Quotes About Cultism

Cultism—like all totalism and fundamentalism—is a reaction against the potential confusions of protean openness. In that sense cultism is reactionary not only in its constraints on the self but on its efforts to stop the flow of history. Expressions of collective proteanism, one of which Václav Havel called "living in truth," can be viewed as a return to the resilience of the self and its dynamic relationship to the historical process.

Of course, the Nazi movement was unique in terms of its killing machines and its policy of rounding up millions of people in order to systematically murder them. Nonetheless, the Nazi form of cultism has close resemblances to that of other political and religious groups, and leaves no doubt about cultist capacities for infinite murderousness.

The Protean Alternative I have stressed the pervasiveness and danger of cultism, but that does not mean it must dominate our future. We are capable of alternatives—even antidotes—that stem from the very structure of the human mind. One such alternative is what I call the protean self, a view of the self as always in process; as being many-sided rather than monolithic, and resilient rather than fixed.

In Germany, they have great difficulty with anything that smacks of cultism or messianic leadership. You can't talk about leadership in its charismatic forms.