Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults

by Janja Lalich

Book Overview

Heaven's Gate, a secretive group of celibate "monks" awaiting pickup by a UFO, captured intense public attention in 1997 when its members committed collective suicide. As a way of understanding such perplexing events, many have seen those who join cults as needy, lost souls, unable to think for themselves. This book, a compelling look at the cult phenomenon written for a wide audience, dispels such simple formulations by explaining how normal, intelligent...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520384024
• ISBN13: 9780520384026
• Release Date: November 2020
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 353 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Fascinating and important

This is an excellent and important book. The concept of 'bounded choice' is a valuable one and can be applied to many situations outside of cults. The majority of the book is taken up with an examination of two contemporary cults -Heaven's Gate and the Democratic Worker's Party (DWP). The Heaven's Gate members, of course, gained great fame when the majority of the cult committed a mass, ritualistic suicide in 1997 in response to the appearance of the spectacular Hale-Bopp comet. The cult had been in existence since 1975 and had been quietly percolating underground for more than 20 years. I can remember when they were first mentioned in the papers in 1975 and had assumed that they had disbanded after the failure of the predicted spaceships to come and take them away. I had not heard of the DWP but was aware of the cult-like aspects of the Marxist-Leninist belief system. Lalich shows how both of these cults, though different in significant ways, operated within an effective and extremely confining framework consisting of charismatic authority, a transcendent belief system, systems of control and systems of influence. By the end of the book, it is much easier to understand how difficult a member would find it to question participation in such an extreme group and come to the reasonable decision that it would be much better to leave. The author deserves a lot of credit for having the courage and academic rigor to write compellingly about a phenomenon that affected her personally in so powerful a way. As she clearly states, more needs to be done. This is an area important to the very future of mankind. The argument can be made that the most powerful nation in the history of the world (the United States of America) has re-elected its very worst president for a second term because the electorate was in a situation of bounded choice -bounded choice in the sense that the U.S. mass media were either toxic, pro-Bush-regime cheerleaders (Fox network, Limbaugh, etc.) or nervous, wishy-washy bystanders, who would perish before they would ask a question that might earn an attack from the right. How can a people make a reasoned, informed choice when the boundaries are so circumscribed? (This is much easier to see from up in Canada, because, although our media are far from perfect, they still function for the most part as gatherers and disseminators of information, as opposed to sellers and promoters of propaganda.) The book does have flaws though. The writing in general is fine, but tends towards sociology-ese in theoretical sections. From the point of view of a story, it would have been interesting to explore what the leaders of the Heaven's Gate cult did on a daily basis. Did they watch soap operas? Did they meditate? Did they read detective novels like Marlene Dixon? They certainly were secretive and so maybe this information is not available. Did they have a sexual relationship? The cult discouraged such 'hum