Why I'm Building a Creative Cult

Individualism is still a new concept to humans. It doesn’t feel like it, but only because we can’t imagine our modern lives without it. The reality is, for most of human history, you were defined by your family first, and yourself second (if at all).

Strangely terrifying and humbling at the same time, right?

History lesson (and, please note, this whole post was inspired by this Yancey Strickler essay from a few years ago, and then his excellent Jackson Dahl/Dialectic podcast interview):

Around 1000 AD the Catholic Church made it illegal to marry your cousin. Up to this point, families of any and all levels of influence loved the cousin marrying option because it consolidated and extended family power. All that Game of Thrones stuff - you can see how and why it makes sense.

So the Church breaks up these power structures and of course it has an unpredictably spiraling impact. Within a century you had an explosion of trade posts turned to proper cities, complete with guilds and universities. For the first time ever, people had to find new communities and opportunities outside of blood ties.

This is the greatest disruption in our understanding of the modern self.

Until… now?

The internet, and specifically social media + smart phones, might be the biggest news since the Pope said kissing cousins is not longer kind of clever (yes, that’s a Q-Tip reference).

Humans made the jump from “Who am I” to “Who ALL am I” relatively quickly. Online, even if you don’t know what a finsta is, it’s easy to fragment into multiple identities. It’s so easy you can do it without even knowing you’re doing it. The amount of people who know me for one domain that I operate in - it never ceases to amaze me. I have financial planning clients who don’t know I’m online (even if I tell them) and people who find me online who don’t even know I’m a financial planner. It’s weird how it works.

No matter what domain you’re in, the truth is right there staring back at you. Classic individualism peaked when we became isolated, shrink-wrapped, mall and credit card trained consumers. But the internet changed everything - suddenly we could be multiple people across multiple platforms, from anywhere in the world.

The younger you are, the worse it feels too. Which is exactly why I didn’t consciously plan this when I named my site “Cultish Creative” (shoutout to Amy Mertz who helped me triangulate on the name). I did know about punk rock economics. I knew about what it meant to grow up and around a scene, and why that could feel bigger, and better, and more productive than scaling something to take over the world.

The old religions were built for clan-based societies. What worked for the old gods doesn’t work for the new/modern gods. Post-individuals need to find communities around shared interests and identities, instead of geographies, bloodlines. The internet helps meet these needs with small, intentional groups of all sorts available. I get it’s weird to call them cults, but that’s what they are.

When I say cults, I’m not talking about the scary, controlling cults of the past. I’m directly referring to the intentional micro-communities built around shared aesthetics, values, or obsessions. Dischord Records collectors on Discord servers, creative collectives in virtual art spaces, niche Twitter communities meeting up in the comments across a handful of accounts - these are the places where one specific part of you gets to fully exist and connect.

Cultish Creative was named to embody all of that. It’s cult-ish because yeah, I know all about David Koresh and Jonestown. And it’s creative because I love creative practitioners for their desire, if not their necessity, to form micro-tribes around their shared values and aesthetics.

It’s ok to rebel. It’s ok to remember it’s punk to NOT make something for everyone. It’s important to remember how it’s punk to NOT scale.

It’s punk and underground and alternative - all the words I grew up obsessing over before I could share it online - to only serve specific identities within the people who show up.

Not to exclude everyone in a negative or shameful way, but to make sure the people who want to come in feel extra special, and that extra powerful sense of belonging. This is the present, and it’s very much the future. We are all seeking specialized communities for our especially segmented selves, and it’s a mind-bender to accept it and move forward.

Just like the Church’s cousin ban accidentally created modern society, the internet is accidentally creating a post-individual society. The question isn’t whether we need community (we do), but what kind of communities will crop up to serve our new realities.

What are you waiting for - go join one, or create one, or celebrate one you found and find fascinating. Don’t be fixated on the church and the old gods when the new cults and the new gods have a new role to play too.

The old institutions were built for people who lived in one place, with one family, as one self. That world is gone. The future belongs to those brave enough to build small, weird, wonderful communities for our fragmented selves.

Go find your people and make that future.

PS. Where my Buddies at???