is blaming a 'cult' a good idea or not?

I've been watching this story unfold with interest, not for the headline facts but for the police and media reactions to it.

The 14 suicides are certainly a statistical anomaly even in an area with above-average rates, but the local community is making great efforts to bury the story and any possible suggestions that the cases are linked, instead blaming the general economy, weather, teenage angst, etc. The press of course are proposing connections left right and center, with friend-of-a-friend links through Bebo and MySp being 'blamed'. The c-word appears a lot, but there is also no suggestion that if a link *does* exist, there's any controlling presence. In my definitions a cult requires a controlling mind and not simply communications between individuals, otherwise there's no source for the ideology. The concept that individuals (even if they communicated with each other) cannot have similar ideas without being driven to them is more and more prominent in the media, and it seems that for every tragedy reported in the press there's an absolute need for someone or something to 'blame'. People don't "do things" any more, they're "made to do things".

The police are publicly denying any links (and denying that the online links which the press have found exist), but at the same time putting together a 'task force' to find the cause - which implies that they assume there has to be one. Personally I can't see why there *has* to be an intelligent cause - statistics have anomalies by their nature, otherwise they wouldn't be statistics. There may well be a directing mind in these cases, but equally it may just be the terrible weather and poor quality beer.

My question is - does the search for 'a cult' to blame in stories like this detract from solving the real problems, or even finding what they are, or is it a useful way to attract attention to the story and force the authorities to act?

that's just up the road from me.

its worrying and i don't think its a cult, just the way the country is heading, very little employment high cost of living. a lot of people do not see an end to this and it even gets me down at times, I'm comfortably employed but i cannot afford to buy a house down here without silly amounts of debt, and there is a credit crash looming here.

but seriously i just cannot fathom the problems at all. Bridgend is one of the nicer parts within a golden triangle (an area of three prosperous towns, in this case, Cardiff, Bridgend and Newport) and i just never understood suicide at all.

i lost a good friend 3 years back and i just still cant fathom how anyone would comit suicide, its just not in my nature and i cannot empathise with that urge

Might be that police is still investigating and looking for that, let's call him , "clever" controling mind. It might be that it's very deeper than it is and that "clever" mind is actualy influencal person on a high position and it's somehow disturbing investigation.

We might never know but.....

Did you heard about 100 monkeys project?

Couple monkeys in one colony on one island was fed with sweet potatoes to see if they likeit. No monkey wanted it untill younger apes came and washed the dirty potatoes and realised that they actualy are tasty and so they ate them...

In the time around 98 from 100 monkeys were eating sweet potatoes. Now, the strange thing isn't that they ate potatoes but that when that happend they realised that monkeys on the land away from island started washing potatoes and eating them as well. Without anyone forcing them to do so.
Monkeys on island were forced to eat potatoes since they other food suply was lowered.

Might be just an evil mind's experiment :)

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Originally Posted by OliX

Did you heard about 100 monkeys project?

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It's a legend created by Ken Keyes to illustrate a sociological point about tipping points in the acceptance of new ideas - it never actually happened but the point about a non-linear expansion of social trends is perfectly valid. Although the theory of unconnected clusters has been proposed for humans many times, given the hundreds of possible ways information can flow between populations it's impossible to show it's ever happened.

If you want strange animal behavior, try the famous Rolling Sheep of Marsden Moor

haha... that was funny :)

I didn't knew that was a legend and that it actualy never happened. I need to read more :)

I suppose the biggest problem that I have is that trustworthy news is often boring. Strong and thorough investigations are plodding and meticulous – these are not sensational things. Facts. Designs. Ruthless theories. All very mundane and would leave most T.V. viewers drooling at their desks if they were subjected to the true minutiae of a study.

Sure. Blame a cult. Except first provide substantial enough evidence to make the theory of a cult compelling. No evidence, no cookie.

Tabloids are entertaining because they’re sensational, shocking, and untrustworthy.

I see from a great deal of these articles that the press does seem to have an angle or at least an agenda. These suicides are being dubbed “copycats.” Did all of these people hang themselves? Write the same suicide note? All being teenagers/young-people who use social-networking sites is hardly compelling in any sane sense (like they all read comics [but not the same comic] or they all listen to rock & roll [but not the same band.])

I think actual problem or not, someone in the press has an agenda and is going the route of scapegoating the current “social bugaboo.”:angel-smi

Wild guessing to atract the readers? Might be....

Anyway the fact that suicide rate is growing in one particular area is a fact. Reason? I don't know but I have my wild guesses too.
What can we do? Nothing than just feel sorry and analize it as deep as our imagination is alowing us...

I think it has to do with the awarenes of those kids. Due to higly put up standards that's coming in to every aspect of their lifes they don't see how to put up with competition and such. Let's asume that they are very emotional and aware of their surounding. These kids tend to have very artistic soul. Age of romantism led to many suicides that wasn't so often before it.

If we would go deeper and deeper into matter then we would come to our educational system and I would be forced to curse how wrong it is.

if it really was a cult, the cult would have let it be known, a lot of ego involved with the cult thing

but the suicide thing, the people up north here on the reservations have a pretty high suicide rate too, dunno....boredom maybe?

interesting world

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Originally Posted by Amerist

I see from a great deal of these articles that the press does seem to have an angle or at least an agenda.

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In these types of case the 'agenda' is often a press-vs-Web thing. The offline media loves to portray the Web, especially online communities, as some dark force of evil that we all fail to see the terror in, so it's the job of the good old newspapers to save us from ourselves. We see it in stories about school shootings, drug abuse and anything where there's a hint of "young people agreeing on stuff". I'm not saying the online world is peachy, but the press has an obvious vested interest in painting itself as "defender of the normal world". Editors watched The Village and took copious notes.

In the case in question the argument being made my many of the papers and TV news channels is that the suicides were driven by a desire to be famous - you kill yourself and people make you a memorial page on MySp or whatever, where you can finally (pun intended) get your 15 minutes of fame. One or two isolated cases I could accept, but a roomful from the same town doesn't make sense unless there's a reason people in that specific location all have the same psychological aberration. IMO there are 14 cases and 14 entirely different causes, but that wouldn't be newsworthy.

someone mentioned something the other day.

water supply? I don't know what the water is like state side but there's a host of stuff added to the water over here like fluoride and other things over here and as each town in Wales more or less has its own resovior (Spelling? English was never a good subject with me) could it be the levels of something being to high. I've had a problem where I am now with the chlorine content in the water has been foul, everything that's drunk here goes through one of those nifty filter jugs because of it