(Published as an Op Ed piece in Litchfield County Times, August 15, 2008)

The Politics of Words: Just a Matter of Perspective?

David Begelman

            George Bernard Shaw famously once said that some of our most cherished concepts are mere words that can be turned inside out like a glove. Among his examples were: beauty, respectability, art, bravery, and patriotism. Was Benedict Arnold patriot or traitor? Maybe the answer depends on whether you see things from the perspective of a fledgling democracy struggling to assert its independence, or from the standpoint of loyalty to the British monarchy. Has administration policy toward Iran done an “abrupt about face,” or are we currently only “opening up an interest section” in Tehran? Why is Canadian medicine “socialism,” but not our own Veterans Administration health care system, likewise a branch of the federal government? And what about colonials of yesteryear who, masquerading as Indians, tossed tea into Boston Harbor? Was that a fearless act of protest, or a terrorist assault on property rights?

First ask: “From what perspective do we see it?” As a distinguished physicist once opined, maybe some things are relative. Not all things, mind you. There are, after all, moral absolutes. (We’d be in a pretty fix if there weren’t.)

            Take the term “cult.” What does it mean aside from being a word we attach to religions or belief systems we find personally disagreeable? One descriptor might be a cult’s insularity. Wait a minute. Insularity is a distinguishing feature of orders within the major religions: cloisters, nunneries, yeshivas, mosques, etc. Are these “cults?” Try again.

            A cult’s methods involve “brainwashing,” another term that functions like a glove that can be turned inside out. Why are Scientologists, Branch Davidians at Waco, or a schismatic Mormon group in Texas “brainwashed,” but not those who rely on the often fiery priests, rabbis, imams, or pastors dotting the American landscape? What about the toddlers in evangelical Sunday schools who say they don’t believe in Darwin’s evolutionary theory (without even understanding at a tender age what it is)? Why is what their tutors dispense “education,” not “brainwashing?” Try again.

            “Cults” practice torture, social isolation, or sexual impropriety. Like the Bush Administration, Amish and Hasidic communities, and pedophiles of a major religion? Try again.

You’d better give up, because you’ll get nowhere nailing down what “cults” do that distinguishes them from other groups we’d never dream of describing as such.

            Do “cults” prey on impressionable youngsters? Or are youngsters who abandon parental values a case of sour grapes when they later become fed up with their charismatic gurus? Do they need to be “deprogrammed,” as though they were miswired machines? Or is their freely undertaken decision to get out from under morphed sanctimoniously into a harrowing escape from wicked influence?

If there’s one thing the great religions of the world teach us, it’s accepting responsibility for one’s choices in life, and not passing the buck to parents, demon drink, the Devil’s playground, or “cults.” Because if any outside influence can relieve you of personal responsibility for what you do when the going gets rough, then everything out there is a cult, and you’ll need to be “deprogrammed” from life itself. Lot’s of luck.