The Three Principles of the Dogma Formula and How They Operate and Maintain a Cult

What are the three principles of the dogma formula and how do they work? To understand the three key principles behind dogma, first, we must learn what dogma really is all about deep down to its core. Dogma is when a principle or set of principles is established by an individual person or collective of people as indisputably true, often with unquestioning authority as a higher power. As you can imagine, this is a recipe for blind belief. Okay, so we know what dogma is now, but how does it work?

Principle 1: Isolationism

They isolate their audiences into echo chambers. According to GCFGlobal, “An echo chamber is an environment where a person only encounters information or opinions that reflect and reinforce their own. Echo chambers can create misinformation and distort a person’s perspective so they have difficulty considering opposing viewpoints and discussing complicated topics. They’re fueled in part by confirmation bias, which is the tendency to favor info that reinforces existing beliefs.” That sounds like a definition where we’re already on to something.

Principle 2: Doublethink

You might already be familiar with the concept of doublethink because of its use by Big Brother in George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. To practice doublethink, it is required to “deny the existence of reality” while also taking into consideration “the reality that one denies” in order to further the interests of a given cult. This is why you have self-contradictory statements like “war is peace,” “freedom is slavery,” “ignorance is knowledge,” and “weakness is strength.” For example, the Church of Scientology uses the promise of gaining control over MEST (Matter, Energy, Space, and Time) to convince members of the community to become OTs (Operating Thetans). However, the Church also teaches that an OT should reject MEST and become disconnected from it. Likewise, Axiom 31 states that good and evil are just considerations while also detailing an elaborate technology of ethics and justice in Scientology. It’s Cult 101. But perhaps what’s most telling of a cult is our next and final principle in the dogma formula.

Principle 3: Cynicism

The last principle in the dogma formula is cynicism. Cynicism is when a person develops an outlook on life that is scornfully and often habitually negative. As you can imagine, cynicism is the easiest of the three principles to identify. Unfortunately, it also happens to be the most destructive one. When a person develops an attitude towards life that is consistently negative, they can eventually become cut off from their support networks. When a person is constantly surrounded by a dark cloud of pessimism that continuously hovers over them, they can not only be cut off from positive-minded friends who wish the best for them, they can even be cut off from their own family so that the first principle of isolationism in the dogma formula is taken to a whole new level. This is a classic example of cult-like behavior. The scariest thing about cults is that they don’t need to be religious or even political to be cults; they just need to have their philosophies formulated with this thought process in order to be harmful to civil society.

For example, there is this one suicide encouragement forum that I cannot directly name that uses this very thought process that I speak of. I will call it “Sorrow Solution” or “SS” for short. Martin Keary a.k.a. “Tantacrul” in his video about the forum identifies three tell-tale signs that it is a cult. “First,” he states, “it has a highly peculiar alternative ideology which runs contrary to mainstream thinking. Second, a ridiculous hostility to mental health professionals and the idea of treatment. You see this a lot with Scientology. Their ideology runs contrary to mainstream mental health treatment, too, so they viciously attack it. It’s Cult 101. Your ideology will seem stronger if you clobber all competing ways of thinking. Third, and most telling for cults, including Scientology, cutting people off from their support networks.”

I like that analysis, but I think that the three principles of a cult that I have described in this article are more to the point. We’ll start with isolationism. Martin Keary clearly describes the forum as one that cuts people off from their families. Now let’s move on to doublethink. Mr. Keary doesn’t directly talk about doublethink in his video, but it is an observation that can be made based on the information that he provided in his discourse. The administrators in charge of “Sorrow Solution” claim to believe in libertarianism, but if you warn the same moderators that someone might be trying to commit suicide because of coercion, they will tell you that it is not your concern on the grounds that life is terrible and death is beautiful. Which leads us to our last principle, cynicism. The users are fed information that encourages them to be cynical towards life, leading to suicide.

Okay, so we know how the formula works now. But how do we shut off this destructive machine so that it won’t harm any more innocent people? Let’s start by addressing isolationism and its use of echo chambers. We know that cults thrive on isolation and make use of echo chambers for this very reason. But we also know that echo chambers can be tricky to recognize, especially if you’re in one. If you’re uncertain about whether an online community or website is an echo chamber, stop whatever you’re doing and ask the following questions:

• Do they tend to give only one perspective on an issue?

• Is that viewpoint mainly or entirely supported by rumor or incomplete evidence?

• Are facts being ignored whenever they go against that viewpoint?

• Do they directly ask for their audience to only listen to them and to ignore everybody else?

If you have answered yes to any of these questions, you’re probably in an echo chamber.

Now let’s address doublethink. If you have identified an online community or website to be an echo chamber, pay attention to what they have to say. Often an echo chamber will contradict itself by offering conflicting narratives that don’t actually intersect with each other. If self-contradictory sources of information make you feel uncomfortable, don’t ignore your feelings! Doublethink thrives on being desensitized to cognitive dissonance.

It’s time to address our final phenomenon, cynicism. Cults like to share news with people that don’t actually inform, but inflame their audiences. They share articles with headlines that stoke outrage by encouraging the reader to form an opinion before they even read the article. They also like to portray people as being driven purely by self-interest, but the truth is that no one operates entirely on selfishness. That’s just not how human nature works.

Even self-serving individuals can be ideologically motivated to make certain decisions when they are in positions of power. If you’re learning to be more pessimistic in your worldview because you’ve bought into the narrative that the truth is always bitter to hear, please understand that you’re being manipulated for the sake of an agenda. Justin “Beau” King in his video “The Roads to Understanding Misinformation” elaborates on this process through an in-depth explanation on this topic. Long story short, only healthy skepticism and genuinely seeking the truth about a topic rather than validation for one’s doubts can lead someone to reality. The truth isn’t always bitter to hear.