So - here we are in July 2024. What a circus! At a time like this, it’s definitely worth re-reading Hans Christian Andersen’s story: ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’. There are so many important lessons ‘woven’ into that story. It illustrates Cognitive Dissonance, Cultic Behaviour, Gaslighting, Mass Delusion and Sunk Cost Fallacy.

In my experience, a single short definition is useful but what I’d like to do is get into the numerous characteristics that make up a cult. So - I’m going to give you my list of CULT characteristics and tactics (There are 25 of them): 

We, the citizens, have to try and live up to some impossible ideal by suppressing or destroying everything that does not meet the ‘holiness’ or ‘purity’ of the ideal. All those shameful things now live in our shadow. Festering, boiling, and sometimes seething with hatred.