It denotes a group that forms around a person who claims he or she has a special mission or knowledge, which will be shared with those who turn over most of their decision making to that self-appointed leader. Cults come in all sizes, form around any theme, and recruit persons of all ages and backgrounds. Not all cults are religious, as some people think. Their reasons for existing may concern religion, life-style, politics, or assorted philosophies. Not everyone who is approached by a cult recruiter joins, and of those who join, not all stay forever.
Cults vary in how much financial and political power they wield.
Some are local phenomena with only a dozen members. The cults' lure is, if you just come along, all will be fine, and everyone will live happily ever after. Down through time, people have written about such promised utopias, but they have also described their downsides, which might be called negative utopias. In 1949, George Orwell wrote about the negative utopia he feared would evolve, perhaps by 1984. Others before him, such as Daniel Defoe, Aldous Huxley, and Jack London, had also written about negative utopias in which political systems gradually curbed and eventually stifled people's most central capacities for reasoning creatively, scientifically, and compassionately.