Spotting Signs of a Former Cult Member: Can't Relate to Satire and Sarcasm

I Guess You Have to Have Been There...

The primary method of initially determining a former cult member - who is still suffering from the after-effects of severe mind control - is they will often have real trouble understanding the social nuances behind sarcasm and satire.

Cult leaders have scrubbed this highly individualistic trait out of them. 

Cults know truths and secrets can be hidden from the cult leaders (who are either full-blown Psychopaths or Proto-Psychopaths) through satire and sarcasm. These are individually learned skills that can only function within the conventions of a free and open society and social order.

Within the highly controlled world of the Scamedemic, Comet Doomsday, Religious, Political, or Flying Saucer cults, the limiting internal language prevents any kind of sub-narratives from occurring. Hence the strict rules, behavior modifications and over-reliance on mantras, catchphrases, and acronyms. Language within a cult structure becomes a type of prison under the guise of purporting to be liberating the membership; "Trust the Science…Stay Home Save Lives…trans women are real women…STS...STO...vectoring... polarized" and so on.

The weaponized language within the cult - akin to machine gun towers around the mind - is trauma-based; in that natural modes of cognition are severely curtailed.

Suppose you are in a cult that forbids romantic relationships and you develop a crush on another cult member. You will be made aware that romantic relationships - unless they are sanctified by the cult leaders (such as their own children given away as 'sex prizes' to the most fanatical, desperate sycophants) - are deemed disruptive to your spiritual growth. 

You joined the cult initially for the perceived spiritual, idealistic or psychological benefits. So, in order to remove your romantic and physical longings for this person, you will have been presented early on with a mantra, or exercise to cull any romantic connection you are undergoing so as to remain on the spiritual or other path which the cult is claiming to represent. In reality, you are prevented from this relationship as it distracts from your love of the leaders. Which must be total and unconditional.

With something powerful as the natural biological sex instinct being suppressed, the brain rewires itself, and natural neurotransmitter functions and mirror neurons literally die. The same happens with the need to laugh and from this understanding the wider, subtle nature of satire and sarcasm. The brain is literally rebuilt - from the amygdala to the frontal cortex - by the cult leaders and their 'modules, 'workshops' and so on. This might also explain the glazed-over dead-eyed stare of cult members.

Eventually "you" are scooped out of yourself and replaced with a dead-eyed, skin-job, automaton whose mirror neuron functions and dopamine surges are only possible within the construct of the psychic prison the cult has landed you within.

If you alter mirror neuron and neurotransmitter functionality, eventually you can only relate to the social and psychological dynamics of the cult. Anything that is forbidden by the cult - such as satire and sarcasm - is literally traumatizing for cult members to deal with outside the cult. It's akin to everyone around them talking in a foreign language.

It does not make the ex-cult member a bad person, as I often find this lack of psychic developmental nuance recognition in them tragic. It often makes it impossible for them to function in regular society.

This is also why cult membership in cultures where 'having the craic' or 'taking the piss' is a part of everyday society is so rare. For someone from say, Scotland or Ireland to end up in one of these cults they would have had to have been something of a social failure within Irish or Scottish societies, to begin with. Hence why cult membership is relatively lower in these countries, but much higher in more controlled societies such as South Korea and Japan.

Of course, this does not excuse them from their terror gang-stalking, free-speech destroying, and book-burning psychotic rampages in order for the career-criminal psychopath at the top of the cult to remain their unquestioned god on earth and for all eternity. They have to live the rest of their lives with that...the cult leader won't care I can assure you.

The Path is an excellent TV drama dealing with cult membership and a man's attempt to leave them.