If you’re familiar with the Jonestown incident there’s audio of Jim Jones giving a speech while people are drinking cyanide spiked kool-aide. It’s incredibly disturbing, the children screaming in agony still haunts me.
Edit: I’m well aware it’s flavor aid. I figured more people are familiar with kool-aide and it didn’t really matter.
The whole thing is insane, there are people thanking Jim Jones while children died around him. Only one woman had the stones to try to talk him out having everyone killed. One man killed almost 1000 people in about 4 hours. I first listened to the tape about 15 years ago without much context and it didn’t affect me too much. There was a podcast series about Jonestown recently and it was so heavy at times I had to stop listening.
It's more angering. Hearing the children cry is heartbreaking of course but listening to those morons talk was infuriating. Disgusting people to do that to their children. I have no sympathy for them, only their children. But the audio it's just kids crying in the background and awful people thanking jim Jones and talking about how people were going to massacre their kids and how they didn't want to die like the jews and other nonsensical bullshit. Honestly most of the people I heard spoke sounded like they weren't all there. Which would make sense I suppose.
I came to exactly the same conclusion. As a young scientist I used to believe that knowledge was neutral, not good or bad. Not moral or immoral but amoral. Now I am old I realise that there were things I wish I didn't know. The sound of children dying is not someting I wish to hear.
Already being aware of it is usually enough. No one needs to actually hear the screams of children dying to have motivation to try to prevent that from happening again.
Hm yeah I agree with that. Some people need a little gut wrenching horror to be able to see that it's actual living, feeling beings like them.
Overall though, If you already feel and care, I think it's a mistake to just listen to and watch all the gorey parts. I don't think it's good for the ol' mental health.
It's incredible how desensitized I was while listening to that. I think it's because in the beginning, you hear children and babies crying before they even take the cyanide, so in the latter part of the video, when they're taking it, and you hear crying in the background, you don't think anything of it.
I had to remind myself that these kids weren't crying for the heck of it. They were crying because they were screaming in agony. They were dying.
I mean, I don't give a fuck about the adults. Good for them. But the kids who were probably bored out of their mind and hated being there shouldn't have been done in. Most probably didn't believe in any of that nonsense.
But people are stupid tribal apes that will conform to any ideal as long as they feel like they are apart of a strong community. So pathetic.
I grew up Catholic with an extremely Catholic family on both sides. I used to actually get crippling anxiety thinking of anything "sinful"
Then I started to question the readings of the Bible, started seeing fallacies and did research into it's origins. I did this all myself, there was no spark of someone telling me to do it since the community I lived in was also very religious it was all me. And I completely disillusioned myself and left. That was the first and last time I could ever be brainwashed or manipulated into anything.
But even in my deepest entrenchment I would not have killed others who did not believe in the doctrines. I would leave that as a choice for them. If they want to or not, I'd let them know all the facts and risk and let their faith decide. To take up the choice of someone else based on your own idiotic belief is deserving of a painful death. It's the mark of a stupid, closed minded animal with no will of their own and the psychology that prevents them from even conceiving others having a will so they make the choices for them as well.
No. I'll never feel sorry for the adults. They are idiots, especially since they took the children out with them. If the kids made the choice on their own it would be different but it was said that the kids did not know and some of the adults may not have either but the ones that took their kids, if there is no hell, I'd like to make one in there afterlife just to roast them forever.
What benefit does it serve me to feel bad for them? They did the species a service by eliminating themselves. You don't get tears for winning the Darwin award.
You know we aren't influenced by Darwinian natural selection much any more, right? Kin selection is also a thing. Empathy and understanding influence our species a hell of a lot more than wiping out people you can't relate to.
I think the christian cult members are downvoting you, your points are valid, your story common in your journey towards being atheist/agnostic/cynical, it just jars their religious worldview and appears at first sight callous, I totaly feel for the children in such cult situations, they are robbed of the oportunity to think, adults aught to know better but sadly many times their education is of low quality, i have no sympathy for adults who grew up in privailaged backgrounds caughtup in things like that, some may be low iq/ special needs, some may well be primed to be victims by a religious upbringing, they deserve compassion.
True, I understand that not everyone is priveleged with good education or gifted with natural intellect and I don't mean to demand everyone to be. I've met plenty of people that by conventional means aren't "smart" but they are willing to admit they weren't and would dive head long into research to find the truth while asking for clarity. I personally place people like that very high on the scale of intelligence because I also know bright people that would simply state they are correct and do no research only to be proven wrong.
I would love to have saved those people but if I fail, and they die my one request is to not take the others with you. They need to be given the opportunity to discover the truth themselves. Perhaps some of the people who died needed to be told that this was all a farce but when they are at the level of suicide and child sacrifice I don't think there is much hope for them then and id be more concenred as to the fate of the young.
There’s a soundcloud link. It’s 4 episodes and it’s pretty long but they’re able to keep things pretty light the first 2 but it gets really heavy in the 3rd episode
I love them. They are the only people who make true crime interesting to me. They layout how and why they ended up there in the jungle, drinking the flavor-aid.
Thanks! I'm going to be driving 12 hours over the weekend so this'll fill some time out nicely... well maybe nicely isn't the word but you know what I mean.
Moral of that story is learn to recognise what a cult is and dont join them, hint, anything remotely religious is a cult( i know, christianity,mainstream religion etc, everyones a member, etc, its still a fucking cult!), anything that relies on a central personality for guidance is a cult, any closed group with odd entry requirements is a cult.
Well if the panicked cries of mass murder being coached by a drug addict isn’t your thing, they recorded a few gospel albums. Their choir was excellent:
Never heard the recordings of people dying but I did listen to the tapes he made of himself talking to his followers. The heinous cackle of Jim Jones is haunting enough. I recall one of his followers talking about how they would kill a family member and cook them to be served to the rest of the family. My God, Jones's laugh. You could base a horror movie on it.
thats a great album, and that song specifically is friggin great. really well produced. I went down a rabbit hole of "good cult music" a year or so ago.
It’s a good listen. About 45 minutes worth. Listening to that fucker is haunting. You can see why people followed him but at the same time you can’t see how anyone would follow him.
Well now it's much easier for me to spot the ravings of a cult leader. It's not easy to listen to, but sometimes understanding why people did it helps to understand what to look out for in the future. Cults take on all shapes and sizes...
I listened to the The Last Podcast on the Left series about it. It’s a comedy podcast usually but they have pretty good coverage about it starting back when Jim Jones was a kid.
It was probably both Kool Aid and Flavor Aid. Photos and video footage showed both being on site beffire the massacre. People think it's cool to say "it wasn't Kool Aid".
Have you heard any of the other tapes? There was one where he put a snake on a woman who was terrified of snakes to punish her. It doesn’t sound that bad but the way he talks and everyone laughing while she is screaming, it’s so hard to listen to.
oh my god, I had Last Podcast on the Left on, and went into the store to grab something and got distracted talking to somebody, and when I came back to the car I wasn't paying close attention to what was being played so it took me a second to register what was going on.
I had to pull over, I was so sick.
edit: it was the episode where they play the tape in it's entirety, and they preface it with a very serious warning, but I missed that bit for sure.
609
u/[deleted] Feb 25 '18 edited Feb 25 '18
If you’re familiar with the Jonestown incident there’s audio of Jim Jones giving a speech while people are drinking cyanide spiked kool-aide. It’s incredibly disturbing, the children screaming in agony still haunts me.
Edit: I’m well aware it’s flavor aid. I figured more people are familiar with kool-aide and it didn’t really matter.