why the "children of the watch" are NOT a cult
i'm going to start this off with stating my credentials in this conversation, though i wish i didn't have to. i was born into a cult and was a member for 17 years. ~i know what i'm talking about~
so in this we’re going to be talking about din as an established member, not as how initiation and recruitment, though that can be a whole other conversation.
one of the earliest parts of cult indoctrination, once the member is already recruited and pulled in, is the establishment of guilt. members of a cult are meant to feel guilt when they engage in certain activities that are not already approved of by leadership, or to feel guilt when they question their leadership. my personal experiences with this made me feel guilty for having friends outside of my cult, guilt for not being more open about being a member of my cult, and guilt for not attempting to invite my outsider friends into the cult.
CULTS WANT MORE MEMBERS CULTS DO NOT WANT TO LOSE MEMBERS
another very important aspect of a cult is the control of information to its members. a cult doesn’t want you to question what it’s doing, what it’s teaching you, the leadership doesn’t want you to interact with the outside world. you are not supposed to question your teaching, that’s where the guilt comes in. if you are questioning your teachings, you are encouraged to go to the leadership about it so they can tell you what to do and what to think.
isolation. alienation is very important to cults, it creates an “us vs them” mentality in it’s members. cult leadership will often tell their members about the worst of the outside world in order to keep them complacent, to make them think that the only place that is safe is within the bounds of the cult andi its members. isolation isn’t always extreme, obviously i’m not talking about literal isolation like jonestown, it can be as simple as a separation from friends or the expectancy that anything you own also belongs to the rest of the cult. you can be expected to give up anything you have the second your leadership asks it of you.
so how does this connect back to din and the children of the watch?
it is shown repeatedly throughout the show that din is not only allowed to, but he is expected to travel the galaxy without restriction. he is expected to learn more about other cultures and interact with whomever he pleases. an important example of this is in the tusken raiders, not only does he know their language, he knows their customs and culture. if he were part of a cult, and was so deeply indoctrinated, this never would have happened, he never would have been allowed to immerse himself is another culture without being expected to attempt to indoctrinate them in turn.
he has friends. he seems to have more friends outside of the covert then he does inside of it. not only that, but not once in the show has he ever attempted to bring them into the covert, nor does he show any guilt in having those friends and those connections. the isolation that we see from din is an isolation from both the rest of the galaxy AND his covert. at the beginning of the show, he obviously doesn’t have many friends even in the covert, he’s an anti-social mess and any isolation he may feel doesn’t come from his place in the covert but in his unaddressed trauma. that’s another post though.
the membership of the covert it few, and to leave is simple enough as letting another living being see your face though i personally think that din is still good because foundlings are the future and the safety of children goes above that. if you leave the covert, you leave. din’s creed is obviously very important to him and he lives by the code pretty strictly, but that does not automatically make it a cult.
there is credence in questioning why he doesn’t know more mandalorian history, but at the same time every mandalorian fraction is polarizing and many consider only their group to be true mandalorians, so it’s not all that surprising that he wasn’t taught/didn’t know more history, especially after the purge.
tldr: it’s not a cult. stop saying it is.
