Ganesha Kaleidoscope
Ganesha, Remover of Obstacles
Ganesha in Blue
Lessons From Jim Jones-town
An extreme example of religion hijacking the deep needs of humans
Led by evangelist Jim Jones, nine hundred American people performed mass suicide by drinking cyanide laced kool aide, on November 18, 1978, in the jungle of Guyana.
How can this happen??? I know that people are crazy, but this boggles the mind. Women gave their babies poison, and then took their own dose. NINE HUNDRED.
An extreme example of religion hijacking humanity's deepest needs. An example of people who were searching for answers, community, spiritual elation. People who wanted to know how to do the right thing. People who wanted to be told how to do right. They wanted a saintly leader. Jim Jones hooked into these needs and led them to mass suicide.
Recently I watched the documentary, "American Experience: Jones-town The Life and Death of Peoples Temple", PBS. I ordered the video from Netflicks because I was curious as to why 900 people would die on the command of a religious leader. This continues my artistic research into, The Persistence of Worship. I watched the video and saw that it had significance for my subject, so I watched it again and wrote notes.
Mothers gave their babies the poison, watched them die, and then took their own lethal kool aide. Real life, worse than a horror movie. How can this happen? What does this tell us about being a human? For on some level we are all mostly alike, sharing the same DNA, the same cerebral hills and valleys. We may say, "Oh, I would never do that." But we do not know what we would do in extreme circumstances. Only six of the congregation escaped into the jungle.
Yes, I am sure that we all consider ourselves more mentally healthy than the pitiful followers of a psychopathic preacher.
And, I guess, most of us are more healthy. People who are vulnerable to cult behavior do not have a strong and workable belief system, so they welcome a charismatic, authoritarian father figure, to tell them what to believe and what to do. They want their life to have meaning.
I have heard that some people have good parents.
That is what I heard, some people have good parents. But, I have come to think that parenting is impossible to get perfectly right. There are to many factors involved in life on earth for anyone to get it exactly right. Really, we just dont know what to do. We are confused and ignorant and wonderfully wise.
Denial, better known as positive thinking, does help. It is better not to think about it to much. It is better to go rake the leaves. I think that I will make a pot of jambalaya. Chicken and sausage with jasmine rice.
Most of us are still searching for perfect parental love. Searching for the person who will celebrate our faults. We tend to project our image of the perfect father onto preachers and Gods, (celebrities and royalty).. We see the longing movies of our minds on the screen of a person who demonstrates a few of the characteristics for which we are searching.
The human condition, the conundrum is that we know so much, but we are unable to answer the biggest questions. We have a need to know. Jim Jones hooked into deep basic needs, just as any religion does.
We want control, but life can knock us down with surprising disasters. We are buffeted by Biblical intensity weather. Tomorrow is uncertain. You, I, us, our life could be wiped out on the road this afternoon. Any of us or our loved ones could disappear forever due to a very small blood clot. We can loose our jobs. The list of blows is endless. Religions offer the impression that people may pray to God, perform rituals, and have some control and protection.
How much of our activity is exerted in order to distract us from these hard, mostly denied truths? We manage to live. Even to thrive. In spite of our ignorance. Denial helps.
Loving and creating is the best revenge.
Here is what Wikipedia writes about the psychology of cult followers:
Under Langone's deliberative model, people are said to join cults
primarily because of how they view a particular group. Langone notes
that this view is most favored among sociologists and religious
scholars. Under the "psychodynamic model", popular with some mental
health professionals, individuals choose to join for fulfillment of
subconscious psychological needs. Finally, the "thought reform model"
states that people do not join because of their own psychological needs,
but because of the group's influence through forms of psychological manipulation.
Langone claims that those mental health experts who have more direct
experience with large numbers of cultists tend to favor this latter view
At the same time, she adds, labeling a group a "cult" makes people feel
safe, because the "violence associated with religion is split off from
conventional religions, projected onto others, and imagined to involve
only aberrant groups."[49]
This fails to take into account that child abuse, sexual abuse,
financial extortion and warfare have also been committed by believers of
mainstream religions, but the pejorative "cult" stereotype makes it
easier to avoid confronting this uncomfortable fact.
Yea, you may die this afternoon. No, I cannot tell you, no one can tell you, what the fug you should do. No one can tell you, they may give you hints, but really no one knows. Bad shit happens all the time. But, many wonderful things can also happen. Other people give us the gifts of their love and attention. We often obtain our goals. I did not say that it is all bad. It is crazy, wonderful, sucky bad, delicious good, all mixed together. The agony and the ecstasy, so intertwined, so very
twisted.
