Episode 4: Who Controls You?

In healthy groups and relationships, members retain their own sense of what's right, their own voices, their intellectual freedom, and their own ideas. In healthy groups, the systems of group control are healthy and nourishing.

In unhealthy groups, the systems of control will demand high dedication, high intensity, self-silencing, intellectual sameness, and extreme perfectionism. In unhealthy groups and relationships, the systems themselves are abusive.

But there is no need to create systems of control that are high-demand or abusive. Healthy groups and relationships are everywhere, and learning about what healthy (and unhealthy) groups look like can protect each of us from unnecessary harm.

SIGNS OF HEALTHY SYSTEMS OF CONTROL

• The system is democratic; all members have a say in how the rules and regulations are developed and implemented.
• Members have the right to question, doubt, and challenge the system.
• Checks and balances are in place so that the system remains fluid, responsive, and fair.
• The system supports equality, and no person is above the rules.
• The system incorporates fairness, justice, and leniency; no one is humiliated, abused, or shunned.
• Members appreciate the sense of structure and discipline that the system provides.
• The system provides a healthy sense of belonging and camaraderie.
• The system helps members develop a unified group identity that does not erase their own identities.
• The group encourages critical thinking and welcomes ideas from outside the system.

When a system of control is healthy, its structure supports and nurtures the people inside it. Healthy systems of control involve rules that make sense, clear checks and balances on power, responsive and respectful leadership, and goals that are livable and beneficial for everyone.

Unhealthy systems of control treat people like cogs in a machine, and they require total submission and unquestioning obedience, regardless of the personal cost. When a system is toxic, its structure crushes, demeans, and dehumanizes the people trapped within it.

SIGNS OF UNHEALTHY SYSTEMS OF CONTROL

• The rules and regulations come from above: members have no say in the system.
• The system of control is undemocratic and does not allow independent thought or action.
• Members must be perfect in their obedience or face dire consequences.
• Rule-breaking is treated as a direct attack on the group or its leader.
• Rule-breaking has extreme consequences, such as public shaming, isolation, shunning, beatings, starvation, or excommunication.
• Publicly shaming or abuse of rule breakers is used as a scare tactic to keep other members in line.
• Members are encouraged to report rule breakers – including their own family members.
• Leaders or members in the inner circle can break rules without consequences.
• The system of control is connected to the working lives of cult members; hard work and even slavery are essential parts of the rules and regulations.
• The leader can change the rules, regulations, and system at will or on a whim.

These lists are from the book I co-authored with Janja Lalich, Escaping Utopia.

In this episode, I talk about Janja Lalich's book about two seemingly opposite cults that were basically identical in their social structures, Bounded Choice.

I also talk about the group Braver Angels, who are helping people on the left and the right learn how to be people with each other again.