About MENS REA
I've always been fascinated with cults from a research
point of view, as I perceive it to be life (in ordinary society) distilled:
The key principles of social psychology magnified, in it's purest form.
My interest in this may of course be deeply influenced by being brought up and still living in one of the most secular societies and countries in the world. Everything surrounding faith and religion are perceived as more or less controversial, and living deeply devoted to a certain faith is seen as impossible to combine with a functioning life in "modern society" based on scientific facts.
The dichotomy between these two, and arguing which one should have the greater influence on society and it's morals / laws / norms, are one of the great struggles we're dealing with in the current climate.
What I however find fascinating are the parallells between the indoctrination (and in some ways brain washing) that takes place both in religious cults and in modern society, in order to be able to live and function within the respective groups. And how quickly and subtle deviations from "what is allowed" are punished, but with different sets of arguments and motifs.
At the same time, I'm not alone in having noticed a lot of warning signs the last decades, in the sense of human life post-industrial revolution not being the liberating, all-gratifying solution that it once was thought to be.
On a national level regarding the industrial revolution, the old farm village society of Sweden de-materialised, urbanization boomed exponentially, and over time the celebration in individualization of living ones life became the norm, in juxtaposition to humans always having lived and worked together in larger groups.
There are a lot of positives regarding automated labour and the "modern society" as a whole, especially for eg. life expectancy, but we've also seen that mental health issues have exploded (and luckily are getting less taboo to talk about), loneliness is rated as one of the biggest public health risks, and the endless pursuit of technological innovations to simplify our lives have made more and more groups of people (feel) superfluous, questioning their purpose.
And, as we all know, the planet is dying. And politically, groups of people have never been more in opposition, openly and privately, than right now (during my lifetime).
It's a pretty scary time and place to be alive, if I'm to be absolutely honest. And fright makes people isolate themselves even more, that's a basic human defense- and survival mechanism.
The common denominator for all of these, in very different ways, is evil - perpetrated by humans, on towards other humans. My key focus for the piece was exploring human evil (and it's latency in all of us) on a whole, and creating the narrative into the story of a fictional cult (in some sorts) proved very efficient for the purpose.
I'm, as always in my pieces, less interested in giving any answers but instead posing even more questions.
This piece is less about my opinion about all of the above, but mainly about me honestly questioning what would be able to bring us happiness. And, in ways, a celebration of critical thinking in a world of fake news and false prophets promising fast and easy gratification.
We're so much more vulnerable than we think we are.
- Rebecka Pershagen, July 2020
