Jonestown Massacre

[KennyFuckinPowers]

Bit of a difficult one this, perhaps a bit odd to be bringing it up, but is anyone else familiar with this?

 

I have been watching People's Magazine Investigates : Cults, and holy fuck, been a bit of a hard pill to swallow  But still interesting all the same, I'm only early 30's and had never heard of this particular travesty, but wow, how can one man have so much power over as many people as that and talk them into doing what they did in the end??

 

 

[rocket_scientist]

I seen that documentary. Crazy shit. Nutters with elements of charisma attract no-hopers. People have to believe in something. The vast majority just make bad choices, religion sweeping up most of the most.

[RicoS321]

There was a good documentary about it on BBC4 (or Netflix?) a while back, might have been the same one. You can see the points where people begun to have their doubts but continued because they were so invested in the idea.

 

That said, our economic system is entirely based on belief. We're all (very much me, anyway) so heavily invested in it that we're pushing our entire species toward collapse just to serve that economy. There's no other reason for it other than the tenents of capitalism and we're all part of that religion and belief system. There's even a similar refrain to that of jonestown with the unevidenced assertion that through (and often suggested only through) capitalist technological development we will prevent disaster (not necessarily existential, but horrific nevertheless). How is us ignoring

systemic: species die off, pollution, water scarcity, resource depletion, massive energy use, soil depletion, carbon emissions, inefficiency, destruction of nature etc etc because of "jobs" and "the economy" different to the people following Jim Jones? We're all taking that pill, just a little more slowly, and it is entirely based on a belief system.

[rocket_scientist]

Excellent analogy and totally correct.

 

The sheeple voted in Blowjob and Trump. God *sic throws in a pandemic curveball and some white police shit and the fan gets hit. A crisis always reveals character. Given the continuous and worsening meltdowns by both governments - the current absurdities of Trump in Tulsa and Handcock lying about Apple - humanity has never had a better opportunity to see truth and to act on it.