Introductions

Hello, and welcome to Contemplations.
My name is Jacob Schluns, I'm 17 years old, and a senior in high school.

I got the idea of opening up a blog to help me with my writing, since practicing writing on a regular basis is supposed to be one of the best ways to improve your ability. Its called Contemplations because my plan is to share pieces of work in writing, books, art, or video games, or events in politics and the world and think about what they could mean. In other words, contemplating.

Now , a joke that I thought of a few seconds ago would have told you a lot about what sort of sense of humor I have, but then I realised that it would probably be inconprehensible to most people who read it (hint: it had a copyright symbol in it).

So instead I went out and found the picture of a baby thinking "I'm going to make this face until you get that camera away from me, papparrazzi!" It works better that way.

Also, another thing about me. I've got fairly bad hearing. "Well Jake, why would we care? This is an online blog where you are typing, not listening." Well, stranger, you should care because it can lead to some funny happenings. For instance, there's a song called "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel.

In it, there's a line that says " "Lawrence of Arabia", British Beatlemania ". In my poor mind, that line turned into "British Pedomania". Think pedophilia, except slightly less creepy and sexual. Nothing against the Beatles, but I wasn't associating them with Britain while I was listening to it. I went around having listened to this line several times over and thinking the song had a very odd subtext when I was finally corrected. So... bad hearing.

Alright, sorry for wandering in a incoherent manner. Just wanted to let you all know a little bit about me (though not too much ;) ). Now, to the contemplations part aka *serious time*. I was wondering about why people would join cults. Before you head for the exit, hear me out. A cult is defined as "a religious movement whose practices are considered to be abnormal."(Wikipedia)


 That's a wicker man to the left. Those are people inside of it, and that thing is definitely on fire. That's something the druids (aka early cult) supposedly did from the 200s BCE to the 700s CE (not exact dates). For a more modern example, there's the Branch Dividians in Waco, whose compound was burned to the ground during a standoff with the ATF and FBI,  and Jim Jones, who had his whole cult of 900+ people commit mass suicide.

Knowing this sort of reputation for cults, why would people even think about joining one. And no, before you say it, its not because they're stupid people. People who join cults are just as smart as everyone else. They are normal everyday people who lived completely normal lives.

I've heard a couple of reasons for it. One is that it could be a way of expressing your beliefs. Say a person believed that the sun was really a fiery demon that needed to be worshipped in order to keep it from annihilating all life on earth (that does make them sound crazy >.<, but it could be as simple as believing someone is superhuman (ie some fans of celebrities)).

Those things (solar flares) are scary, given that they can be bigger than the planet Earth.

If there were a cult espousing that same belief, then they could be tempted to join them in order to be around people who have similar beliefs. Another is that cults are masters at recruiting people when they are in a stressful situation. People who have just gone through a tragedy in their lives, people who have moved into a new city, people who just lost a job. When they are in that sort situation, people feel like they have to belong to a group in order to have someone to talk their feelings over with. A group that will treat them like family and genuinely care about how they are doing at the moment. Cults are good at arriving just at that moment, and offering to be that group.

One final way that I've heard was that people who join cults are trying to find a way to rebel, to not conform to the "rules" of society. Those people tend to find that cults offer them a way to free themselves from what they view as the crushing pressure to conform with the norm. A way to set themselves apart from the masses. And cults are, again, good at offering that opportunity.

Alright, that's my contemplating for the day. If you readers have any thoughts, please let me know.

PS .Especially with how the economy was a few years ago, and even today, I'm surprised there wasn't more in the news about more people becoming cult members (remember, losing a job could be a trigger for joining up).

, Jacob Schluns