8 ms·

I still can't imagine or comprehend what kind of mental illness, evil coercion, or both, is needed for a mother to murder her own 1 year old child. Not being a

• maxxxxx 8y ago
  I think the story is always about a charismatic leader whose followers get so dependent that they can't even imagine living without that person. Then when the leader's ambitions don't work out the leader decides it's better not to live and the followers will kill themselves. Some of Hitler's followers killed themselves (and their children like Goebbels), people in Waco didn't try to escape. It's a weird psychology but I think it has happened many times in history.
  • crispyporkbites 8y ago
    They see their followers as an extension of themselves, so when they die, their followers die too.
  • jacobush 8y ago
    Waco has its own layer of weird to it - people also didn't escape because doing so could get you strafed by the FBI.
  • dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    Hitlers followers didn't want to be captured by the Russians.
    • stcredzero 8y ago
      The Soviet followers didn't want to be exterminated by the Nazis, and the rhetoric that the Nazis were waging a war of extermination happened to be true in that instance.
• altairiumblue 8y ago
  Last Podcast on the Left has a multi-part episode on Jonestown - it shows how his ego goes unchecked even from the beginning of his life and how he slowly prepares the people in his cult to take their own lives one day. Definitely worth a listen if you find this interesting.
  • SimplePeople 8y ago
    For those interested: https://soundcloud.com/lastpodcastontheleft/episode-300-jonestown-part-i https://soundcloud.com/lastpodcastontheleft/episode-300-jone... I'd note that it's very intense, but worth the six hours. It really tries to get at the underlying thinking behind those involved in this kind of thing.
    • nyolfen 8y ago
      if you can put up with those guys for six hours you’re a stronger man than i
• ChuckMcM 8y ago
  Understanding that question "How could this happen?" is something that will help you understand more about the world, and may change your opinion of people whom you think are crazy. The key is that humans act on their beliefs. Which is to say if you believe X, then the action required for situation Y is Q. Rather than be abstract about it though lets put wrap some reality around it. If you believe your house will be destroyed in the event of a hurricane, then the action required when it is threatened is to evacuate. Conversely, if you believe your house will survive a hurricane, then the action required when it is threatened is the shelter in place. Two people, each holding an opposite belief about the threat to the house, will come to two very different conclusions. Now if you layer in a belief about evacuation, where one believes that people are killed when they try to evacuate with everyone else, and one who believes that people who evacuate survive these disasters. You can set up a perfect conflict between these two people. Person A, thinks both their their home will survive and that evacuation will kill you. Person B, thinks that the house will be destroyed and that evacuation will save you. Here is the kicker, if you can put the right sets of beliefs into a person you can make them do anything you want, even when it is against their own self interest. We call it things like brain washing or propaganda or "fake news" but it is all the same stuff. It is possible to define a set of beliefs for you where you think that killing yourself and your children is the correct (or even only) choice available to you. What is worse, deprogramming people is super hard. They have these beliefs, they have been reinforced by some mechanism, and part of that reinforcement are a layer of beliefs that prevent alternate ideas from seeping in. Immigration is a canonical example. Characterize immigrants as murderers, thieves, and rapists, show an imminent threat of "invaders", and convince people that the other side wants to just let these people waltz into the country without restriction. The beliefs are all carefully constructed to interlock such that people who have adopted those beliefs will take action to insure the current ruling party is kept in power in order to keep them safe. The Nazis used this, Stalin did too, the Chinese, and now the Republican Party have all adopted this technique of constructing a belief system around immigration and "the other" that incentivizes people to act against their self interest (or perhaps more accurately to convince them their self interest is served by acting in the way the party wants them to act.) Jim Jones did this by convincing people that he was a prophet and in touch with God. That he had a clearer view of what was happening in the spiritual world, and could advise people how to act in order to maximize their success in the afterlife. They believed that so strongly that when he told them they needed to die to move on, they considered that a reasonable next step. Edit: One of the more interesting aspects of Jim Jones' ministry for me was how people responded when faced with the reality that they were in a cult. There is an interview of some members from one of the documentaries where the members get angry at the interviewer who is pointing out inconsistencies and risks. Rather than challenge the beliefs with the source, they lashed out at some poor reporter who was pointing things out to them. No one thought to ask these folks if they would rather feel foolish at having believed something that wasn't true, or be dead. Of course at the time they didn't realize their beliefs would get them killed exactly. In my mind that is a real tragedy, one warped leader leading all of these people to a place where their energy, and contribution served only a twisted need for loyalty and power.
• aswanson 8y ago
  One thing jones promised was an idealistic prejudice free vision of society. Keep in mind many of his victims were poor black elderly people who had likely seen the harshest era of jim crow racism. They were old in the 1970s meaning that some had likely experienced racial terrorism & seen lynchings & kkk rallies. A white man preaching equality and justice to such an oppressed people would seem messianic.
  • watwut 8y ago
    Got a source on that? (Like to read detailed history of events and this sounds interesting.)
    • aswanson 8y ago
      Which? Jim Jones' racial messages or the Jim crow era?
• Amezarak 8y ago
  I think the best thing to do is listen to Jones' own words, and look at their ideology, rather than ascribing it to more abstract psychology notions. Jones believed, or at least said he believed, that because of the shooting of the Congressman (which he claimed he had no control over), they were all doomed. The US government was going to kill them. I apologize for the source (though I can verify it is accurate, having listened to the recording), but here's the transcript of the tape of Jones telling them they needed to die: http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/The_Jonestown_Tape http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/The_Jonestown_Tape > So my opinion is that you be kind to children and be kind to seniors and take the potion like they used to take in ancient Greece and step over quietly because we are not committing suicide. It's a revolutionary act. We can't go back; they won't leave us alone. They're now going back to tell more lies, which means more congressmen. And there's no way, no way we can survive. > JONES: Don't be afraid to die. You'll see, there'll be a few people land out here. They'll torture some of our children here. They'll torture our people. They'll torture our seniors. We cannot have this. Are you going to separate yourself from whoever shot the congressman? I don't know who shot him. Essentially, Jones believed their (in his mind) communist, multiracial utopia was doomed to fiery death the moment his people shot Leo Ryan. The mass suicide (or murder, if you prefer) was in his mind, and in the minds of many of his followers, a protest against the racist capitalists.
  • hnmonkey 8y ago
    Just so you know... creepypasta is fiction and they've even had to come out and say so multiple times. So whatever recording you listened to is probably also fiction...
    • Amezarak 8y ago
      I know creepypasta is fiction, that's why I apologized for the source. But the transcript there is real, and nothing else came up on a quick google. The recording is legitimate. Here it is on archive.org, where I listened to it: https://archive.org/details/ptc1978-11-18.flac16 https://archive.org/details/ptc1978-11-18.flac16 Following references on Wikipedia (which would have been a better way for me to find a reference in the first place), here's a site on SDSU with the tape and several transcripts, one by the FBI: https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=29084 https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=29084
• coffeeboy27 8y ago
  If you just heard of Jonestown then I'm guessing you might not have heard of Heavens Gate either https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s_Gate_(religious_group) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s_Gate_(religious_gro...
• deleted 8y ago
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• 0x8BADF00D 8y ago
  Never underestimate the power of charisma and persuasiveness. Just look at Osho and other cult leaders. They find people that have nothing to lose, a void, and fill it with charismatic lies. That’s what makes these individuals truly sick and twisted.
  • rdtsc 8y ago
    Indeed. I listened to some of the tape recordings of him and has what I call a hypnotic voice. He is spewing crazy gibberish but I can see how it sounds appealing and pleasant at the same time.
  • everdev 8y ago
    Another take is that if you speak in general enough terms, people will fill in the blanks with what they want to hear. You see this in politics a lot too.
• mturmon 8y ago
  One worthwhile vantage point from which to understand the foul and self-serving element of the 1960s in California is Joan Didion’s essay collection The White Album, published 1979. And in particular the title essay, which deals partly with the Manson cult. It is a fascinating book, and she is such a singular writer, with a different and unique viewpoint of the 60s (being older than the hippies and not temperamentally suited to an optimistic worldview anyway), that it is completely worth your time. Another reference point, come to think of it, is T.C. Boyle’s novel Drop City, which also features an idealistic commune that starts out in California and relocates (kids and all) to a remote place once the Man catches up to them. It also does not end well. (Edited to add: not knocking the 60s as a whole, or optimism, or hippies, each of which has/have their place in my heart.)
  • stcredzero 8y ago
    I remember an essay about how, every generation in the modern era, it seems like there's a new crop of avant-gard writers who think they should shake things up and abandon the rules of narrative, or some such. These movements turn out to produce "new and forward thinking" writing that eerily resembles the attempt of the previous generation. We know from history and even archaeological records, that there have been people trying to start society anew with some idealistic insight or inspiration for literally thousands of years. Most of those attempts resemble each other. Most of them fail within a few generations, and most well inside one. That's not to say that there isn't some kind of progress. However, even the examples of progress can be characterized with common attributes. Often, in the case of successes, there is often an economic revolution based on technology. There is often some kind of communalism involved, which fails to scale, resulting in some form of hierarchy and bureaucracy. There is almost always some kind of ideology involved as well.
    • village-idiot 8y ago
      People never change.
      • stcredzero 8y ago
• mcshicks 8y ago
  I am old enough to remember it. I guess I would have been 13. It was a very big deal at the time. Not like 911, but like the Oklahoma city bombing. I think the comparison at the time was really to like Manson. Same kind of crazy person, but able to convince more people. There was a huge story about it in time magazine I remember reading. My general sense is nowadays while it's possible, it's harder to isolate people like that (i.e. cell phones, email), but there are still crazy things like the NXIVM thing. Of course its hard to tell if what's change is not world, because I'm 53 now and not 13. So my sense is now that it's probably easier for someone to get word out that they want out and are afraid. Really the part of article that was interesting to me was the part about the congressman, and the things he did before. That's the kind of thing I can't imagine happening now. I had completely forgotten that there was a congressman that had died.
  • Doxin 8y ago
    > it's harder to isolate people like that (i.e. cell phones, email) How is it harder to convince people to hand in their phones than it is to convince them to hand in their passports? (which happened in jonestown iirc)
• dinglejungle 8y ago
  I recommend listening to the audio recording of the incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Peoples_Temple_Cult_Death_Tape_Q042.ogg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Peoples_Temple_Cult_Death... It's disturbing, but it gives the best insight into the mindset of those involved.
• edna314 8y ago
  I think if history taught us anything then that the firm belief in absolute truths leads to such atrocities.
  • thyrsus 8y ago
    I firmly believe in the absolute truth of mathematics, but I do not propose to deal with mathematical errors with cruelty, unless suggesting a correction be deemed cruel. The pythagorean response to the demonstration of irrational numbers was both reprehensible and not mathematical. If your proof is wrong, the most cruel response I propose is to ignore it. My point is that there are some firm beliefs and some absolute truths that do not lead to atrocity.
    • edna314 8y ago
      > My point is that there are some firm beliefs and some absolute truths that do not lead to atrocity. I agree, but I have some concerns. First of all I would claim that the cruelty of your response to my wrong proof will depend on how much your life is affected by it. If your life depends on it you would pick any kind of cruelty in an act of self-defense. Then again, any such situation would be outside of the realm of mathematics, because for your life to be affected by mathematics it has to be applied to the real world. Mathematics doesn't tell you whether or not you can safely apply it to the real world. It just tells you: given a set of assumptions what you necessarily must conclude. In that sense I'm a bit hesitant to call what mathematics tells you 'absolute truths', because its statements are only true, given that the assumptions are true. Another truth I'm convinced of for example is that Snape killed Dumbledore and I'm also sure that believing in this truth won't lead to any atrocities, because it is clear that it doesn't relate to the real world. So, maybe I only have to update my statement to: Firm beliefs in absolute truths about the real world, lead to atrocities. Or would you have another counter example? I mean the examples for absolute truths about the real world which justify atrocities are practically endless (basically all religions, science, communism, capitalism ...). Still, of course there are versions of each one of these which wouldn't allow for atrocities, but they are mostly the less dogmatic ones.