The average-of-five-people aphorism can be weaponized to isolate a follower from critics

Evidence

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with,” my mentor used to preach. Because I wanted to be special, successful and at a high spiritual level, I greatly reduced contact with my friends and family. They didn’t seem to understand me, found only criticism of my mentor and my courses with her, I didn’t even want to listen to that anymore. “They pull you into their low frequencies,” she said. — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 470

Categorization

• XREF: Reverses the benign-sounding self-help maxim, showing how isolation tactics borrow its logic — echoes cult-control mechanisms familiar from the reader’s media-analysis work.