Word: jonestown
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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What was it in America's spiritual heritage that could have inspired an endeavor like Jonestown--where radical politics, fundamentalist theology, Utopian optimism, black consciousness, psychological manipulation, inherent sexuality, violence, communistic tyranny and ultimate mass suicide were reconciled and united under that quotation from Santayana? The "past"--the irony is that those 900 people did not escape...
...which led them to Jones. And them majority of Jones' followers never seem to have repented of the decision--he seemed to be the only thing between them and despair. They did not want to return to the tough life--there was at least hope and a vision at Jonestown...
...Jonestown was more than an isolated aberrant phenomenon, a cult which had little to do with mainstream culture; it was, in a deep and touching way, an American tragedy. The incident at Jonestown could have happened only to Americans: the People's Temple arose out of social conditions absolutely indigenous to this country. Though the final mass suicide was bizarre and unprecedented, the force lying behind it are forces peculiar to America. The proof lies in the public's outrage--some deep nerve of the national consciousness has been touched. After all, 300 Vietnamese died in a boat a week...
...press gave Jonestown attention without recognizing its American significance. Why? Because the American people have little sense of their history--it is short and we are a people oriented to the future. We raze architectural treasures for tomorrow's parking lot. Unlike the European, who has an instinctive feel for tradition and the forces of his history, we have little sense of how the past can relate to things of the present...
...when they were uncomfortable with his actions. He looms over them not as an autocrat, but as a beneficent master. We may call him sick and ruthless, yet we must admit he held some uncanny attractiveness--and he hardly seems mad, at least not until his last days in Jonestown...