
Surviving Jonestown - danso
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/11/10/jonestown-massacre-first-person-speier-ryan-jones-222222
======
skrebbel
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 an American, I first learned about Jonestown pretty recently, but I
keep returning to sources about it and I simply can't comprehend it. What
causes people do this? Why did _Jones_ do this? How can someone like that
enjoy political support? Does anything like this still happen? Why? Where?

The author of this article takes care to point out that it was mass murder,
not mass suicide. I "understand" mass murder for personal gain, or because of
blind racism, or out of desperation (eg access to food), or as defense against
(perceived) threats. But what would cause one to murder their own community
and then themselves? What's in it for, well, anyone? I mean, American high
school shootings, 9-11, or Anders Breivik's terror attack make a lot more
"sense" to me than the Jonestown story.

Does anyone here, maybe someone older than me, understand this? What was the
world like in that time, that something could come to this?

~~~
ChuckMcM
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.

~~~
gedy
I think it's more that _every_ group tends to make some other group "the
other" or the out-group. The current US progressive/leftist's out-group are
conservatives/Republicans.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I completely agree with your statement. Every group layers its members in a
self sustaining belief system that calls on it to reject other groups and be
loyal to the 'home' group. Whether it is democrats vilifying republicans,
republicans vilifying democrats, white supremacists vilifying non-whites, poor
vilifying the rich, the christians vilifying the muslems, Etc. It goes on and
on and on.

I hope (clearly over optimistically :-) that once people can understand the
mechanism by which they are manipulated they can become a bit more critical
about what they choose to believe and how they come to that belief. Every time
I've found myself in what seems like an irreconcilable difference of opinion,
when we've been able to break that down into what we believe and why, we can
see exactly why we disagree.

I find it helps me to be more empathic to different points of view. Some
people find it destabilizing and threatening clearly.

~~~
Retric
That is an oversimplification to the point of absurdity. People generally
think in terms of us, bystanders, or enemy. Democrats and Republicans both
view Canada as a mostly neutral party.

Further, groups can shift between those states based on context. What’s going
on when propaganda vilifies a group is context is being assumed.

~~~
ChuckMcM
What part of 'that' is an oversimplification?

Consider the case of Edgar Welch, father of two[1]. On one fateful day in
2016, Edgar drove to Washington DC _to save children_ who were being exploited
at the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria. Who wouldn't try to save innocent children
from an abusive situation when authorities refuse to act? Anyone who is a
parent with a sense of duty, that is who. And yet for Edgar, his actions which
made perfect sense, _given what he believed to be true_ , turned out to be not
only unwarranted but dangerous to patrons at the restaurant.

The only difference about Edgar, who up until then was just an average
community member in an average community, was that he _believed_ something
that wasn't actually true. Even Edgar realized that his beliefs were
misplaced, once it was clear there was no way the restaurant could have been
participating in the activity he believed was going on there.

Your comment talks about groups, but I was talking about individuals. And the
original comment was how could individuals at Jonestown kill their own
children?

My assertion, and Edgar is but one example, all of Jim Jones' congregation is
another, is that if you can make an individual believe something, you can
cause them to act against their own self interest, even to the point of
murder. This is true even when that person is otherwise free of mental illness
or emotional disorders.

I don't see the over simplification aspect. Manipulating people through there
beliefs is something hypnotists do every day, whether it is to quit smoking or
to cluck like a chicken at a Las Vegas show it is a well understood part of
human nature.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/business/media/comet-
ping...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/business/media/comet-ping-pong-
pizza-shooting-fake-news-consequences.html)

~~~
Retric
> What part of that is an over simplification?

Because it’s really not about people it’s about aspects of people.

Let’s say Sam is a Packers fan. Now Bob is a member of the Packers football
team so on Sunday their part of the same in group.

But, on Election Day Sam is a Dem and Bob a Republican so the must fight.

But their both Americans who are part of the army reserve, so they are
brothers in arms willing to risk their lives for each other.

But, they are part of different faiths, and ...

So, this vilification is about context. The football team you need to beat
today, may need to beat some other team next week to get you into the playoffs
etc etc.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Got it. We are talking about different things.

In your example with Sam and Bob, I see two people who are in different groups
and can have identical (or highly coherent) belief systems.

If you want to split Sam and Bob up so that they won't be friends any more and
they will hate each other, you do that by twisting their beliefs.

First one might suggest that members of Sam's faith, while in the military,
were kept from the riskest parts of combat because the military. Then you
convince Bob that anyone who plays football is just asking for CTE and that
any friend you have is going to turn into a raging monster one of these days,
and then you convince Sam, that Bob and others in his religous sect are
perverting American politics to keep people like Sam from achieving similar
level of success. And you convince Bob that it is Sam "and people like him"
who are responsible for the cost of getting a new car or the reason jobs have
left the area.

The next thing you know, Sam and Bob hate each other.

My point is that this can be done by carefully setting up what Sam and Bob
believe, regardless of what groups they belong to. There are examples all
around us today of families that have gone from groups of like minded people
to separate camps, lifelong friends that one can no longer talk to.

This is Propaganda, this is Brain Washing, this is the corruption of a group
through alternative belief systems.

And its the topic at hand, "Surviving Jonestown".

------
Waterluvian
I feel like the least I can do to respect the memories of those murdered is
to, as Speier suggests, banish "drink the koolaid" from my lexicon. Used far
too much in tech culture and simply isn't necessary.

~~~
maxxxxx
I bet most people have no clue where this is coming from. It's another weird
thing like "skinning the cat".

~~~
NeedMoreTea
I'd always assumed it came from kool aid being some terrible cheap drink mix
that needed you to hold your nose to tolerate. Only heard of Jonestown and it
being the origin quite recently.

More than one way to skin a cat has more jokey roots, that it's a shame
haven't survived, becoming just the bland intro we now use without the
punchline.

~~~
owlninja
Kool-Aid isn't that bad...

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Never seen it sold anywhere so haven't ever tried it. Only ever seen it on US
tv and movies. :)

------
neonate
I was surprised to learn that Harvey Milk was one of Jones' strongest
supporters. The article touches on this but doesn't go into it. I ran across
it in a different article, which is a bit strident, but it's still interesting
to read a different side of the story:

[https://home.isi.org/jim-jones-harvey-milk](https://home.isi.org/jim-jones-
harvey-milk)

Milk was assassinated only 9 days after the massacre.

------
docSpock
For people wondering why people in cults do appearingly 'abnormal' things,
there's science to this madness.

One is escalation of deviant behavior. Which means over long periods of time
behavior slowly becomes deviant after past behaviors become normalized.

So no, people dont just join a cult on day 1 and on day 2 they kill
themselves. It's a slow ramp up. It might start with singing and songs, or
lectures about the after life. It might then escalate to giving everything up
to the leader. Like money, possessions, etc. It then might lead to abnormal
norms like dressing up and or acting out sexual fantasies that at first seemed
a little strange but over time normalizes. By the end of a 3 year run you can
have all kinds of horrific acts that appear completely normal to people on the
inside but horrible to outsiders because we didnt come along for the ride.

I can dig up my college notes and books if anyone is interested.

------
ru999gol
I understood his point to be, to reject the notion that it was really a mass
suicide, but instead he argues it was a mass murder with only a minority
willingly committing suicide. Its obviously an understandable viewpoint, the
idea that of course you can't possibly make hundreds of people kill themselves
willingly, that this would be impossible, but to me it seems more like a
denial of human nature that is actually unhelpful in preventing those types of
atrocities in the future. Its much more beneficial to try to understand how
far the human mind can be twisted by blind faith, for even good people to do
incredibly horrific things.

(Of course its proven that there was murder involved, but I still think we
should recognize it as the mass suicide it was).

~~~
jmcgough
It isn't wishful thinking from Speier; there are a number of survivors who can
attest that this is what happened. And how would many of them actually know
that they were drinking poison, when there were several rehearsals beforehand
that jones explained as tests of faith?

~~~
dinglejungle
There's an audio recording of the incident from nearly start to finish[1]. If
you listen to it, it's pretty clear people were aware of what was happening
and only a minority were against it.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Peoples_Temple_Cult_Death...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Peoples_Temple_Cult_Death_Tape_Q042.ogg)

------
wj
One of my favorite talks of Stanford's Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series
is by the author of this article:

[https://ecorner.stanford.edu/podcast/overcoming-adversity-
an...](https://ecorner.stanford.edu/podcast/overcoming-adversity-and-taking-
risks/)

------
davemp
Jonestown and the like are such tragic events. I feel like it’s oddly
appropriate to honor them in the same way I choose to honor the collective
memory of veterans. Remebering them as a group of individuals with their own
convictions rational or irrational, weak or strong, citizen or foreign.
Without attempting to prescribe morals onto any of them in hubris. I honor the
value of their lives spent, by blindly stumbling in a slightly less costly
trajectory towards a maxima. Knowing the tools I use to give me hope in this
journey—liberty and justice—were won with a terrifying cost.

------
tomhoward
The true-crime podcast Casefile recently released a three-part story on
Jonestown.

I've watched a few documentaries and read a few articles about Jonestown, but
the Casefile story was by far the best I've come across, because it's the
first that properly conveys that the event was really not a mass suicide, but
rather a mass murder for the vast majority of victims.

[https://casefilepodcast.com/case-60-jonestown-
part-1/](https://casefilepodcast.com/case-60-jonestown-part-1/)

------
sarabad2021
Just heard a very relevant Podcast called Cultish that digs into the thinking,
teaching, strategies, and consequences behind a lot of these cults. The latest
episode explores Jim Jones and Jamestown.

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/cultish/id1440854210](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/cultish/id1440854210)

