Stardate 20030326.1614

(Captain's log): A lot of organizations put new members through some sort of initiation ceremony. Fraternities are typical; candidates are forced through some sort of ritual, and it's quite common for it to include at least one episode which is either uncomfortable or unpleasant or deeply embarrassing, or potentially so if you screw up while doing it.

There have been studies about this kind of thing, and what was learned was that members of such groups tend to be more loyal and more dedicated when there is that kind of ritual than they will be without it, and are more likely to remain loyal for the rest of their lives. And if the group has some sort of agenda, they're more likely to adopt that agenda as their own, and to maintain and promote the group and help it to work to achieve its goal.

Such things appear many places in human culture. It applies to various rites of passage, such as adulthood ceremonies (e.g. bar mitzvah, or adolescent circumcision ceremonies in many places around the world). Not only do such ceremonies represent a clean dividing line between "child" and "adult", but they also tend to make each kid bond to the group, and help in promoting group cohesiveness.

By the same token it also tends to induce group chauvinism. If the group is important, and if those in the group are superior because they're members, then it means everyone outside who is not a member is inferior. And you often encounter a kind of smugness about membership, or varying degrees of outright hostility towards non-members, to a great extent as a function of the group culture and the kind and amount of ceremonial suffering which is involved in joining it.

Groups like the Masons take this to particularly great lengths. There are varying degrees of membership; an entire ladder, in fact, with dozens of rungs.

Each step up the ladder involves a new initiation ceremony, and though the precise details of them are secret (or at least supposed to be, though some have been leaked) they all involve exactly this kind of embarrassing or uncomfortable public display by the candidate in front of the rest of the membership, or in front of those of higher rank who themselves have already gone through it.

At a certain point a member becomes eligible for the "Shrine" and if accepted becomes a "Shrine Mason" (or Shriner), which opens up an entirely new ladder to climb with many further steps of rank. The Shrine recruits from the outer lodge, and its members are seen as being even more special than normal Masons, by themselves and by non-Shrine Masons.

No one really knows for sure why this makes people more loyal to the group, though there's speculation. One idea is that it leads to a period of rationalization: Yes, I did just go through something awful and demeaning but it was worth it because membership in the group is even more important. Therefore the person will assign offsetting value to the group proportional to the degree of unpleasantness they went through to join it or advance within it. Whether that's why it works, it's beyond dispute that it actually does. And this same kind of thing also tends to show up in cults.

And it's also the case that lesser parts of the group culture can enhance this on an ongoing basis. Even something as trivial as having all members wear some sort of silly hat during all group meetings will work to this end. Yes, this fez makes me look like a moron, but it's worth it because it helps me be accepted in this group that I think is particularly important. Thus group meetings as such come to be valued in direct proportion to the silliness of the display.

In cases where this kind of overt display of membership isn't just in secret (i.e. only at lodge meetings) but actually becomes a permanent part of the lifestyle, it works even more strongly.

For example, if a given group always goes around in public wearing strange robes and with most of their hair shaved and a strange braided pigtail, they tend to get strange looks from others, and quite often are avoided or treated with disdain. In some members this will eventually cause them to give up and leave, but it's more common for them to bond more closely to the group because of this. And disdain is given for disdain received; they hate us because they know we're better than they are.

And it may be that the reason they are more likely to remain loyal to the group is that if they do leave, they cease to have the ability to rationalize that all the stupid and painful things they did were worthwhile.

The same kind of thing is at work in certain fringe extremist Christian sects whose members have a predilection for standing on boxes at busy street corners accusing everyone who comes by of being a sinner, and preaching at the top of their lungs about how the end of the world is near. This is seen by members of such groups as being a moral duty, but on a lower level it also has the same bonding effect as fraternity initiation ceremonies. As a practical matter it has negligible chance of recruiting new members or of swaying the public, but it is still an important part of maintaining the group by keeping its own members loyal and subservient.

Many kinds of groups have processes and policies which cause their members to make these same kinds of public displays, which cause them to be disdained by those around them, and which have the effect of causing their members to bond more closely to the organization and its goal. Whether this is deliberate for a