Risks: Succumbing to Groups that Require Mind Control

 

We have witnessed centuries of experience with cults – like the vivid mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978 where over 900 Peoples Temple (Jim Jones) followers drank poisoned punch or accepted cyanide injections to be transported to paradise. Cult followers approach their commitments with varying degrees of passion, yet often with a complete refusal to accept reality and an unquestioning pledge of total fealty. Reality itself is challenged as false. Almost all cults are religiously based, and questioning those underlying beliefs can lead to ostracism, the threat of perpetual damnation and perhaps even torture or death.

While cults like the Peoples Temple are extreme and rare, religions have long imposed dire consequences for non-believers, particularly those who affirmatively reject the core beliefs and mandates of their faith. “Infidels” are considered less than human, and apostates and non-believers are often subject to execution. Think of the Spanish Inquisition in the late 15th century, where Roman Catholics executed non-believers in droves. But where the penalty for non-believers is simply excommunication or a pledge to an afterlife in Hell, the next question is whether or not there are any medical consequences to such “us vs them” ardent believers.

It’s a very relevant question today where not being part of your community (online or physically present) carries feelings of isolation and guilt, especially where that community is based heavily on fundamentalist beliefs, where fealty is a bottom-line prerequisite. In the United States, many communities (particularly small towns and rural areas) are socially united around their local Christian church. Online sites can create parallel effects. Few people would challenge Christian belief as either aberrant or toxic. It represents a code of moral values that has guided a huge segment of the planet and this nation.

But as politics and faith increasingly intermingle, as “faithful” adherents are required to reject non-believers and ignore empirical reality to “fit in,” the questions of possible brain changes become medically relevant. The other side is depicted in dehumanizing epithets – “deplorables” vs “vermin” – and people are forced to “pick sides,” often under direct orders from their pastor.

Is this the new politics of the now and future. If people commit fervently to what their group says is the only “right-thinking,” denigrating all challenges even if logical and factual, is that simply an expression of an opinion or do such patterns of extreme belief have any medical consequences? Particularly, does the brain undergo any physiological changes, and if so, are they medically harmful. This arena of neurological inquiry isn’t particularly new but recently focused on less than the extreme of cultism and more on current religious beliefs that push toward the extreme.

Let’s start with a study (using sophisticated tools like CT scans) entitled Biological and cognitive underpinnings of religious fundamentalism published (June of 2017) in the medical periodical, Neuropsychologia, written by a gaggle of neurological research scientists and academics – Wanting Zhong , Irene Cristofori, Joseph Bulbulia, Frank Krueger and Jordan Grafman. They “assessed religious adherence with a widely-used religious fundamentalism scale in a large sample of [119 Vietnam War veterans, 89 of whom had brain damage – associated with PTSD – in the areas suspected of being affected by religious fundamentalism]… [Their] findings indicate that cognitive flexibility and openness are necessary for flexible and adaptive religious commitment, and that such diversity of religious thought is dependent on [dorsolateral prefrontal cortex] functionality.” Effectively, “right-thinking” religious rigidity produces PTSD brain changes.

To simplify the mass of results, E.B. Johnson, a Neuro-Linguistic Programming – Certified Master Practitioner – published an analysis of the issue (A Study Has Highlighted the Link Between Religion and Brain Damage) on July 30th, including this excerpt: “People are always surprised when they find out that the majority of my clients come to me with some kind of religious trauma in their background. For some, it’s severe. Starvation. Beatings. For others, it’s subtle. Subconscious programming has hindered how they see themselves and the people they love.

“It’s taken a long time, but we’re now starting to wake up to the trauma that high control and fundamentalist religion can do. Now, the research is starting to catch up and painting a scary picture for all those still stuck in that Ol’ Time Religion… Fundamentalist religions, no matter their denominations, are high-control groups that apply strict interpretations of dogmas, scriptures, and ideologies. They oppose and discourage progressive thinking. In these groups, there is only the body of the organization and ‘the others,’ who are labeled as dangerous and divisive people who threaten the religious group…

“Essentially, what the researchers discovered was two things:

    1. Brain trauma, psychological disorders, addictions, and certain genetic profiles made individuals              more susceptible to religious fundamentalism.

    2. Religious fundamentalism harms the development of the prefrontal cortex and makes it harder for          individuals to think with flexibility and openness.

“Both findings are substantial because they point to some glaringly obvious issues in the people we love and the world around us… You see, cognitive flexibility - or the ability to change beliefs when presented with new evidence or learning - is key to progressive organisms. Without this flexibility, organisms (even big ones like we humans) can remain stuck in patterns of behavior and belief that limit our ability to grow and to flourish… Having a large number of the population who are prone to the damage of religious fundamentalism, or those who have been traumatized by it, poses a threat to our society. If we cannot be open and flexible in our thinking about the future, we will be doomed to the history books with all the other failed humans who have come before us.”

This leads to a question if this condition, the brain’s rewiring so to speak, can be repaired. Assuming someone wants to be ‘repaired,’ Johnson notes: “There is evidence our brain can be repaired through the evolutionary ‘magic’ of our brain’s own natural function. I’m talking, of course, about neuroplasticity, or our brain’s natural ability to ‘repair’ itself after trauma or damage.

“The concept comes down to the way our brain works naturally. A tangle of neurons and synapses (and a lot of other, more complicated stuff), our brain essentially moves through the world, rewiring itself in response to the stimuli it experiences. For example, if you run a red light and get into a car wreck, your brain rewires itself to look for and prevent car wrecks each time you approach a red light in the future.” But those living in a community of “right-thinking” members, or who have built their personal relationships around an inflexible religious belief system, there is little to suggest that they either know they have an issue or that they want to challenge their peers… and risk the ostracization that many entail. Think of the issue as “thought control.”

I’m Peter Dekom, and where there is such a mass commitment to an exclusionary “right-thinking” matter of faith – perceived as a mandate from God – the ability to use truth and facts to change those patterns appears to be futile until peers and their children suggest other paths… or a sudden realization of the false narrative that has enveloped them.