Thank You For Listening to My TED Talk
On Thursday, June 12, it was my pleasure to present a lecture titled “What Do Destructive Cults, Violent Religious Extremism, Far Right Militias & Conspiracy Theories Have In Common?” at a TEDxYouth event organized by some wonderful students at my school. The basic conceit was to apply classic concepts in the typology of religion developed by Rodney Stark and William Bainbridge to several groups that have gained traction by exploiting modern feelings of isolation and powerlessness. “Everywhere under Heaven is in great disarray,” says the Zhuangzi, a third century BCE book of Taoist wisdom—“the whole world tends to see only one aspect and think that they ahve grasped the whole of it.” O tempora o mores is hardly a fresh complaint in the long record of social unrest, nor is violent extremism a new response. But the groups that take advantage of this all too human tendency to seek simple, self-affirming answers can and must be avoided. The solutions offered by these movements are...