COMMUNITY BUILDING AS A CULT
by Mike Roth
Community Building in Britain Newsletter, No. 103, Autumn 2007What are the key features of a cult? I want to insist upon the differences between a militant cult like
Scientology, which makes it difficult for people to leave and even pursues them when they try to get away, and an addictive cult like Hari Krishna or the militant Christian “House Churches”, which may not seek to entrap people but do tend to persuade them that their only spiritual salvation lies with belonging, and following the cult’s precepts. Compared with these types, I think the cult aspect of Community Building is more of an accident, arising out of a practice that does have genuine potential for fostering positive change. Yet if we engage with that practice blindly it starts to develop features very similar to a full blown cult like Hari Krishna.The following features are what, in my view, make Community Building look precariously like a cult:
- The promise of salvation.
- Specific cult techniques or rituals, which are of dubious efficacy in the long term—except insofar as they confirm one’s continuing membership of the cult.
- Specific jargon which has the effect of ratifying a person’s status within the cult—but otherwise conveys no real information.
- Powerful inner change at first—followed by continuously diminishing returns for longer-term members of the cult. The techniques or rituals have a powerful mind-altering effect, especially with the beginning practice, but become less and less effective as people mindlessly repeat the technique or ritual over time. (People continue to do the practice once they are fully initiated into the cult, because they are fearful they will become even unhappier if they stop. This, I note, is precisely the same phenomenon as that experienced by people who use Librium, amphetamine or alcohol for their mind-altering effects.)
I do not think this “cult” aspect is the only thing that goes on within the community building culture. I would not have stayed involved for more than a decade if I did not believe that there are real changes, and a real improvement in the quality of our lives, offered by something that goes on in Community Building Workshops and the culture that continues to evolve out of these.Having recently participated in several “ongoing group” meetings which seem as stuck and bizarre as anything I have known in my 16 years of involvement, I have been wondering, intensively, about what is missing. We come ostensibly to “build community” but we do nothing of the kind. We sit in a bizarre, tense, atmosphere of multi-person isolation; evidently each individual is trying very hard to do something. What on earth do we think we are doing?
I think we are seeking to identify our barriers and obstacles to community, and to work out “what we need to empty ourselves of”, just as the experts and the elite of the community-building-world have taught us to do. I suspect that the very effort to do these things stands in the way of our simply being present with the others in the room, and seriously wondering how real connection might happen between ourselves. This effort stands in the way of our noticing what is actually going on in the room. We seem to have been caught up sadly and impotently enmeshed in sterile cult practices. We are caught in a “diminishing returns” loop and unable to break out of it because of our very commitment to the jargon and rituals of particular model of community building.
What is missing, in my view, is the simple common sense commitment to being in relation with the actual people in the room, in real time. I am struck by how first-time attendees at Community Building workshops are quite likely to engage in this process of genuinely reaching out, just because they have not yet learned the rituals and the jargon, and have not (yet) developed the cult habits. On the whole, also, people seem to me to create a much more genuine and alive community out of the 6-day Facilitating Ourselves events, compared with the typical disoriented lack of direction an ongoing community building support group. I notice several key differences between these two types of situation, which strike me as possible clues as to what actually makes the difference.
For much of the time, at a Facilitating Ourselves workshop, the chaos is more alive. I have the feeling of an evolution taking place in real time. It feels as if real connections and interactions are taking place within the pattern of the chaos. This is quite different from the stereotyped “chaos behaviour” which Scott Peck describes in dismissive terms, i.e., the clichéd “fixing, healing and judging” of The Different Drum. I also find in a 6-day event that the community becomes dispersed with multiple sub groups springing up, resulting in significant interactions occuring in smaller configurations outside the large circle. There seems much less jargon and learned pontificating about “the path” and “spirituality” too. Yes, people earnestly discuss their neuroses and their therapeutic practices, as if it was that, which makes them interesting. However, this seems a harmless enough diversion for the worried soul, and it does not seem to interfere all that much with real communication in the circle.
My own guess at the difference that makes the difference, is that the ongoing groups are frequently dominated by fear, and by the habits that have been born out of fear. To me, the stereotyped thinking, and the stereotyped unhelpful behaviour, speak of “the fear of what life may bring forth”, and of the counterproductive and useless attempt to control its flow. Better to live in a hole, than surrender to the richness, the intricacy, and the blooming, buzzing confusion of the actual flow of life.
I continue to believe in Scott Peck’s “four stages” as a broad if crude map of our potential progress towards community. And I believe in the real desire, in nearly everyone I know in CBiB, to make a better life, and to foster more genuine human connections. In the long run, however, I think that we will only evolve towards real and abiding human communities if we have a commitment to the real-time relationships we are making, and do not hoodwink ourselves into thirsting after “community” as a substitute for actually getting to know one another.