional communities,” as they call them in the class — that attracts followers. They even design their own intentional communities, often with Berkeley students in mind.
Together, they think through how feelings of loneliness and isolation could lead someone to join a community of people that promises devotional support and belonging. Those kinds of feelings are common to young people, Saha says, especially on big college campuses like Berkeley.
“The brilliance of Berkeley students is not only do they have book smarts, they also have a pretty remarkable emotional intelligence and willingness to be intellectually vulnerable,” says Saha. “They have the ability to say, ‘What’s the difference between me and this person?’ They’re willing to think about their own embeddedness in a way that’s quite revelatory.”