Speaker 1: I get aur groovers. Welcome to another installment of the
Speaker 1: show Tippany and Cook. David Bryan, Kevin Patrick James Gillespie,
Speaker 1: the less talented of the two Gillespies I've had on
Speaker 1: the show today, joins us.
Speaker 2: Will say lighter, tiff Hi, tiv.
Speaker 3: Hi, harps.
Speaker 4: I'm standing up at my standing desk for the first
Speaker 4: time in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: How is it? It's good? Huh.
Speaker 4: I'll pa sick of it soon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I need to.
Speaker 3: What exactly is the point of a standing desk.
Speaker 1: Again, because we weren't built to sit galispo because flexes.
Speaker 2: It gives us time.
Speaker 1: So us and all those muscles and you old people,
Speaker 1: I mean, feel free.
Speaker 2: That's your age. It's a wonder you can even get
Speaker 2: in and out of a chair.
Speaker 1: But that's true us youngsters, Us youngsters, we need to
Speaker 1: maintain integrity through the hip muscles and lower back.
Speaker 3: And so you can get so you can get into
Speaker 3: your portion out again. Yeah, because it's so.
Speaker 1: Low, saving up for fucking salad.
Speaker 2: So don't start.
Speaker 1: Only one of us on this call who's rich and
Speaker 1: were to get this. There's only one of us who's
Speaker 1: sold more than three books and mum bought too, so
Speaker 1: that was fucking tragic.
Speaker 2: How are you gless, bo?
Speaker 3: Yeah good, Yeah, I'm sitting. I'm sitting at a desk,
Speaker 3: by the way, and I never intend to be standing.
Speaker 1: I am also sitting at a desk, Tiff. What led
Speaker 1: to the new kind of standing format.
Speaker 4: I've been doing a lot of work lately and a
Speaker 4: lot of sitting, and so I just decided to stand up.
Speaker 4: And it's good if I leave it up, then I'll
Speaker 4: come in and I won't just sit down as it
Speaker 4: to have it.
Speaker 1: I used to think that too when I bought my
Speaker 1: million dollar two motor electric desk.
Speaker 2: And all I do is sit at the fucking thing.
Speaker 1: I just tell everyone how good I was, because I'd
Speaker 1: like sit for four hours, stand four hours, like hour on,
Speaker 1: hour off. All I do is sit now. So I'm
Speaker 1: with gillespo So I'm full of shit. So don't listen
Speaker 1: to me.
Speaker 3: At least you know you could stand if you wanted to.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, Tiff. Here's my question.
Speaker 1: Before we talk to the great Man and we tap
Speaker 1: into that big, massive prefrontal cortex of his and all
Speaker 1: the other bits, can you focus and concentrate as much
Speaker 1: when you stand is it the same, better or worse?
Speaker 2: Because it took me a minute to get used to it.
Speaker 4: No, I think it's the same for me. It's good,
Speaker 4: it's not, no, no different, okay, just a better position.
Speaker 4: I don't I find when I sit I end up
Speaker 4: slouching and wriggling and fidgeting. So just is me a
Speaker 4: break from that?
Speaker 2: Well, beautiful, mister Gillespie.
Speaker 1: So we spoke a while ago, and we've spoken like
Speaker 1: periodically and pieces about the idea of building a cult
Speaker 1: and the different kinds of cults. And you know, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of pyramid marketing is cultish, and you know,
Speaker 1: a cult doesn't have to be religious.
Speaker 2: We know that.
Speaker 1: But you actually created a kind of a or you
Speaker 1: wrote like a five step playbook, yes, a kind of
Speaker 1: a how to guide, which I think is so generous
Speaker 1: of you, like literally a five step plan on building
Speaker 1: a cult for those would be cult leaders who listen.
Speaker 2: And I know who you are. What was the prompt
Speaker 2: for this?
Speaker 3: Like what, well, talking to you last week last time
Speaker 3: was the prompt because I said, you know, you really
Speaker 3: just need to create a cult. And I said, it's
Speaker 3: a pretty simple formula. And I didn't really run through
Speaker 3: what the formula was, so I was a bit of
Speaker 3: a teaser for you, but I thought, you know, I
Speaker 3: actually have never written down what the formula for creating
Speaker 3: a cult is, so I thought I should do that,
Speaker 3: So I wrote that piece.
Speaker 2: Is it pretty similar? I mean, you'll tell us.
Speaker 1: But the five steps and the principles that work in
Speaker 1: say a religious or spiritual context similar in other contexts
Speaker 1: or areas.
Speaker 3: It's in everything. Because the cult, what we're calling a cult,
Speaker 3: is actually just a hack to the way humans are wired. So,
Speaker 3: and we've talked about this before, which is the key
Speaker 3: differentiator for humans as a species and why we're able
Speaker 3: to dominate the planet even though we're a terrible predator,
Speaker 3: no teeth, no venom, no scales, nothing, you know, we're
Speaker 3: basically meat on feet for an alligator or crocodile or
Speaker 3: a great white shark or even a koala bear. Really, then,
Speaker 3: how we defeat that is that we're the only species
Speaker 3: that can cooperate with strangers and regularly does so we
Speaker 3: can work in groups of one hundred or ten thousand,
Speaker 3: a million and be just fine. No other species on
Speaker 3: the planet can do that. Now, people, whenever I say
Speaker 3: they'd always say, oh, yeah, but what about ants. Well,
Speaker 3: ants aren't individuals. Ants are an animal with severable moving parts.
Speaker 3: So you know, an ants nest or a bees hive
Speaker 3: is all one organism. It just has bits that move independently.
Speaker 3: They're not individuals. You don't see bees making individual decisions
Speaker 3: about what they're going to do today. Oh, I feel
Speaker 3: like I want to take the day off today, so
Speaker 3: I'll let you guys go out and get the pollen.
Speaker 3: That's not how bees work. They're part of one organism.
Speaker 3: And humans, however, unlike every other species, can cooperate with
Speaker 3: strangers because we have some built in mechanism that allow
Speaker 3: us to do it. That we've evolved relatively recently, and
Speaker 3: a key mechanism is that we do things for the
Speaker 3: approval of others. So dogs don't care what other dogs
Speaker 3: think of them, and neither the sharks. Humans care a
Speaker 3: lot what other humans think of them, and it motivates us,
Speaker 3: so we are motivated to do things that we think
Speaker 3: other people will like. Now you can imagine that that
Speaker 3: would be a pretty powerful glue for getting us to
Speaker 3: cooperate in large groups. If we get a large group
Speaker 3: of people together and give them a motivation and some
Speaker 3: of us start doing it, then the rest of this
Speaker 3: will start doing it too, because we want to please
Speaker 3: those that are doing the thing that obviously large numbers
Speaker 3: of humans want us to do. So that automatic grouping
Speaker 3: or coalescing, where we always automatically seek the approval of others,
Speaker 3: works to make us very powerful because we can cooperate
Speaker 3: in large groups of strangers, and it means we won't intentionally,
Speaker 3: most of the time, hurt each other because that's generally
Speaker 3: not going to make us popular with other humans. So
Speaker 3: that's not something you can say about any other species.
Speaker 3: They will behave that way with their own family members
Speaker 3: because of DNA, and we could go to that in
Speaker 3: great detail, but we won't, but beyond that, they won't.
Speaker 3: And so the difficulty then for other species is that
Speaker 3: when you get two groups of elephants coming together, if
Speaker 3: they're not related to each other, they're the enemy, whereas
Speaker 3: with humans they are potentially a uniting force, which makes
Speaker 3: them all much more powerful. So that's the advantage. The
Speaker 3: downside to this is that it can be manipulated by
Speaker 3: bad actors, and that's what a cult is. A cult
Speaker 3: is a bad actor who creates a system of belief
Speaker 3: for a large group of humans that is all about
Speaker 3: empowering them to achieve their aims by getting people to
Speaker 3: behave that way. And it's just a hack on that
Speaker 3: self approval system, and it's a pretty easy thing to do.
Speaker 3: All you've got to do is well, a be charismatic.
Speaker 3: So I guess that rules you an eye out, Craig,
Speaker 3: but you know, TIFF's got a chance. And the definition
Speaker 3: of charismatic here is someone who people want to follow.
Speaker 3: So if it doesn't necessarily mean good looking, it means
Speaker 3: someone who people find compelled to listen to.
Speaker 1: Yes, so, and I guess attractive, not in the physical sense,
Speaker 1: but that they are attracted to their energy, like you said,
Speaker 1: their charisma, their ideas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it can be in the physical sense too,
Speaker 3: you know, and often is. But there's also plenty of
Speaker 3: examples where the leaders of cults or the things that
Speaker 3: I'm describing here, and I keep using the word cult,
Speaker 3: but it describes anything, right, It describes a political party,
Speaker 3: it describes a religion. It does describe what people traditionally
Speaker 3: call a cult, but any kind of movement where large
Speaker 3: groups of people are mobilized to a cause by a leader,
Speaker 3: and that leader.
Speaker 2: Is by definition, that would make religion's.
Speaker 3: Cults of course, yes so, And it makes the MAGA
Speaker 3: crowd in the United States a cult. It makes anyone
Speaker 3: who gets that absolutely devoted following where And you can
Speaker 3: tell when it's a cult because it's impervious to logic.
Speaker 3: We'll talk about that in a little bit more detail
Speaker 3: about how that's achieved. But it's impervious to logic. You
Speaker 3: can throw facts at it till you blow on the face,
Speaker 3: and the people who are believers in the cult will
Speaker 3: not change their point of view at all.
Speaker 1: Ever, And I guess you could also call sporting fans
Speaker 1: cult members in that sense that it's very emotional, it's
Speaker 1: very irrational, it's very us versus them. It's like we're
Speaker 1: the best, everyone else is the worst. We're right, they're wrong,
Speaker 1: they're shit, We're great. That's cultie.
Speaker 3: It's a weak form of it. Yes, so, there are
Speaker 3: probably a core group of fans who very definitely behave
Speaker 3: like a cult. What they often like is a leader though,
Speaker 3: so a leader is a core component of this. There
Speaker 3: has to be someone who is projecting the core message
Speaker 3: of the cult, and a sports team is not a leader.
Speaker 3: A sports team is a common interest and yes, there
Speaker 3: are people who are radically committed to it and will
Speaker 3: brook no criticism of it at all, but it's still
Speaker 3: what I would call a weak version of it. But
Speaker 3: it is using the same mechanism in the human brain,
Speaker 3: which is they're doing things that they think the other
Speaker 3: people who believe the same things as them will approve of,
Speaker 3: and it will therefore increase their status with those people.
Speaker 3: It's the same, by the way, at an even looser level,
Speaker 3: when someone goes to say, you know, a stand up
Speaker 3: comedian performance, if the audience is laughing, you're laughing even
Speaker 3: if it's not funny, because it's part of a group
Speaker 3: of humans behaving in a way that pleases the other humans.
Speaker 3: So those are all examples of that in action, but
Speaker 3: it isn't. None of those things are a cult unless
Speaker 3: you've got that core ingredient of a leader. So you
Speaker 3: need a leader. The leader has to be charismatic in
Speaker 3: some way. There has to be something about that leader
Speaker 3: that causes people to listen to what they say, because
Speaker 3: if you don't listen to what the leader says, you
Speaker 3: can't create a cult. So, because the core in a
Speaker 3: cult is what comes out of a person's mouth, what
Speaker 3: are they saying that you are finding as an intrinsically
Speaker 3: powerful belief to hold so at the core of every cult.
Speaker 3: So if we look at, say, for example, the Nazis,
Speaker 3: which your classic cult, you have a leader there not
Speaker 3: particularly good looking, but very charismatic in you know, tif,
Speaker 3: I see a smiling she obviously found Hitler quite attractive,
Speaker 3: but there, you know, I think generally not regarded as
Speaker 3: particularly good looking. But he said some really powerful things,
Speaker 3: and he said things to people who wanted to hear
Speaker 3: exactly these things. So when he rose to power at
Speaker 3: the end, well in between the wars, I mean, Germany
Speaker 3: was being destroyed by dream punishments driven largely by France
Speaker 3: economic punishments that were destroying the German economy. Life was
Speaker 3: getting hard and harder in that economy, and they wanted
Speaker 3: to hear someone who had a solution for them. And
Speaker 3: Hitler didn't just offer a solution which would be dry
Speaker 3: enough and could be any political party. It came with
Speaker 3: a really nice message. It came with a message that said,
Speaker 3: you are part of the Aryan race. You, the German people,
Speaker 3: the German speaking people, are part of the Aryan race.
Speaker 3: You are superior to all of these other people who
Speaker 3: are trying to take you down, and all of these
Speaker 3: other people are your enemies. So he gave them an ideal,
Speaker 3: which is you are special. The people who follow me,
Speaker 3: the people who believe in the things I say, are
Speaker 3: special people, you know, gifted people, you know, apart from
Speaker 3: the others, and created a US and them narrative which
Speaker 3: he then just fed into with the other elements of
Speaker 3: cult building. But that's a key part of creating a cult.
Speaker 3: So when you create your cult, Craig, let's assuming you
Speaker 3: can be charismatic to have one.
Speaker 1: Can you not talk about my cult straight after you
Speaker 1: talk about God?
Speaker 2: Say?
Speaker 3: But but when you create it, you're going to have
Speaker 3: to have that key message. You're going to have to
Speaker 3: have the message that the harp Rights are better people, Okay,
Speaker 3: just better people in general. They're they're fitter, they're healthier,
Speaker 3: they're you know, you're going to have to find some
Speaker 3: characteristics that unite the harp Rights in their belief that
Speaker 3: they are better than everybody else, okay, And so that
Speaker 3: you need to create that us and them narrative because
Speaker 3: that's a key part of this cognitive tool that we
Speaker 3: have in our brain. There has to be there has
Speaker 3: to be an us who are bound together by a
Speaker 3: common belief, and there has to be them who are
Speaker 3: the out siders who don't believe these things.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Wow, I've never been less inclined to start a cult.
Speaker 1: But it is I remember you were saying, and we'll
Speaker 1: jump straight back into where you're at. But one of
Speaker 1: the things that really resonated with me last time we
Speaker 1: spoke about this was you said, you know those religions
Speaker 1: where there's these kind of world ending or world changing
Speaker 1: events that are coming on a certain day, and these
Speaker 1: people in these cults believe this, and then the day
Speaker 1: comes and goes and the event didn't happen. So rather
Speaker 1: than people going, oh, well, old mates full of shit.
Speaker 1: So clearly he's not connected to God. Clearly he or
Speaker 1: she doesn't really have any mystical, magical, mythical insight.
Speaker 2: And they don't leave the cult.
Speaker 1: Some of them do, but a lot of them, you know,
Speaker 1: stay and just kind of like reason and logic and
Speaker 1: critical thinking goes out the window because they're so intertwined
Speaker 1: with this thing that the idea of leaving is scarier
Speaker 1: than the idea that old mate might be wrong.
Speaker 3: And that's another key element. So that is demanding escalating investment.
Speaker 3: So you have to demand that people commit more and
Speaker 3: more and more to the cult. So the example you're
Speaker 3: talking about there, well, I mean there were quite a
Speaker 3: few in the eighteen hundreds, but the biggest and most
Speaker 3: famous one was William Miller. William Miller who was a
Speaker 3: preacher in the eighteen forties, and he predicted that on
Speaker 3: October twenty second, eighteen forty four, Christ would return to
Speaker 3: Earth and the gates to Heaven would be open, and
Speaker 3: only true believers would be admitted in. And so his
Speaker 3: cult consisted of the true believers and everybody else. And
Speaker 3: the true believers, yeah, I ended up being about one
Speaker 3: hundred thousand of them by the time you got to
Speaker 3: October twenty second. But he demanded escalating commitment. So in
Speaker 3: order to demonstrate their belief, they had to rid themselves
Speaker 3: of all worldly possessions because they wouldn't need them because
Speaker 3: on October twenty second they would be being admitted to heaven.
Speaker 2: So admitted very clinical.
Speaker 1: It's not unlike, it's not unlike I could be fucking
Speaker 1: this up.
Speaker 2: I think I've got it right.
Speaker 1: The Jehovah's witnesses who think who believe one hundred and
Speaker 1: forty four thousand will be transcended to heaven on the
Speaker 1: last day, but there's a lot more than one hundred
Speaker 1: and forty four thousand Jehovah's witnesses.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I guess someone going to miss out.
Speaker 2: But that's a problem.
Speaker 3: But he regarded part of his thing was you had
Speaker 3: to be you had to demonstrate total commitment. So his
Speaker 3: believers gave away their property, abandon their farms, gave away
Speaker 3: their world It possessions, and were regarded as being totally
Speaker 3: insane by almost everybody else. But that actually helped the
Speaker 3: narrative that proves the US versus them. You know, we
Speaker 3: are the true believers. Those people who are making fun
Speaker 3: of us are the evil people who don't understand. So
Speaker 3: now the fact that we are now passed October twenty second,
Speaker 3: eighteen forty four and still Jesus hasn't turned up might
Speaker 3: seem like it's a bit of a problem.
Speaker 2: And you're right, Jesus hasn't turned up.
Speaker 1: That's the name of the show, tip and so what
Speaker 1: we're going to call it Jesus hasn't turned up. With
Speaker 1: the little hands in the air emoji, do you know
Speaker 1: Jesus hasn't turned up emoji the oldest shrug emojill.
Speaker 3: So anyway, October twenty third, eighteen forty four rolls around.
Speaker 3: Everything's still the same as it was the day before.
Speaker 3: And that's subsequently became called the Great Disappointment, which to
Speaker 3: me is a bit of an understatement. So the disappointment occurred,
Speaker 3: and there were some people who that caused to lose faith,
Speaker 3: believe it or not, who left the church and who
Speaker 3: didn't believe any longer. But there was a fairly large
Speaker 3: group of people who said, ah, well, we just we
Speaker 3: must have must have misunderstood the calculations or misunderstood the scriptures,
Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera. And in fact it split the place.
Speaker 3: The things split into about three or four main groupings
Speaker 3: of people who had different explanations for why, but they
Speaker 3: all believed that it was still right. It was just
Speaker 3: something had been misinterpreted. The one that Brian in accounting
Speaker 3: that's right. Well, one of the groups actually survived and
Speaker 3: now has millions of followers today. So the group that
Speaker 3: survived we now call the Seventh day Adventist Church, and
Speaker 3: they were one of the groups of the Miller Rights
Speaker 3: that came through the disappointment, and their rationalization for why
Speaker 3: it didn't work was, oh, listen, old mate, Miller. He
Speaker 3: stuffed up the message because what was actually going to
Speaker 3: happen was Jesus was going to come to his place
Speaker 3: in heaven, and all of this was supposed to occur
Speaker 3: in heaven, and it did occur in heaven from people
Speaker 3: who had already passed, and and so you stuffed it
Speaker 3: up thinking that it was going to happen on earth.
Speaker 3: The convenient thing about the in Heaven story is that
Speaker 3: there was no way to verify whether it had happened
Speaker 3: or not.
Speaker 2: I know it did happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you just enjoyed.
Speaker 1: There really just not anywhere that we can verify. But
Speaker 1: it definitely did.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, you know you don't know my boyfriend. He's
Speaker 3: from Canada, so the I knew you had a boyfriend.
Speaker 3: So anyway, the reason that that happens from a cognitive perspective,
Speaker 3: from a biochemical perspective is you know what accountants called
Speaker 3: the sunk cost fallacy, which is the more we invest
Speaker 3: in something, the less easy we find it to pull
Speaker 3: away from it. So the more invested we are in
Speaker 3: the message, if we've given away, our home, our car,
Speaker 3: our farm, towards our wife, et cetera, et cetera. Because
Speaker 3: of this belief escalating investment required of this cult, then
Speaker 3: even though it didn't happen, it still must be true
Speaker 3: because I've given up everything, so that the thought process
Speaker 3: is I've given up everything for this, therefore it must
Speaker 3: be the truth. And you can see that same process
Speaker 3: occurring in cults all the time. It makes them impervious
Speaker 3: to logic.
Speaker 1: Well, also when you think about the fact that people
Speaker 1: have like got this, some of them ten twenty thirty
Speaker 1: forty year relationship with this ideology, philosophy, theology, fill in,
Speaker 1: fill in your own ology, and their identity is intertwined
Speaker 1: with that. And if you tell them your identity like
Speaker 1: that thing that you identify with, that thing that is
Speaker 1: essentially you, it isn't true. Well that's got to be
Speaker 1: terrifying for them. So they don't know who they are now.
Speaker 1: So you defy reason and logic and evidence and go.
Speaker 1: You know, I was thinking as you were talking a
Speaker 1: little bit, this is not extremely dissimilar to your theory
Speaker 1: or not your theory. A lot of people's theory and
Speaker 1: evidence and science around seed oils versus mainstream Yes, dietetics.
Speaker 3: Yeah, say again, it's the same cost fallacy. It's we've
Speaker 3: invested so much in this, it must be right, yes,
Speaker 3: and so it becomes impervious to science that proves it isn't,
Speaker 3: because that would mean that you would have to un
Speaker 3: leave everything you've spent your entire life believing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what do you think that?
Speaker 1: Like? Why are we We're getting philosophical now and we
Speaker 1: haven't even done step one, which is isolate the subject
Speaker 1: and become the source of validation. This could be the
Speaker 1: longest Gillespie show ever. By the way, everyone, it is
Speaker 1: a really good article. It is on if you go
Speaker 1: to de Gillespie dot substack dot com you'll find it there.
Speaker 2: It's one of the best articles I think you've ever written.
Speaker 2: I loved it. But I'm fascinated with this shit. I've
Speaker 2: got no idea what I was saying. Carry on.
Speaker 3: So yeah, So there's different steps to this. The first
Speaker 3: one if you're going to go full cold, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: there's different ways to do this. Many of the sort
Speaker 3: of more modern day cults start from they've got a
Speaker 3: bit of a leg up because they've got social media
Speaker 3: to help them. So social media sort of reinforces the
Speaker 3: mechanisms I've been talking about. There, you no longer have
Speaker 3: to get in a group of people and convince them
Speaker 3: personally of something. You can access millions of people simultaneously
Speaker 3: with a message, and some of them will catch on
Speaker 3: that message and receive validation from it, and the algorithm
Speaker 3: will then keep feeding them even more of that message
Speaker 3: and more validation. So it forces them into an echo
Speaker 3: chamber where their own mind becomes a prison guard, defending
Speaker 3: their commitment to the cult and causing them to attack
Speaker 3: anything that arms the cult. So social media is a
Speaker 3: massive accelerator for this massive accelerator. But back in the
Speaker 3: olden days before social media, if you wanted to start
Speaker 3: a cult, you actually had to isolate the subject. So
Speaker 3: you had to find someone who was susceptible to your
Speaker 3: messaging cut them off from any external value because they're
Speaker 3: open to persuasion by someone else. In the early stages
Speaker 3: of recruitment, if you're just talking to them one on one,
Speaker 3: then they might find you very charismatic and believe everything
Speaker 3: you say, and then they know they walk out in
Speaker 3: the street and someone else says something else to them
Speaker 3: as well, and they think, oh, hang on, maybe what
Speaker 3: harp said is a load of bs I better reconsider.
Speaker 3: So to avoid that kind of thing happening, you've got
Speaker 3: to cut them off from that sort of communication. You've
Speaker 3: got to make sure that the only messaging they're hearing
Speaker 3: is your messaging, which so that usually involves, you know,
Speaker 3: isolating them from their family, isolating them from their friends,
Speaker 3: other networks. That can't be done instantly, but you start
Speaker 3: in order to do that, you create very very frequent
Speaker 3: meetings with them where you're controlling the messaging. As I said,
Speaker 3: this is a bit old school because you don't need
Speaker 3: to do that so much now because the algorithm does
Speaker 3: it for you. So as soon as someone starts to
Speaker 3: indicate a preference for a message, the algorithm starts isolating
Speaker 3: them anyway, so that all they see is their echo
Speaker 3: chamber of the things they think they believe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's so true. It's yeah.
Speaker 1: Obviously, all it comes up on mine is health stuff,
Speaker 1: fitness stuff, motorbike stuff, and stuff that for the most
Speaker 1: part I align with anyway. So yeah, it's just feeding
Speaker 1: you the stuff that you want to keep looking at.
Speaker 3: That's right. And but once you've got them captured. Then
Speaker 3: the last key ingredient that you've got to, you know,
Speaker 3: the icing on the cake, is you've got to control
Speaker 3: the narrative. You've got to you've got to make sure
Speaker 3: that the messaging becomes your messaging, so people will still
Speaker 3: be exposed to media which says something about your leader
Speaker 3: that isn't pleasant. You know, believe it or not, there
Speaker 3: are people out there saying really bad things about Trump,
Speaker 3: for example, and yeah, apparently and myself back up off
Speaker 3: the ground. And if you don't want that to start
Speaker 3: affecting the movement and start chipping people off the edge,
Speaker 3: you've got to give a counter narrative that is just
Speaker 3: as strong, and you've got to put it on maximum blast.
Speaker 3: So you've got to within the cult, you've got to
Speaker 3: be distributing your own version of everything, your own version
Speaker 3: of events, your own counter narrative, your own plausible deniability
Speaker 3: for everything, because people outside the cult will start saying
Speaker 3: that the bigger the cult becomes, the more nasty people
Speaker 3: will get about you, its leader and its followers. You know,
Speaker 3: it's like the poor Miller rights. You know, people calling
Speaker 3: them learns because they gave away everything because you know,
Speaker 3: the world was going to end, you have to have
Speaker 3: a counter message going within the cult where you are
Speaker 3: controlling the messaging and the language, so that they've always
Speaker 3: got something to lean back on when someone from outside
Speaker 3: says something nasty about their leader or them, they've got
Speaker 3: an answer to whatever the event is.
Speaker 1: Wow, I'm sure I was in a cult when I
Speaker 1: was younger. But you know what is interesting about just
Speaker 1: in terms of not so much specifically about religion, but
Speaker 1: happens to be religious groups like just individual groups, like
Speaker 1: there's whatever. There is twelve major religions thereabouts and four
Speaker 1: thousand minor religions there abouts three to four thousand, and
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly everyone who is in any of those religions thinks
Speaker 1: pretty much that every other religion is wrong. It's, you know,
Speaker 1: like it's the only kind of environment where all these
Speaker 1: cult kind.
Speaker 3: Of but that's a critical component. You have to believe
Speaker 3: that or you're not in a cult.
Speaker 1: Well, but isn't it funny how you can suspend intelligence
Speaker 1: or reason or logic when you go, Okay, I just
Speaker 1: ended up in this group. Now I'm in this group,
Speaker 1: and there's another four thousand or so groups that don't
Speaker 1: believe what don't have our ideology, philosophy, theology.
Speaker 3: They're wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course that's the thing.
Speaker 1: But what's the odds that, statistically, I just landed in
Speaker 1: the one group that's got the direct hotline to God.
Speaker 1: That's well, the one true whatever, even statistically, it's.
Speaker 3: The one thing we all believe is that we're always right.
Speaker 3: So the thing that every minute that you spend in
Speaker 3: that cult reinforces your belief that you have made the
Speaker 3: correct decision and that everybody else has made the wrong decision.
Speaker 3: And every minute that you're in there, the sunk cost
Speaker 3: fallacy gets stronger and stronger because you've devoted more time
Speaker 3: now to this than anything else, so you've made the
Speaker 3: correct decision until you get to the point like the
Speaker 3: Miller rights, where facts collide with with your beliefs and
Speaker 3: it still can't change things because you have then got
Speaker 3: the mindset this can't be true because I have invested
Speaker 3: so much in it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now, I know we're going way beyond the Gillespie quota,
Speaker 1: So charge me tariff on this. I want to quickly
Speaker 1: go through. Give me like one two minutes on each
Speaker 1: of these. So the article is called well how to
Speaker 1: build a cult? Firstly, but then kind of the sub
Speaker 1: It goes straight down to I love this. The recipe
Speaker 1: a five step protocol for hijacking the human mind. Step one,
Speaker 1: so I want you to riff on this for a
Speaker 1: couple of minutes. Step one isolate the subject and become
Speaker 1: the sole source. We've kind of covered all this a bit,
Speaker 1: but at snapshot, become the sole source of validation.
Speaker 3: Okay, so this isn't as necessary these days, but if
Speaker 3: you're starting small and you need your core group of followers,
Speaker 3: this is what you need to do. You need to
Speaker 3: isolate them from people who will say bad things about
Speaker 3: your beliefs. So and you need to be a source
Speaker 3: of validation for them so that you are continuously reinforcing
Speaker 3: for them that they have made the correct decision. And
Speaker 3: so it's that simple. You just need to be that
Speaker 3: all encompassing source, and you need to cut them off
Speaker 3: from their sources of support. Now, as you grow, your
Speaker 3: cult starts to take on an automatic recruitment capability, because
Speaker 3: now you can use social media to achieve this same
Speaker 3: because the algorithms will automatically do this for you. So
Speaker 3: it'll give them validation, it'll show them only the things
Speaker 3: they want to see and it will make anything else
Speaker 3: foreign to them.
Speaker 1: Step two, create a system of variable rewards.
Speaker 3: Ah. Now we haven't talked about this one, but a
Speaker 3: critical component of this is that the oxytocin reward we
Speaker 3: get from believing that other people like what we're doing is, say,
Speaker 3: at level one hundred. It's a standard dopamine reward, just
Speaker 3: like the one we get from having sex or from gambling,
Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera. And we've talked about this a lot,
Speaker 3: but the way our brain is wired is that we
Speaker 3: prefer uncertainty, and the way that works is it magnifies it,
Speaker 3: in fact, doubles the hit of dopamine we get from
Speaker 3: a rewarding experience if it's not definitely going to be delivered.
Speaker 3: So if we only get the rewarding thing every now
Speaker 3: and then, then the hit we get from exposure to
Speaker 3: it is double what it would be if we get
Speaker 3: it all the time. And colts use this quite powerfully
Speaker 3: in that they're not always your friend. They're not they're
Speaker 3: not always telling you you're the greatest person on earth.
Speaker 3: Sometimes they're telling you you're an idiot, or they're randomly
Speaker 3: punishing you. So one of the most powerful and effective
Speaker 3: methods that a cult leader can use is to make
Speaker 3: an example of someone who has betrayed the cult, So
Speaker 3: to take someone down in front of the other cult members.
Speaker 3: This is a non believer who has made a transgression
Speaker 3: against the beliefs of the cult. And if you do
Speaker 3: that every now and then and on a random schedule,
Speaker 3: and where no one knows for sure whether they might
Speaker 3: be next, the pleasure they receive from being part of
Speaker 3: this cult is twice as high as it would otherwise be.
Speaker 3: So while it seems cruel, it's a powerful motivator.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess, Like think about in Christianity, while in
Speaker 1: fundamental Christianity anyway, and most versions of Christianity, most denominations,
Speaker 1: you're taught that you were born a sinner, like you
Speaker 1: like babies sinners, and the only way that they can
Speaker 1: like can't behave their way out of it, Like you're
Speaker 1: just a sinner and you need redemption.
Speaker 3: Well, it's treata means keep them keen. You know it's
Speaker 3: where you get it. Yeah, treata mean keep them keen.
Speaker 3: Is if you're a member of a cult and then
Speaker 3: suddenly you're on the outside, Suddenly you're getting the cold
Speaker 3: shoulder you're being punished, then the thing you want most
Speaker 3: in the world is to once again be part of
Speaker 3: the cult. So it triggers an intense craving for the
Speaker 3: uniformity and the belonging that the colt gave you.
Speaker 1: Step three, establish a fortress of us versus them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is the thing we're talking about before,
Speaker 3: the one that Hitler used with great effect, which is,
Speaker 3: you know, you are better than them, you the Aryan people. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you might feel like the world's against you, but you
Speaker 3: are better. You're fundamentally better people, and that's what unites us.
Speaker 3: You have to have something that you and you can
Speaker 3: see this playing out in the United States on a
Speaker 3: broader scale, you know, the immigrants of them and the
Speaker 3: ass says the people born here. So this is a
Speaker 3: really common narrative in cults, which is you latch onto
Speaker 3: a message it's already there. You can't. By the way,
Speaker 3: this is not something that you can just make up.
Speaker 3: It's much much harder if you make it up. You
Speaker 3: have to find something that your potential cult members do
Speaker 3: regard as a unifying feature. I mean, this is, at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, the fundamental basis for racism,
Speaker 3: which is you know, white people are all better than
Speaker 3: other people, et cetera, et cetera. So that's the the
Speaker 3: underlying mechanism that is being exploited by this. But you
Speaker 3: need to find a uniting thing that most of your
Speaker 3: followers will find, will agree is a common superior factor
Speaker 3: about them. Now, with the Miller Rights, it was their
Speaker 3: belief in that event, you know. And but you will
Speaker 3: find in every single cult there'll be something that unites them,
Speaker 3: and whether it's spoken or unspoken, it'll be a characteristic
Speaker 3: that they all regard as they share and the outsiders don't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, will you kind of cover this one speaking William
Speaker 1: Miller demand escalating investment?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you just got to keep ramping up the ask. Right. Initially,
Speaker 3: it's very very simple. It's, you know, give me some
Speaker 3: of your time, you know, commit to being helping at
Speaker 3: this event. And then it turns into asking for money,
Speaker 3: and then it turns into asking for possessions, and then
Speaker 3: it turns into surrendering all worldly possessions and so on.
Speaker 3: So it's an escalating ask because you want people to
Speaker 3: get to the point where they have committed so much
Speaker 3: to it that they cannot walk away from it no
Speaker 3: matter what happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I love this. I'm just going to read
Speaker 2: a little bit.
Speaker 1: On the prophest side Day, which was October twenty two,
Speaker 1: eight forty four. The followers gathered on hillsides and in churches,
Speaker 1: dressed in white robes to await their salvation, but the
Speaker 1: sun rose on October twenty third to a silent, unchanged world.
Speaker 1: This was the ultimate reality landmine. From an outsider, the
Speaker 1: conclusion was obvious. Miller was a fraud for the follower
Speaker 1: who had given up everything. However, admitting this was psychologically impossible.
Speaker 1: The pain of acknowledging that their entire investment, their home, reputation,
Speaker 1: life's meaning was for nothing was too great.
Speaker 2: That's so interesting, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's so so bloody.
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 1: Last one, step five, Step five, if you're paying attention
Speaker 1: and taking notes, seize control of the narrative.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So this is the one I'm talking about before,
Speaker 3: where you have to keep the messaging. You can't just
Speaker 3: start a col and then walk away. This is a
Speaker 3: full time job. You've got to keep the messaging going.
Speaker 3: I mean, and I give the example in the article
Speaker 3: of nineteen eighty four where they took it to the
Speaker 3: extreme of controlling the language. Followers can't conceive of something
Speaker 3: like freedom or rebellion or individuality if the words don't exist.
Speaker 3: So you see this sort of thing happening in North Korea,
Speaker 3: for example, where there's just some concepts that no longer
Speaker 3: exist in their language. And that's because they've had such
Speaker 3: absolute control over what people say and believe that they
Speaker 3: really don't know of anything else and can't even conceive
Speaker 3: of it. And that's where you want to get to
Speaker 3: with your cult that you're making, is you want to
Speaker 3: get to a point where the only narrative comes from you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I love this sentence. This five step protocol
Speaker 1: is a recipe for building a cage inside a human mind.
Speaker 2: Well, that's fucking terrifying.
Speaker 3: It works, it works. It's taking advantage of a bug
Speaker 3: in the way we work. I mean, it's both a
Speaker 3: feature and a bug. It's the feature that makes us
Speaker 3: the most powerful animal on the planet, but it's also
Speaker 3: a bug that can be exploited.
Speaker 1: Well, I might have to put my cult plans on
Speaker 1: hold because I feel a little bit out of alignment
Speaker 1: at the moment.
Speaker 3: You feel the one thing I didn't put in there,
Speaker 3: and this is probably A really important requirement is you
Speaker 3: have to be a psychopath. So normal humans would find
Speaker 3: this protocol really really hard to do because it involves
Speaker 3: really really hurting people, and psychopasts don't care about doing that,
Speaker 3: and psychoasts also don't care what people think of them,
Speaker 3: so they're all good. If you're not a psychopath, you'll
Speaker 3: find this really difficult to do.
Speaker 1: Wow, thank goodness for that. Well, mate, I think March
Speaker 1: of Tea is going to have to wait. We're talking
Speaker 1: about it next time. You'll have to wait a fortnite
Speaker 1: TIF to get you into Are you still standing?
Speaker 2: Are you sitting?
Speaker 4: No way that I had to sit down.
Speaker 2: I knew you were sitting. That's a terrible idea. That's
Speaker 2: so hilarious. That's fucking that lasted about twelve minutes.
Speaker 3: Everyone.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I'm really into standing up. I've got a
Speaker 2: stand up disk and it's fucking this is the new me.
Speaker 2: Seven minutes later, sitting on her ass your ideas though,
Speaker 2: when then you.
Speaker 1: Especially when you're telling the world you know how good
Speaker 1: you are at it. And then I saw your elbows
Speaker 1: resting on the desk. I'm like, that motherfucker is sitting down?
Speaker 3: What you.
Speaker 2: Gills boat. We'll say goodbye affair. But yeah, thanks for's name.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah yeah I noticed Tip sit down about halfway
Speaker 3: through that. Oh dear, she's having asleep.
Speaker 2: Yeah so much for that new activity. Thanks mate,