On Bad Ideas Podcast, this episode talked about Jonestown/The People’s Temple and its founder Jim Jones. Jim Jones started off by preaching racial equality and advocating for desegregation. He started his church based on the purpose of changing the world. Members of his church were committed to feeding the poor and they started free nursing homes. This surprised me because I never thought of a cult having good, normal intentions at the beginning, but that the ideas were radical from the start. But then, Jones started to become more radical and believed he could “heal” people. For example, the podcast mentioned that someone complained about their cancer to him and he was somehow able to rip it out of them. This was absolutely crazy to me that someone could believe that because that is not how medicine works. Jones also claimed to be a psychic and although this was manipulative, it was also clever. During his information meetings he would have current members talk to people in the audience and then give him notes about them so that Jones could pretend he was a psychic by talking about them, without knowing them. Jones would use this in order to convince those members of the audience to join the church and most did.
One thing that struck me was how Jones was only able to have one child with his wife because of her back problems so he got another lover, which reminded me of King Henry VIII. Jones then chose to start his community in Guyana because the natives spoke English, it was isolated, and they could help people. After the community was established things started getting really crazy with physical punishments and people were being isolated from their families and all of their possessions belonged to the church. One of the most crazy events that happened before the big murder/suicide night was the White Night rehearsals where Jones would test his followers’ loyalty to see if they would “drink the Kool aide”. It is crazy to me how something started with such good intentions and ended with the deaths of hundreds of people. Jones believed he was doing the right thing, but he endangered society and the lives of all his followers. This is leaves the question: is Jones a charismatic leader or a toxic charismatic?
One thing that really struck me was when the podcast hosts mentioned what if jones had used his charisma and his powerful social influence for good. He clearly was a charismatic and was able to inspire and motivate people, so it is a shame that he wasn’t able to use these qualities to accomplish his originals goals to fight racial and socioeconomic inequality
I also thought it was interesting that his initial ideas that were ethical and beneficial for society developed into an evil cult. Jones’s claim that he was able to heal, as well as being a psychic, show his toxic charismatic traits. In fact, his charisma was almost as bad as Hitler’s, which makes sense since he supported Hitler’s ideas.