Today in class when talking about the cults of the counterculture of the 1960's, Mr. Stewart mentioned the Manson Family, generating a response from many of the students in the class. I was surprised that I had never heard of them before, since they are supposedly very infamous, so I did some research on them.
It was a cult led by Charles Manson in California in the late 1960's, who were hippies. Charles Manson gained a group of followers through his ideas that he was Christ, and that they were the reincarnation of the original Christians. They committed many crimes, including the murders of Sharon Tate, an actress, and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. Other "Family" members committed even more murders. They were very cult-like in the way that Manson's followers would blindly obey him, and he had immense control over them. They were a very eerie and strange group. They were charged for 8 murders throughout the 1960's. Their actions were beyond insane and there are many questions about them, but it is apparent that they committed so many crimes and murders simply because they enjoyed killing.
This is really fascinating to me because in my opinion, Charles Manson fits all the criteria of a psychopath. But his followers could not have all been psychopaths either, the majority of them must have just been regular people, with regular upbringings. So how was he able to have so much influence over them and convince them to commit these horrible murders?
Although I don't have extensive knowledge about psychology or the people following Charles Manson throughout the 1960s, I would imagine that he was able to convince so many people to "blindly obey him" as you put it by slowly manipulating individuals until he was able to develop a large following. Because he's highly regarded as one of history's most psychopathic and manipulative individuals, I think it's obvious that Manson was talented at controlling people around him and toying with their emotions. Now, it would be impossible for Manson to have immediately convinced people to support his movement and his personal ambitions by walking up to them and asking them if they wanted to do something extreme, which it's more realistic that he instead chose to get to know people and manipulate them over the course of months or even years. By doing so, Manson could get people to follow them without them being directly aware of his overwhelming influences, which made it significantly easier to convince them into joining and worshipping him. I think that this form of manipulation is essentially the same as how a cult like Scientology would try and get a normal person to become a Scientologist based on my knowledge of the organization (which may not be correct) as I've heard many stories of the group appealing to impoverished and/or emotionally struggling regular people by trying to help them like a normal church would do and manipulating them into thinking they were a beneficial support group. As a result, normal people would convert to Scientology and actually support it over the course of many months, which I would think is pretty similar to how Manson manipulated victims into supporting his personal pseudo-cult.
ReplyDeleteI believe that some people may be very manipulative and since history repeats itself, it is likely something like this may happen again.
ReplyDeleteI don't think Manson usually applied a strategy of gradually converting his followers. Most of Manson's followers, were, in fact, people like him: They shared common interests such as living unconventionally and using drugs constantly. Many of them, like Manson, wanted to shock the world and attract the attention of the public. This was most likely why they committed the murders in the first place.
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