1 result for (book:tps5 AND heading:"delet session novemb 22 1978" AND stemmed:mass)
5/33 (15%)
Jones
Jonestown
suicide
temple
quickie
[... 3 paragraphs ...]
(We also speculated that Seth might refer to what may be called the “Jonestown Affair,” or something like it. This had erupted in a mass suicide, involving over 400 Americans, in the community of Jonestown in what was formerly British Guyana, in South America. A US congressman was also murdered, along with media network people, etc. The sect, called the People’s Temple, had been created by Jim Jones, a charismatic fundamentalist who had eventually been hounded out of the U.S. for many reasons, to then set up his town for his devoted religious followers in Guyana. The whole thing had a weird unbelievability about it, as Jane and I watched the TV reports and read—and saved – the newspaper accounts.
(Actually, the affair is a perfect example of much of the material Seth has been going into in his latest book on the mass culture and mind. To Jane and me, it seemed as if his material was being enacted in real life as the ideal demonstration of Seth’s material. The tragedy, if one wants to call it that, would make an excellent book in itself, and many probably will be written about it. It certainly furnishes ideal subject matter for the media. We also think that these books-to-come will not manage to penetrate the forces behind the phenomenon nearly as well as Seth could, but that Seth won’t be carrying out such a project, either.
[... 3 paragraphs ...]
Now: the message is clear: fanaticism can lead to mass suicide and murder.
[... 6 paragraphs ...]
He was, of course, a despot, and he did indeed set up his own alienated kingdom. Those that followed him pretended to themselves not to know what they were doing. You make your own lessons, so that these mass suicides and murders are an objective culmination, on those peoples’ part, of other, lesser psychological suicides committed on the part of millions who abdicate their personal responsibility in such a way.
[... 15 paragraphs ...]
(I might add here that the Jonestown affair reminded me at once of the mass suicide of the defenders of the Jewish stronghold of Masada, in the First Century AD, in Israel. But those people had a strong uniting religious faith and tradition behind them. But wait—it gets tricky; The Jonestown people didn’t? A death is a death, regardless....)
