The Taproot Podcast - ☯️Cults, Conspiracies, and the Quest for Meaning: A Psychological Perspective

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

The episode emphasizes the importance of addressing systemic issues that contribute to the rise of cults and conspiracy theories, rather than simply dismissing adherents as crazy or stupid. By understanding the psychological inevitability of these phenomena, we can work towards creating a society that fosters authentic growth and actualization. 🌱 Cults replace authenticity with false promises, exploiting members' time, sexuality, and resources 🎭 Conspiracy movements provide a false sense of agency and empowerment, driving people to take action based on unverified beliefs 🕵️‍♂️ Charismatic cult leaders often exhibit symptoms of temporal lobe epilepsy, such as hyper-religiosity, hypergraphia, and altered sexual behavior 🧠 Cults and conspiracy theories thrive when society fails to provide pathways to self-actualization, economic stability, and a hopeful future 📉 Intuition and the unconscious play a significant role in the appeal of these movements, as people seek meaning and purpose beyond the rational mind 🔮 #CultPsychology #ConspiracyTheories #SelfActualization #UnconciousMind #SystemicIssues #TemporalLobeEpilepsy #CharismaticLeaders #FalseEmpowerment #IntuitionAndMeaning #AuthenticGrowth #PodcastInsights #MentalHealthAwareness #SocialCommentary #PersonalDevelopment #HumanPotential   Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/ Podcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/ Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xml   Taproot Therapy Collective  2nd Floor | 2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216 Phone: [phone] Fax: [phone]  Web: www.GetTherapyBirmingham.com Email: [e-mail]   Taproot Therapy Collective 2nd Floor | 2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216 Phone: [phone] Fax: [phone] Web: https://www.gettherapybirmingham.com/ Email: [e-mail]

There were deserts on the seafloor Mountains higher than Any peak you'll ever see Up above dry land as I fall I give my body back Hey guys, it's Joel and it's been a minute. I appreciate y'all listening to the Taproot Therapy Collective podcast. It's been a while since I just sat down and recorded an episode like this one where it's just me talking for this mini episode. We've been doing a lot of interviews and that's been really fun.

Things have been really crazy and I'm going to give you a quick update before we get into this mini episode. So this was, I wanted to wrap up the cults and conspiracies series, which we lost some guests during that. Things were crazy and we kept hitting scheduling issues and my schedule was not so, wasn't as robust as I wanted, but it's really fun. If you haven't listened to those, I'd go back and check out Matthew Remsky and Julian Walker and John Alelich and see what they have to say about cults and conspiracy theories, because that was a fun series. I wanted to have a sit down with Alice and our other host, James, and have a discussion, but everyone's schedules are all over the place and we didn't get to do that. So I was going to go through those and before I could get around to doing it myself or with them. Um, the episode that we recorded a bit

ago with James Maffey about, um, Aztec metaphysics and mythology, uh, got posted. So this one will be going out after, um, the cult series has already been moved past, but I don't know, man, case or a, so a few updates, my schedule has been, um, crazy and I hope to get back to doing this more regularly. I've kind of had long COVID. I might take breaks, might write more. But we just had some emergencies with the clinic and different things that I had to deal with. Now that we're on the other side of it, we're probably in a better spot. One of them is that the building almost got sold, which would have ended the practice. So, you know, luckily everybody was able to get an LLC and purchase it, which also means that we can have a podcast studio and a place to sit down and do live podcasts with guests, um, or maybe not live, but you know, in person, uh, videos. So we're

not on Google meet all this stuff is probably, you know, I don't know, at least six months away, but it is in the pipeline. Um, if you're one of the listeners who, um, has sent email to me, um, thank you. And please don't, has sent email to me, thank you. And please don't hesitate to reach out about anything. You know, we kind of talk about a lot of stuff, cultural anthropology, the cutting edge of trauma treatment in the future, the past of psychotherapy, the history of that. And then the way that psychology informs like arts, design, cultural movements. You know, you cast a white net and anyone who wants to talk about anything weird, I encourage you to reach out because you may make a great guest for the show.

I mean, some of the people who've reached out became guests, even though they weren't what they were reaching out to do. If you have an idea for a good guest, send me an email because it's, you know, it's a wide net, but we're still like a little niche. And I make a lot of jokes about, you know, the, it's a wide net, but we're still like a little niche. Um, and I make a lot of jokes about, you know, the clinical psychology one-on-one student, or they take the research one-on-one class, those clinical psychology students. And then so many emails saying I shouldn't have a license. Cause I said something about brain spotting or whatever, uh, or Carl or whatever, you know? Um, and that is very funny. Uh, I, I like, I like to make fun of the, the,

the bad emails that I get, but it isn't the majority of them. And if you're listening, if you like it, please rate it. Please write a review if you want to. But really reach out because the point of it is connect with you as somebody who is into these things, not to be a huge show up there with Joe Rogan. There's a lot of things we could do to make the podcast more visible. And we don't because that's not really the goal. The goal is to support people that are kind of in this space and want to talk about this stuff. So that said, thanks. There's been a lot of chaos. Um, I look forward to there being a studio on the horizon, um, where we can sit down and talk about these things, uh, with a bigger cast of people. That's not just me and

have more perspective and have some guests in person. I also get, um, excited about getting back to the trauma treatment episodes and some of the stuff that's on the horizon and being able to write a little bit more. I appreciate you. Thank you for being there. Thank you for bearing with us. And I hope you enjoy the cults and conspiracies episodes. So all that said, here's some takeaways from that that I wanted to sit down because all of the guests that we had when we did cults and conspiracy theories had a pretty specific focus and that's great you know but not everybody is kind of synthesizing all the information that i'm trying to synthesize they're talking about their specific um area of expertise because that's what a guest is supposed to do and so to kind of synthesize that

i was hoping i could get um scheduling with alice scheduling with Allison and James because I know that they have some experience with these things. But maybe we can do that later. So the first thing is like I want to make a distinction between a cult and a conspiracy theory. You know, cults are something that or cults are high control groups is a word that you hear used now. There are things that take over and run a huge part of your life and then later replace your identity. I know that these things, there's a Venn diagram. I can hear you already saying in your head, yeah, but conspiracy theories do that too, but let me get through it. Like the cults tend to operate by having, sometimes through a charismatic leader, sometimes through, you know, a teaching or some sort of ritual process of trusting the process.

What they do is they take you and they say, here are all of these things that you need. And then that diagnosis is usually right. If you look at somebody like a Keith Rainier, if you look at somebody like, um, Keith Rainier's of the NXIVM cult, which the documentary, The Vow, and, uh, what's the other one, Seduced? Uh, there may be a third one now, I don't know. Uh, what they're doing is they're going up and they're making a diagnosis. So he goes up to Sarah Edmondson and he says, you're coughing, but you're not sick. And you're doing is they're going up and they're making a diagnosis. So he goes up to Sarah Edmondson and he says, you're coughing, but you're not sick.

And you're doing that because you think that you have to be sick to get attention. Who are you without that? And it changes her life. Cause she's like, I've done this my whole life. My dad gave me attention when I was sick or whatever she does. I don't remember her,

um, psychoanalysis of herself, but she says basically that woke her up. So then she's kind of in a vulnerable state where she feels like she doesn't know who she is, but she says basically that woke her up. So then she's kind of in a vulnerable state where she feels like she doesn't know who she is, but she's ready for growth. She sees this thing that's been holding her back. And then Keith Raniere says, okay, you got to do this process. And you understand how, and I'm not going to go through the whole NXIVM indoctrination, but the diagnosis is right. You know, charismatic leaders, cults, if it's like a text or something that people can

kind of project on or sort of vague or has a process. It's going to leave room for people to do this diagnostic part in a way that is unique to them, because not everyone's running from a different thing. We all have a different shadow. And so what Keith Rainier did and what most cult leaders are able to do is come up and say, oh my gosh, you have a father wound. You have a father shaped hole. And you've been trying to stuff that with drugs your whole life. And you've been trying to stuff that with music and this other identity and sex or whatever. And now you're trying to make me be your father and project that energy on me, but I'm not going to accept it. You need to become your own father, you know, and the person's like, Oh, wow, you know, that diagnosis is real, right? That somebody can

diagnose what you're running from, and you're suffering, and they can still have a prescription that is complete bullshit. And sort of that is what advertising is, right? Like, and, you know, and advertising isn't necessarily a cult, but they are operating on that same mechanism, where Starbucks is saying in the 90s, hey, you think a coffee shop is like cat and some books or whatever that isn't, it's a new way of life. Okay? If you're younger, you have no idea what I'm talking about. Okay. Cause you don't remember what a world was before Starbucks. Um, but Apple computer, if you're, you know, you may, some of you may be too young to remember this, but it was like, they came on the scene and they said, this computer is not like, and I'm specifically talking about their advertising,

you know, don't send me an email and say, well, computers used to not be intuitive. And Steve jobs wanted to say, well, the, this is a bicycle for your brain this is supposed to work that okay i'm not talking about the actual product i'm talking about the way it was marketed okay so like apple computers said here's an artist blowing dust off an odd thing they built in their studio and they have this apple computer and they have this thing and here's this guy going on this long journey and the ipad's in the leather case and he's a, you know, bespoke gentleman checking his thing that, and they were trying to say these people live intentionally, they live artistically, they have a very small quantity of very nice things because those nice things cost a lot of money. Um, you know, the

computer is next to the heirloom watch or knife because it's going to be the same thing. It's going to last forever. It's not computers don't don't last forever. But you're supposed to feel that and intuit that. Okay. And that diagnosis of like, you want to be an artist doesn't mean that you need an apple. That diagnosis of like, I want to go on this thing to have this part of my life. I want to have a new way of life. That doesn't mean that you need a cup of Starbucks coffee. The diagnosis in a cult and a conspiracy theory in predatory therapy, in predatory religion, like you'll see the same thing in religion. They'll get that. I mean, a ton of religions, they lead with this, these basically like self-help techniques from the seventies. Now, like I've had people tell me, well, yeah, you're just running

from stuff. You know, you don't know that you have a black hole in your heart that you're trying to stuff with all this other stuff. They don't even know where that line came from. You know, you don't know that you have a black hole in your heart that you're trying to stuff with all this other stuff. They don't even know where that line came from. You know, their pastor or something said it to them. But like that came from human potential type cults in the 70s and Synanon and things like that. So like a lot of these things make a diagnosis and then they tell you that you have to do something to feel better or you have to do something to be whole. Okay.

So that's what makes it a cult is that in that spot, that person is taking away, they're clocking you, making you feel like you're moving towards authenticity. Then they're taking away your authenticity and they're replacing it with something else. And that something else is this thing that usually leads to exploitation of your time, exploitation of your sexuality, exploitation of your, sometimes it's just your attention that these, some people will settle just for being an egomania. You know, a lot of these kind of cults of personality are just that, but it replaces it with something that is self-serving to a small group of people or a person or a group. And then it's going to put you in a position where you are supposed to go out and do the same thing on a smaller scale. Now, you're not going to get as much of the reward as the founder. Usually your reward is going to be

ego, but you're doing the abuse and you're a good person and you think you feel well. So what you're doing is an abuse. So that means you're not being abused. You get it? And that's why so many people who come out of these things, they have such problems because not only if if I admit that that guy damaged me enough to start the healing and change process, I have to sit with the shame and guilt that I hurt all these other people. And so vulnerability is always going to be switched and replaced in a cult. Okay. That's a cult. The difference in a cult and a conspiracy theory, or I think conspiracy movement might be a better term because there's conspiracy theories that are

right. Right. And I know the thing happened. I just term because there's conspiracy theories that are right. Right. And I know the thing happened. I just don't agree with the thing that people are doing with it. And then there's also conspiracy theories that are wildly insane and are just not real. But the movement around them is like pretty mainstreamed. So I don't know that the theory itself is the problem. I'm going to say conspiracy movement. Right.

So the conspiracy, what a conspiracy theory, how that difference differs from a cult, right? Is that with a conspiracy theory, you are feeling a group of people is deciding that there is a course of action because that's one of the reasons I don't like theory is people sitting around and diagnosing this thing and talking about it and writing books about it or believing it or going to church to talk about it or going to academia to talk about it or school to talk about it and just talking about it anywhere, that isn't a conspiracy theory, right? Because conspiracy theory involves action. Now, the action might be talking, right? The difference is that the conspiracy theory, you've made the leap that

what you are doing is messianic, is important, is fighting back, is empowering you against the forces of darkness in a way. Now, a cult can't really empower you the same way a conspiracy theory can, right? Because Keith Raniere, he needs you working all of the time. He needs your finances and your sexuality and your whatever. Like, you've got to be tired. You've got to be exhausted. Matthew Rimsky was talking about one of the high control groups he was in, and he was saying that the only time where he had time to realize that he was in a cult was when he's in the kitchen because he just got to feel a little moment of joy while he made something. I mean, he was making it a slave labor for this organization, but it was

like one of the only places where he could feel himself because he was so tired of going in the process, it wears you down. You can't clock out of NXIVM and then go do QAnon and Storm the Capitol. Like, there's not, you don't have time to do that. The conspiracy movement is taking something and saying, this action is actually empowering. It is good. It is going to get you to fight back and you're making a difference. So I'd say a cult is giving you a false sense of authenticity, right? Authentic self, a conspiracy movement. And I know there's some overlap, but, but its main mission is, is it's giving you a false sense of agency. You know, they're making the frogs gay. They're making the kids gay. The Disney movies are contaminated. You know, they're making the frogs gay, they're making the kids gay,

the Disney movies are contaminated, you know, no one knows that Jesus is coming back. Whatever the cult is doing, it's saying all this stuff, and then it's telling you that if you get on Facebook and you post, you're fighting back. You're in this, you may just be talking about it, like I said, but the talk becomes the action, and that we have this little bubble of people, and we're spreading the word, and it's growing, and it's on 4chan and you've got to go out and find younger kids and then co-opt their style and their culture and bring them into this thing. And people are waking up and people in other countries are even supporting us. That feels like I'm doing something that is empowering to me. That's less about my authentic self being replaced

by a leader or group or a high control system. And it more is telling me something That's less about my authentic self being replaced by a leader or group or a high control system. And it more is telling me something that's either negligibly effective or actually harmful to the world. And myself is great. You know, that there's a secret conspiracy that on this pizza restaurant in DC that doesn't have a basement, um, there's actually a secret dungeon of kids. And I'm going to go shoot that up because Alex Jones told me to. That's me feeling empowered to go act on behalf of as a conspiracy theory. So there's overlap between these things. They are technically different things. So where are they similar? Causationally, I think that they are very similar. So the psychology of these things,

I'm going to take a quick break, jump back to cults, right? So there's a ton of diversity in both cults and conspiracy theories. But one thing that I think is notable, it definitely is not an explanation for why every cult exists. But I think it is relevant when you're looking at why sort of charismatic leaders and certain religious and especially that have a certain quality of a mystical or a messianic quality exist. So there's something that a lot of people have noticed called Gestalt Gershwind syndrome, which is a type of epilepsy, basically. But people who have this particular form of temporal lobe epilepsy have a cluster of symptoms that if you look at cult leaders, mystics, a lot of artists, like different people throughout history, it doesn't always, I mean, it's kind of an, I mean, this is just a neurology thing. So it's amoral.

It's not immoral. It's just amoral in that it exists. And sometimes it can be co-opted on behalf of negative parts of your personality. A lot of times there's hyper religiosity. There's this intense focus on spiritual or moral matters that is accompanied by religious visions and sometimes delusions. There's also hypergraphia, which is where you just compulsively write or draw. When I worked with schizophrenia, I saw this in about 20% of people. I mean, they were constantly writing and I was like, what does this mean? And they're like, I have to get it out because this is the

message for you to understand. And it was just total nonsense. And I was trying to slow them down to pull them back into a groundedness and say, yeah, but can you tell me what this thing that you just wrote a minute ago means right now? And they would look at it and they would get so frustrated and be like, it's got to come out. It's not like there was just a confabulation. They couldn't explain the thing that they had just written, but they still had to continue to write for hours. Well, it goes around. It didn't. The link broke. And so now you don't know what it is. And it's like, wait, I just got to get back to writing. And you're like, wait, why are you writing? It is a kind of delusional need to create something incredibly important.

There's changes in sexual behavior, which is either hypersexuality or just a decreased libido, um, or an aesthetic nature of, I'm afraid of my sexuality and I'm afraid of it and other people. And I'm going to start spinning my wheels intellectually and thinking about why all these things are actually like bad and you shouldn't do them. You know, um, I'm going to start spinning my wheels intellectually and thinking about why all these things are actually like bad and you shouldn't do them. You know, I'm going to come up with either a spiritual or a logical reason why sex is degenerate or impure or whatever. So, I mean, so imagine like if you're somebody like Marshall Applewhite in the Heaven's Gate cult who is a repressed gay man, that is going to be incredibly helpful to you not changing to you doubling down on your worst parts and not confronting them because like now all sex is bad so i don't even need to think about my whatever i need to just teach other people how great it is to avoid your sexuality

that could be hypersexuality like in the case of the rajneesh cult you know there there was a lot of that in some of the charismatic leaders um there's also like an obsession with like eating habits a lot of times with this kind of epilepsy. So restricted eating, fasting, eating at certain times, rituals basically. It doesn't matter what the ritual is, binging, purging, like it's a ritual. It's just a strange obsession with how there's a certain way that you have to do that is very extreme, normal parts of human life, creativity, eating, sexuality, emotions. There's an obsessive and a ruminative tendency. There's also strange humorlessness and sobriety that kind of clicks on and off. Like a lot of these guys, when you look at the history of the cult leader, you see

that they're so dry and they do the teaching and then it goes on and then they laugh. And it's this moment of like liberation for the whole groom because they have this moment where they're allowed to have humor. And, oh, isn't this so funny? And you're turning the humanness of the group off by repressing emotion and humor and then giving them permission to enjoy it. And you'll see when you see that dynamic in a lot of these tapes, if you watch any of these true crime things it's kind of hard to unsee so this is not um there's also like a weird uh some people call it circumstantiality but i call it like a spiral there's like a spiral of language you see it in people that are like addicted to maybe benzos or something and then still using them um like there's certain kind

of youtube philosophy people that talk this way and a lot of them um like there's certain kind of youtube philosophy people that talk this way and a lot of them in the past have been like that guy's on benzos and then people are like no he's a genius and then later it turns out yes he is actually on benzos but they kind of talk in the way that a jj abrams movie tells a story like jj abrams if you've ever seen his stuff it's scene to scene's compelling, and it makes you're following what's happening. But you back up from the whole movie and you're like, what was the point of any of that? Or why would they even have done that? You're so compelled by, and then you understand how this connects to that. But when you think of light,

that's the opposite of darkness. What if we put the light and the darkness together? Do we have everything or do we have nothing when that happens? And if it's everything, well, then that means that there's a lot of power over here. But if we have nothing, then that means we have none. Okay. What I just said is zero. I said nothing like that is meaningless nonsense. Okay. So Alan Watts will talk this way and he, he shares some of these features and he has probably more of a point and he's not a call leader right like it was sort of working for him um in a way that like a keith rainier doesn't like by keith rainier you can listen to 50 hours of this stuff and your takeaway is that it's just

so complicated because you don't understand it and actually you must be stupid when really the content is stupid and it doesn't mean anything like a lot of these people have these features and i don't know that rainier had this but but I'm just saying, look for this when you're finding, when you're analyzing the leadership of a lot of cults. So, um, and not everyone has Gestalt. I'm wanting to say Gestalt because I'm a therapist, Gestalt-Geschwin syndrome. Um, and I'm not the one that made that connection. There's a lot of academic, um, work on that that goes back a long ways. But when you're looking for the original person,

because, you know, a lot of the things when you're looking at the cult leader, right? Like a delusion, spirit, I don't think spirit, I'm not one of those therapists that, I'm not Freudian, I don't think that spirituality is delusional. I know a ton of people who, when you're going back to the brain science,

we talk about the front brain and the sub brain, where their front, they had a moment where their sub brain turned their front brain turned off. Their sub brain was incredibly active and they're telling me about it. And they're telling me that they went into this place where they saw a connection to all things. They have a profound empathy for creation. They don't identify with their ego as much. They still want to be a person, but they don't really care about being a powerful or right or proud or whatever person. They just want to be loving and good and connected to other people.

And they have this spiritual experience, you know, in that sub brain place. And I'm not saying that that isn't real or it doesn't come from a medical physical thing. I'm a therapist. I'm not a priest. And when you talk to them, it's working out for them. You know, they quit drinking. They went to this place. They turned their life around. People think they're easier to deal with. Maybe they changed their job to something that's more fulfilling. It works out for them for the rest of their life. I know a lot of people where that

happened. Um, and I think that that is interesting. Um, I don't know where it comes from, but that kind of spirituality, I'm not saying it's bad because it's not logical. I don't know where it comes from, but that kind of spirituality, I'm not saying it's bad because it's not logical. I don't think that's right. But a delusion where there is, and you have an experience in the sub brain that is beyond logic, that is beyond I think people say, well, all spiritual people are just delusional or all spiritual people are just weak and they're trying to find a way to make themselves so powerful. That definitely is a dynamic. Anybody who says it doesn't happen is wrong. I don't think that's behind all spirituality, having sat with multiple types of people in a religious and non-religious setting, dealing with religion for most of my life. I just, I don't. But when you look at somebody like in the Amy Carlson documentary, the Love Has Won documentary about Amy Carlson, she is smoking drugs and drinking fifths of vodka and saying, well, for you, these are drugs, but for me, they're spiritual

tools. She looks pitiful. They're in a trailer. And the people around her are saying, you can't see it, but I see it. And she is God. And I feel that. And she's dead. And they're still in that cult. They still believe that. Everything that she said was going to happen didn't happen.

That is a delusion that is looking and functioning like a spiritual experience. How do you tell those apart? Well, I mean, people get frustrated, especially Western, you know, psychology, because there isn't an empirical way to do it. You can't give somebody the MMPI, the Minnesota Psychiatric Screener, you can't give somebody, you know, a deck floor and then have it say, this person is actually a guru and this person is a charlatan or this person is having a delusion and this person has a spiritual experience. You kind of have to have done your own work with these things to just be able to get a vibe and you still don't have certainty. And I think that is why a lot of scientists just say, well, that's not science. I'm not going to go there, which, yeah, you're right.

It's not. And you don't have to if you don't want to. But it's another reason why a lot of therapists in a a way that is not helpful, say all spirituality is bad. It's illogical. I'm an enlightened atheist. Or they say all spirituality is good. And I'm just going to encourage everybody to be woo-woo. And in doing that, you enable a delusion.

Okay? So when you're trying to find somebody, just be aware of how they're treating those experiences. But you know, that is underneath these cults. I mean, you're, you're, you're wanting, if you're a cult leader to find the people who are delusional, but the problem is delusions. These people are not stupid. You know, John Alela has just done a lot of work with this, where she writes about how, like, you don't actually want somebody in a cult who's not good at anything. If you've ever worked with like a toxic employee um like somebody who is being enabled by the organization but like you didn't like them and like they weren't they shouldn't

be there and they made everyone was like doing their job for them if you had a cult full of those people it wouldn't work but really those people are generally pretty like easy to get them to join cults right the cult is keeping those people out. Because what the cult wants to do is apply those in the world, which is why cults get worse when there's less pathways to economic, spiritual, psychological fulfillment in society. Cults get worse because it's easier for these people to be found. Or the person already is doing that and you want to convince them that they're doing it wrong. They're doing it the right way. Really, they have to do it through you. You want to get those people. Look at these

documentaries. Look at some, like these people are film directors. I mean, yes, the movies that Mark Vincente or whatever directed before he joined NXIVM were, we will BS on the half of another cult, but like he was effective at stuff. You know, Sarah Edmondson was running a business. Nikki Klein was an actress. I mean, these people were successful. Keith Renier wasn't going into homeless shelters, not that homeless people are not smart or that homeless people are not, you know, capable. It's just that you're looking for people who either have the, you're looking for people who have the ability to be effective tomorrow with your help or who are already effective because at the end of the day, a cult is a business. If it's not making money, if it's not making extra labor for you to exploit, then you're not able to get anything out of it. So why would you run it? You know, um, nobody works for free, not even a cult leader. So except the, I guess the people in the cult work for free. So you're looking for people who are not stupid, who are not, not emotionally intelligent, who are not, um, a lot of these

people aren't woo woo. They end up in a woo woo cult because they're so disconnected from their spirituality that when someone opens that door and says, look what spirituality can feel like, and you're so hungry for that, then you, you know, these places converted scientists and doctors for that reason. I think, you know, nobody showed them how to do that in a healthy way or open the door for them to do it themselves. So, um, going back to conspiracy theories and some of the overlap, one way to think about a conspiracy theory is that it is a metaphor for something that like you already know is true, but you don't know how it's true. And so, for example, like, I remember there were all these things, you know, I'm older, like in the 90s, you saw, you know, everything was going pretty good. Like, people like Clinton, largely, some people were angry

about him, his values or something, but they still couldn't complain about the economy because it was everyone was doing pretty well and so people were like trying you know they're like it was a time of kind of economic surplus or whatever and i remember like my parents are boomers and they never said anything about this but you just saw it through like movies or news or you know the stuff that was on the things that i read that i probably shouldn't read when I was a kid. Um, it was like boomers would talk about, there were all these things that probably never happened. Like they probably weren't real. Um, or like most things like that, somebody did it like once in New York and then like

wrote a story about it. And then other people read it and were like, Oh, this is coming to the suburbs, you know, but things like key parties, which was this like urban legend kind of, again, a lot of overlap between urban legends and conspiracy theories that you would just go to a party or somebody knew somebody because everyone was doing this where you just like you were going to a party and you thought it was a normal dinner party and you were going with your partner and then they told you, oh, you have to put your key in this bowl and actually everyone at this party is going to get someone else's keys and they have to have sex with that person. You know, like you would never accidentally walk into an orgy, like,

especially not in 1990s America like that. If you want to do that, that's fine. But it's just I am and I don't have any personal experience with this. But I imagine that like, planning an orgy with a bunch of people from your church is probably a lot of work. There's probably a lot of ground work and conversations that you have to have, you know, but there is this feeling that like something wasn't right or there was something about the civilization that they weren't understanding or they weren't getting. A lot of news from that 90s period was like targeted at this thing that the internet is coming. Yeah, AOL CDs are getting mailed to your house and this thing beeps and boops and it lets you send an email. And it's kind of lame, but it's going to change everything. And this we're on the edge of this, you know, like we were at this point where the world, the rug was about to get pulled out from under everybody and everybody kind of felt

that. And they felt like they were going to be going through this routine where there was this normal thing that they were doing. And then all of a sudden they didn't understand how the world worked. They didn't understand what the rules were. Their life was not going to look like their parents' life, even though they thought that it, and that was true. That was going to happen. And their intuition there was not wrong. But so much of that, I don't want to just talk about the 90s, that could be a whole episode, but like so much of that culture was anticipating this sea change that was going to make everything different in a way that would never go back to being normal. Some things like that you can predict, right? Like the internet, you know, there were that we knew

that this was going to happen. We knew that it was going to change. We didn't know how, but we knew that we wouldn't be the same. Other cultural things that set things off like 9-11 or the atom bomb, like you can't really predict, like technology just gets to this point or a cultural event happens. And it wasn't something that everyone could feel with their intuition was right on the edge of the horizon, but the internet did work like that. And so you go to something like a key party that you're going to go to the normalest, most safe thing that you've ever done, like go eat dinner with the people in your church. And then all of a sudden you're going to be in an orgy or some kind of sexual affair, whatever, something that just so contradicted your values that really everybody was going to see inside of what

everyone wanted in a way that they didn't want to see. I mean, I mean, the internet did kind of do that. It kind of key partied everybody. We had to, we had to hear what our family members actually thought in a way that just talking to them didn't get us to, you know, you had to give them the anonymity to sort of tell them themselves or something. Um, so I don't want to waste too much time like with that metaphor, but I think that like a conspiracy theory does that, you know, the anonymity to sort of tell them themselves or something. So I don't want to waste too much time with that metaphor. But I think that like a conspiracy theory does that, you know, Matthew Rimsky, when we did the interview, like he's talking about how when people are like, they know that the CIA overthrows these places in America, and then it's not on American news. They know that Jeffrey Epstein was not just a financier in New York who all of a sudden got 10 sweetheart deals for no

reason and then hung himself. They know that these things aren't real, that there are forces at work that we don't know. One of the authors who, I heard him in an interview and I don't remember the book that he wrote, but what he was saying about his jump for staying sane while he wrote all of these things about conspiracy theories and said, Hey, look, probably all this stuff happened because look, you've got 90 coincidences here that are so coincidental. A lot of them are probably true, but I can't tell you definitively than any of them are, but I can tell you that there's probably some smoke. There's probably some fire under the smoke because even if half the stuff is wrong, it's still pretty damning. He was saying you have to have that attitude because when you make the jump between this is extremely likely based on all the information that we have to, I know this is what happened. You can't know that you have to

know that you can't know that you have to know that you can look at all this disclassified things that this person is released from jail over and over and over again by the men in black suits, that this thing is thrown out, that this doesn't happen to anybody else. But you can look at all this disclassified things that this person is released from jail over and over and over again by the men in black suits that this thing is thrown out that this doesn't happen to anybody else but you can't say but I know that the CIA did it because this is right when Thaksin was coming in and then he

took over so he must have put these people in that's where you've joined the conspiracy theory because you can't know those things you can be pretty sure that something like that happened but it is the certainty that makes you the convert. And that's how he said he stayed a researcher instead of a convert. One of the other things that I've heard, I've heard this account from several people who write

books about conspiracy theories. So I think they probably talked to the same guy who's spoken anonymously. I don't know who it is, but what they said is this guy who evidently was a politician, a successful one who spoke off the record is he said, you have to understand that most of the people who were in the conspiracy theory aren't really in it. That the people who actually are going to Epstein Island are doing a thing like they're always going to be the minority, but what they're, what the, the, these organizations are going to do or what wealth and power is going to, going to do to vet you is they're going to put you minority. But what these organizations are going to do or what wealth and power is going to do to vet you is they're going to put you in a situation where you're uncompromising, where you see this thing and you know someone else is doing something bad

and everyone knows that you saw it and everyone knows that you know. And if you ever talk about it, you're ostracized, you're out, your career is over. But you didn't do it. You don't have to do it. You don't have to do it. You don't have to do the bad thing, but you do have to be around it and you have to let everyone know that you know that. And in that way, you're complicit. You're complicit because you know that if you say something, you're cut out. And so your whole career is not saying something. I think that's really interesting when you get into political conspiracy theories and this is not about the adherence, the converts who get into them. This is about the reason that they actually exist, the systems that enable them

and wealth and power. Um, you know, multiple people wrote books about, you know, Epstein and, and, um, you know, Charles Manson's connection with, um, federal Intel and different things. And they were all kind of interviewing a politician at the end of his life who, you know, evidently their research led them to this person. And that was something that he said. Um, but the thing that I think is interesting there is that certainty that you can never not know. And so most people are not researching that academically. They don't know half the information that any of these guys do. They're just looking at it and it feels right.

If you're old, if you don't have experience with people different from you, and you're watching TV and the world is changing and you don't like what's changing, and somebody says, hey, the president is actually a Muslim. The president is actually an alien. The president is actually part of a group of people from another country that are coming here to hurt you. And you see problems in the world, and you feel like something's wrong. And then somebody tells you, this is what's wrong wrong in a way that speaks to what you're seeing, validates it, and it sounds right to you based on your cultural biases, then you're just going to be certain that that thing is real. That is how most people think. And we can sit back and say, oh, well, I don't think that way. But there's a lot of things that are, I try not to talk about

politics on the show, but where I can't get away from talking about politics is psychology is real. And a whole lot of these, um, takes on things presuppose that it's not okay. So like there are certain things that are psychological inevitabilities. And so if something is a psychological inevitability and you say, well, it's my political position that, that, that that that isn't inevitable, I'm sorry, I guess that I'm being political there. Because when you have no pathway in society to self-actualization, when you have no pathway to, and there's a lot of things that are part of that, economic stability, education, access to healthcare, a belief that the future is going to be slightly better, and in the worst case, not that much worse than the present. When you, you know, a way to actualize your goals, your potential, when you don't have that, it is inevitable that you will start having conspiracy theories.

It is inevitable that you will start having cults. This goes back like to every empire on earth. Like you can go back to the Roman empire when it's not doing so on. And people are able to look at, you know, earlier generations were like, we're conquering all this stuff. The gall is getting paraded through the street. Um, they're bringing in elephants and these animals that I've never even seen before and saying, we conquered these countries. Um, there's all this stuff that you're getting, you're getting the bread card and it's, it's great.

You know, you're, it's successful. And then the empire starts to decline. And so they say, okay, well, here's the football game. Watch this to be entertained and get your libidinal rage out. But don't think about how like, you're not actually getting what you want. Go to the gladiatorial thing and cheer on your team or watch whatever. I mean, they, they invest in the gladiatorial stuff.amed us when they want to distract you from the crumbling empire that is making your quality of life worse that only works for so long i mean it is a psychological

inevitability that you're going to get something like mithroth the cult of mithroth in the army you know an army cult is going to be scary because when your whole army converts to a religion at a certain point are they going to do what the emperor tells them to do? You know, um, you're going to get things because when I don't have actual active power out here, then what happens is I'm going to, unless I just say I give up, I'm going to jump off a bridge. There's no point in my life, which that person, you know, politically, I guess, ceases to matter after that point. Just it's sad. I'm not saying they don't matter, but I'm saying that they're no longer affecting the political process.

If you check out from society and go off into the woods, um, then what happens is I move inward and I start to find mysticism, esotericism, you know, all the people who get bullied in high school, like those people are going to go, you know, inward and play D and D or be an actor, do something that involves masking and ritual and, um, uh, accessing and mapping parts of my internal self. And those aren't bad things to do, but when you have no power that is effective, available to people actively, when they know that if I can vote right or vote left or go up or go down, it doesn't matter if I can vote right or vote left, or go up or go down, it doesn't matter, I'm going to get the same result, the political process doesn't really reflect my ego, my interests, then they look for that power personally. And

sometimes that leads to people who become cool artists and write cool stuff. But as a inevitability, you're going to get cults and conspiracy theories because people are going to say, one, I'm going to go to a cult leader who says, this is how you feel better. This is how you do it, right? I'm telling you why you feel bad. Just statistically, that's going to happen more. You're also going to have people who find a conspiracy theory and say, this system makes me meaningful and powerful and gives me action. Posting on the internet, going to this rally, sharing this information, fighting back. I mean, you get that language in the conspiracy theory in a way you don't get in the cult. I mean, the cult is saying, we're going to tell you what to do. You don't need to figure it out. The conspiracy theory is like helping you infer what gives you agency. So I don't know. I hope that that's helpful. I hope that that's an

interesting summary. I'm trying to think if there's any part of that that I didn't get to. Some of those are rabbit holes that I could have gone down longer. But I think all of those things are things that were touched on the cults and conspiracy theories podcast. If you're interested in that, I'm just kind of giving you a lot of different, uh, bullet points that you may want to look at more. Um, I definitely think that there is a pretty profound, um, and some people don't like it when I use the more Jungian language on the show, but I do think it's useful. Um, we all have intuition and when we're cut off from intuition,

things get, you know, pretty dark, they get they get pretty sad, we may look like we're a successful doctor, lawyer, wealthy person, like doing whatever. But we don't feel like we're able to be in touch with the part of our brain that is more than logic that is more than language that is more than time. And so that saying of like, if you don't have a religion, then something will become your religion, that, you know, I remember hearing a bunch of people say that in the 70s. I went alive in the 70s, but in what I'm reading and watching things, so I don't know who exactly said that. But I mean, that's what it's saying is that if you don't make your intuitive function conscious, then it will remain unconscious and that unconsciousness

will control you. So a lot of the people that are in these, no one ever said, I mean, remember the diagnosis of the cult leaders, right? No one ever said, hey, look, you don't have to be sick to be important. You are important. You don't have to, you are an effective actor. You don't have to make movies on behalf of this other, or your director, writer, you know, you don't have to make movies on behalf of this other person's religious thing. You can find a point within yourself that you want to tell, that you want to say. You know, all of these things that get worse when you have a civilization basically that is cutting off past actualization and it's not functioning, people statistically will just hear less and then people

will um get worse they'll be more susceptible to these things so you hear cult used kind of too much like i think a lot of times um remember when we're talking about cults here you know a conspiracy theory is a metaphor that describes a reality with a metaphor where we can't see reality clearly. We don't really know what is actually happening under the hood. And so we make this guess and then we become too certain about that guess. Whereas a cult is something that is replacing a part of you with something that feels easier or more authentic. But ultimately, there's going to be this bait and switch where that thing is going to control you and it's going to cut you off from authenticity so that you're trapped. That is how they're going to function. So when you see people

say, well, this political party is a cult or that both political parties are cults or, you know, this, the entire religion of this as a cult or something, I have a problem with that kind of language because I don't think, um, cults can quite be that big, you know, like are most Americans affiliated with some organization somewhere that they don't understand how it works and it exploits them. Yes. Like, you know, almost definitely. Um, but you know, what is that? That's a problem that needs to change, but that's the, that's the problem driving the cult. You know, it isn't really the cult. It isn't really a conspiracy theory. It is the system not working as intended. And there is an inevitability that I want to leave you with, where when two parties offer

you no pathway to where most people want to go, and there's no pathway for another party to exist politically in a country, when you don't have humanities. And liberal arts to put us in touch with history. You know. I don't mean history like the textbook history. I mean. Our own cultural history. And tradition. That makes these things that I think we see as modern.

Inventions or modern realities. It cuts them off from us. We're really seeing their ancient nature or the archetypal nature of how they work. Again, that psychology is real, you know? I think, you know, James Hillman, the psychologist, the Indian psychologist, has this, that acorn theory about how like you may feel crazy because you're an acorn that got thrown into a sunflower field, but you were just an acorn. Like you were born with this inner spark that you have to actualize. And we all have that. And when you are not seeing a way to become what you were supposed to be,

then just our psychology is going to make us deflect, defer, or project that pathway to actualization onto shortcuts. And those shortcuts are going to be cults of conspiracy theories that are going to hurt us and hurt people around us. And unless you fix the systemic problem that is always going to be exploiting and enabling these things to exist, and then scapegoating them a lot of the time, pretending that, well, these people are just crazy. Well, those people are just stupid. Instead instead of like our world doesn't work and it should work better. You know, they're, they're a deflection away from systemic problems in a way that I don't think is good. And will these problems always be around? Yes. You know, have they always been around? Yes. notice that the system is broken and that people who want to grow and change are being cut off from authentic pathways to actualization when these things increase in frequency, intensity, and duration? Yes. Also, we can notice that. Thank you. Succes! Thank you.