In this page I give multiple answers to the question Is the Monastic Academy for the Preservation of Life on Earth (MAPLE) a cult? This question is nuanced because the word cult is nuanced.

Answer 1: MAPLE is not a cult, it is a monastery.

Monasteries often get confused with cults in the West because people here are familiar with cults and unfamiliar with monasteries, and monasteries are similar to cults.

Both monasteries and cults are:

• a culture within the culture
• secluded from the general culture
• with hierarchical power structures
• and with beliefs and practices different from the general culture

So what's the difference? The difference is that while a cult is harmful to the surrounding culture, a monastery is beneficial to the surrounding culture. (This is why many monasteries run public services such as schools, orphanages, and hospices.)

Answer 2: Cults are generally a good thing, and MAPLE is a particularly good cult.

The mainstream culture is destroying the biosphere. We desperately need alternative cultures. A cult is just an embryonic alternative culture. Therefore, we need many cults at this time, in the hopes that even one of them will be able to guide the mainstream culture in stopping its destruction of life on Earth.

Cults are judged severely for the harm they cause, but it would be hard to find a cult more harmful than the mainstream culture. MAPLE is not only less harmful than the mainstream culture, but it holds to a particularly high standard of ethical conduct.

Answer 3: The word cult is a pejorative term, so neither Yes nor No would be a true answer.

Cult is to community as bitch is to woman.

A woman who goes too far outside the gender norms is called a bitch by those who wish to enforce said gender norms. A community that goes too far outside the mainstream culture is called a cult in order to enforce the mainstream culture.

The norm-violating woman then has options: she can deny that she is a bitch by saying bitches are like this, but I am like that as we did in Answer 1; she can try to reclaim the slur and say hell yeah I'm a bitch and that's a good thing because of such-and-such as we did in Answer 2; or she can push back against the word itself as we are doing now in Answer 3.

Answers 1 and 2 may be expedient in certain contexts, but it is important to push back against the word itself. This is because both I am a bitch and I am not a bitch both carry the sexist and untrue presupposition that norm-violating women tend to fit a certain despicable stereotype.

And similarly, MAPLE is a cult and MAPLE is not a cult both carry the harmful and untrue presupposition that communities that go sufficiently far outside the mainstream culture tend to fit a certain despicable sterotype.

It is more honest to do away with messy terms like cult and if you want to discuss harm in a community, be specific and say what is harmful.