Cults Appeal Because They Provide A Greater Purpose

The fundamental human need for ceding control, giving up responsibility, and submitting to a greater power.

Photo by Artem Maltsev on Unsplash

“You guys are like a cult,” an acquaintance told me about my Cross Country team, long ago.

I am told that a lot of the groups I’m in are almost like cults. Whether it is inside jokes, mantras or sayings we have unknown to the rest of the world, or the fact that we spend so much time together that we barely have other friends, I would say that I am in several unofficial cults.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary offers two compelling definitions of the “cult”. The first of which is “a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious” and “great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (such as a film or book).” However, cults have a very negative connotation as having socially deviant behavior in a sociological context. Types of cults on Wikipedia range from terrorist cults, polygamist cults, racist cults, Doomsday cults, so it’s clear that the general understanding of cults and their influence on the world is pejorative.

But it’s also true that the definition of cults can be stretched to a lot of groups with strange and unusual beliefs or traditions, like my team or churches. The reason why people…