2026-06-12

Like Satan, the cult leader believes they can fabricate a better reality. A better worldview than the truth shared by us all, a life-stimulating falsehood.

This is a lonely place to be. They are disconnected from the world and others at a fundamental level. (Arendt: ideology is a product of isolation)

Then, rather than healing by re-entering society, they double down. They say: my reality is superior and stray further. Believing they are in the right also leads them to evangelize.

And they are very good at evangelizing. Because their great suffering gives them a great passion, and this passion is seductive to others.

This pattern, I think, goes beyond cult leaders. Anyone who doubles down on a fabricated worldview, then tries to sell it to others (e.g. communists, conspiracy theorists) is doing something similar.

Some comedians do this too (blessed is the man who does not sit in the seat of scoffers). Most are lonely. Most are suffering. And so they want people to hate the world as they do. They want people to see it as stupid, violent, meaningless, empty. They seduce you with their passion. They put great effort and energy into humor and ridicule to dress up their views and sway people to their side. I feel this often from South Park.

abrupt evolutionary jumps is W for platonism: Science of the Gaps \| Luke Smith