The danger of charisma

Last night, we watched “Holy Hell” a 2016 Sundance documentary that told the real life of cult guru and its followers between 1985 and 2007.

It was all about the destructive power of spiritual or religious belief, the magnetic charisma of its leader and most importantly, the tenacious attachment of its followers to the “truths” they had been told in spite of the ordeal they had experienced.

This made me think that organized religions, political beliefs and movements of all kinds aren't that much different from these destructive cults and when people have been perfectly brainwashed on a weird idea, it's very difficult to make them execute to a total 180 degree turn.

I'm thinking about Nazis, ex-USSR Communists, Evangelists of all kinds, Trump followers or ex-Catholics just like me. The trip out of an entrenched set of belief proves always very arduous if not impossible.

Until now, I thought that religion or any other form of mental contamination was simply a “poison”, but it also a “prison”.