Be a Skeptic

1 Comment » // October 1st, 2009

I was watching the Oprah show yesterday and, of all the things, it was about hair. The hair of African-American people specifically. I gather there’s a lot of effort involved to manage hair if you’re African-American, especially if you’re a woman.

What prompts me to write this post is that Oprah currently has long, flowing hair and her guest Chris Rock was shocked that it was all her own hair and not a weave.

I realized as I discussed this briefly with a friend, that it had not occurred to me to wonder if Oprah’s hair was artificial. It’s been long and flowing since the season started at the beginning of September and my Oprah-loving friend and I have commented on it several times, but it honestly never occurred to me to wonder if it was a wig or a weave.

This brought home to me how naturally unskeptical I am. This was one characteristic that allowed me to get swept up in a cult and I talk about this characteristic in my book and how it contributed to my manipulation by our cult leader. But you’d think that after a decade of being in a cult and then a decade of studying cults I’d have a little more skepticism built up inside myself.

This thing with Oprah’s hair has made me realize that that’s just not the case. I constantly have people pointing out to me instances where someone might not be telling the truth.

Because of this, one of the projects I’m working on lately is a list of questions we should ask ourselves before we get involved with any sort of spiritual group or personal growth training. I’ve realized that if I had had a list of questions to ask about the spiritual group I found when I was 22 I wouldn’t have joined what turned out to be a cult. I would have had my eyes opened and would have realized that the community was not safe and that the leader was coercive. Because I’m not naturally skeptical I definitely could have benefited from a list like the one I’m preparing for others now.

It makes me happy that I can now use my personal experience to hopefully prevent others from ending up in cults. This is another way I aim to use my negative experience and turn it into something positive.

Stay tuned for more about that.