Observing Mass Suicide and Religion - Term Paper Example

?Client’s Observing Mass Suicide and Religion Introduction Despite urging several groups to make good on promises tocommit suicide so that they could be observed, they were surprisingly resistant. Mass suicide for the benefit of religious fervor is something that is both deeply personal and done publically. Field study on events that are both unpredictable from an exterior perspective and private from at the moment of the event is impossible, but observing those who are caught up in cult ecstasy can be used to understand how the emotional component of group membership often lead to what would seem to be unreasonable decisions. Cult suicides are a social phenomenon that have occurred throughout history, with many of those events in the past being conducted to thwart the efforts of raiders or marauders from raping or maiming before killing an group of people. Modern day suicides group suicides are far more perplexing, and while they cannot be observed, fanaticism can be observed. Problem The phenomenon of obedience has been studied by Stanley Milgram who setup ‘teachers’ and ‘learners’ so that the teacher would administer an electric shock of increasing intensity every time a ‘learner’ got a question wrong and was instructed to continue to do so no matter how much the ‘learner’ screamed in pain. Two thirds of the participants continued to administer the shocks long after the ‘learners’ had begun to scream and well up to the highest level of shocks. Of course, in the experiment, the ‘learners’ were only play acting, but it goes to show how authority can press people to obey even when good sense dictates that they stop (Milgram 20). The same type of scenario can be seen in the Stanford Prison Experiments. In the Stanford prison experiments a participant group was divided into two roles, prisoners and guards. The prisoners began to act like oppressed people in a very short period of time while the guards took on their assigned roles as authoritarians. While many see this as a role adaptation experiment, there are a large number of psychologists and researchers who saw this as a study in obedience. The participants were instructed to take on the roles and they obeyed those who gave them these instructions (Weiten 539). What seems to be common in these kinds of unethical, but enlightening studies is that a human being is much more likely to go along than to go against the authority. Cults prey on the ability of authority to override the sense of the individual. Group think is a phenomenon in business where people in a group will all agree on very bad ideas because no one has the courage to create disharmony by simply saying “wait a minute”. Using a variety of means through which to break down the individual, cults are able to create blind obedience to the point that they represent a single shepherd with many sheep. Even if the direction that they are being led is over a cliff, they will all follow right over the edge rather than contradict the authority. Even those who choose to contradict authority usually do so through their focus on a leader who is an anarchist. It is rarely one person who defies authority. An example of one or two people who defied the authority that was acting unreasonably does not go well for those who tried to subvert the actions taken by civic leadership. John Proctor and Giles Corey are two men who went in contradiction to all authority in order to stop a madness that had taken their community. Instead of stemming the tide of madness, they were executed for witchcraft on the words of a few little girls. Giles Corey was tortured to death, a panel of wood placed on his body and heavy stones piled on top of him with the intention of making him confess, which he never did. John Proctor was accused of witchcraft and while at first willing to sign the confession to save his life, did not and was one of the last people hanged. In total, nineteen people hanged because of the Salem Witch Trials with Giles Corey being pressed to death and one more dying of natural causes in prison (Williams 48). There has been some evidence since the Salem Witch Trials that the motivation for these trials was economic. The trials provided some people the ability to acquire desired lands, and the family trees of the victims of these trials bear witness that this may be true. The tragedy is that a whole region was swept up in the belief that they were being plagued by witches. A mass hysteria that caught up a group of young girls was interpreted as an adult crisis which saw the deaths of good people of the town. An official apology was handed down by one of the judges several years later for his part in the hysteria, his mind obviously released from the group-think that was causing him to agree with unreasonable events (Williams 48). Following groups of unreasonable actors has been a constant throughout history. People followed Hitler through his reign of terror and in the end he took his life rather than face his crimes. People in the United States walked right off the metaphoric cliff with President George W. Bush as he used the tragedy of the fall of the World Trade Towers to invade a nation that had no connection the event and had no weapons of mass destruction on which to base his claims. The people of the United States and those in Congress, even those who knew better, ‘drank the Kool-Aid’ because there was a fear to not follow him into this future that anyone with any sense could have predicted. There was a poignant moment when Hillary Clinton stood up in Congress and began to dissent against invading Iraq, but she was shouted down, her vote eventually agreeing to make this unquestionable mistake. Even the most powerful will ‘drink the Kool-Aid’. The following research looks at the problem of obedience and group dynamics as it is explored through the events that have taken place in the past with mass suicides. Field research has been done to understand how people learn to obey over their conscious and work within groups and valuing conformity. Review of Existing Sources Jim Jones The Jonestown suicide is the most famous cult based suicide in the United States. The horror of poisoned Kool-Aid has even become part of a colloquialism which refers to people who have committed themselves to group-thinking without the benefit of sense. When someone refers to the idea of ‘they drank the Kool-Aid’ it is Jonestown to which they are referring. Kool-Aid has become synonymous with adhering to a sub-cultural set of beliefs and losing one’s own decision to decide. The people at Johnstown lost their abilities, for the most part, to think on their own and joined their leader in his decision to commit suicide (Chidester 10). However, there are some contradictions to the story of Jonestown. Jonestown was the camp for a group named the People’s Temple Agricultural Project that was developed in Guyana where 918 people died because of the cyanide poisoning, most of which ironically was in Flavor-Aid water drinks, a competitor with Kool-Aid (Chidester 15). Some reported that the suicide was more like a murder, the hundreds of people being emotionally forced into dying rather than through any sort of self made decision. Jim Jones was found with a shot to his temple, eluding the cyanide death that took most of the others. Puputan The ritual of mass suicide has often been used as a way to deny invaders of their prize. In 1906 Balinese practitioners of the local faith committed suicide in Bali in order to avoid being enslaved by the Dutch who were invading their country. Through denying the Dutch their imperialistic aspirations, the Balinese Raja commanded that all of the valuables that were in possession of the people be burned and that all of the people be marched to face their aggressors. This included all children and adults. When they reached the line between themselves and the Dutch, the high priest thrust his dagger deep into the Raja’s heart, signaling everyone else to begin to kill one another while money and jewelry was thrown at the Dutch soldiers. Over 1,000 people died that day. Every year the ritual of Puputan is repeated in mock celebrations as a way of celebrating their independence (Brainz). The Order of the Solar Temple The secret society of the Order of the Solar Temple was in operation in both Canada and Switzerland and is mythically believed to have been a continuation of the Knights Templar. The purpose of this group was to create proper ideas about authority and power so that there could be a preparation for the Second Coming of Christ. The belief was that in order to prepare for His return the unification of the Christian and Islamic faiths must occur. The belief systems of the group included a blend of Protestant forms of Christian faith and New Age philosophies. Murders and suicides have been attributed to the group throughout its history, but in 1994 the murder of a 3 month old child in Canada who was identified as the Anti-Christ put the order in question. In October of that same year 48 adults and children were dead from a suicide pact with the victims shot in the head. The Swiss chapel that was under the ground was lined with things that symbolized the Templar traditions (Brainz). Jauhar Most ritualized suicide is done for a cause. The practice of Jauhar was a mass suicide of women in the Raiput kingdoms in order to avoid capture. When the Sultan of New Delhi invaded in the 14th century the queen of the Chitter led all of the royal women and children to throw themselves on a bonfire to deny the Sultan their bodies. This occurred two more times during the 16th century, wiping bloodlines and lineages. The same type of suicide occurred in nunneries across Europe in order to avoid being raped by marauders, although they did so without it seeming to be suicide. Instead of suicide, however, the nuns who followed St. Ebba the Younger cut off their noses in order to be hideous to the invading army so they would not be raped, only killed (Bardley 37). Belonging and Self Destruction The need to be a member is sometime more important than to survive. Belonging is such a strong part of the human experience that it can lead people to do self-destructive and final acts. Nelson-Jones writes that the need for power is often in conflict with the need for belonging (177). This might explain the need of people to create large communities around themselves in order to have both power and belonging. This can also explain the need for some people to follow in blind faith, obeying whatever is required of them so that they have that sense of belonging. Cults will use that need in order to wind people up so that they would not dare to disobey. One of the strongest tools that a group has is ostracizing members who do not follow the demands and commands of leadership. Needing to belong can be more powerful than self-preservation when the leader/follower dynamic has been firmly rooted (Nelson-Jones 177). Sociological Connections The events of mass suicides are connected to sociological phenomenon through the concept of belief, faith, and obedience. In seeking to find belonging within a community, people will suspend their own sense of right and wrong in favor of that of the leader or of the collective. When placed within a collective, the individual usually has very little to say over their own actions and fates. While society rarely allows this to be an excuse, they should use it as a power in order to create better citizens. The evidence has been shown that people will conform rather than rebel when given the opportunity to be a member of a group. Street gangs, social rebellion, social conformity, and most community groups all stem from the need to belong which outweighs almost every other need, except maybe the need to have the basic essentials of survival. Research Methods Cult observation is really not a reasonable expectation and of course observing a cult committing suicide is highly unlikely. In order to observe the idea of blind devotion to a belief system, three different types of social groups were observed. The first was a church in which the speaking of tongues is practices. The second was a Girl Scout troop where military behaviors, sales competition, and the high praise for conformity and obedience forms early on obedience mind sets. The final observation was in watching a counter-cultural group as they discussed their own brand of fanaticism. A group that met at a local restaurant on a regular occasion was joined to listen to them discuss their favorite, but no longer aired, television program. The phenomenon of comic-con was discussed in order to get a better sense of how fans of science fiction and fantasy form their own brand of cult behaviors. Main Points A cult is considered a group of people who have similar belief systems, although it is a bit more complicated than a simple group. Eyre writes that “Sociologists tend to distinguish cults from more established religious organizations based on such factors as group size, membership characteristics and types of beliefs”. A cult is a group that has established its presence and grown its membership. However, this still does not fully describe the existence of a cult. Eyre goes on to write that “While the term 'sect' classically refers to a breakaway movement from a mainstream church, the term 'cult' became a popular way of referring to new and different religious groups, particularly those groups surfacing in the 1960s and 1970s in America”. After the Jonestown mass suicide, the idea of cults began to spring up around the United States. Cults were groups of fanatics that could behave in any number of anti-social ways and this idea threatened the American culture as it continued to be sensationalized in the media. In order to understand cult behavior, other groups that have similar fanaticism and behaviors relating to obedience can be observed. The first group that was observed for this study was a church in which speaking of tongues was a common practice. Speaking in tongues means that one person will channel ‘angel speech’ while another person acts as the interpreter. Although this occurs in mainstream churches throughout the United States, the behavior when witnessed by someone who is not used to the practice is very unsettling. The individual channeling the angel speech is making what sounds like the utterance of language. During the time this was observed, the interpreter was swaying with the rhythm of swaying that the speaker was making. A symbiotic relationship seemed to have developed between the two. The collective was worshiping as one, believing that they were hearing the language of Angels as the seeming gibberish continued to be heard from the speaker with the interpretations being called off in a litany of ways in which to praise God. Choosing to visit a Girl Scout troop was meant to be a more benign experience. The visit took part during a meeting that was intended to discuss cookie sales, however, and it took on more meaning than expected. The success of the sales was recited to the girls like a litany with responses in the form of shouts and claps. In observing the nature of the event, it was clear that the Girl Scouts were also a cult in a fashion. They had similar belief systems, worked as a unit, and believed what they were told without questioning the authority of it. This suggested that the subject of collective obedience began in childhood. In searching to discover the way in which collectives became obedient, another form of collective experience was sought out. Fans of a science fiction program were sought out in order to see if a social group that was outside of the mainstream would be more rebellious within the group or have a collective mind. A group of people who were fans of a specific television program met on a regular basis at a local restaurant. The researcher inserted themselves into the group after asking for an invitation and began to observe how they operated. While in the restaurant there was not much in the way of signs of collective actions, but then they began to tell stories about convention events. The stories that they told made it clear that as an organized group they were subject to the fervor of fanaticism and this led them to do things they might otherwise not do. In their ‘worship’ and in clothing themselves in clothing that made them a part of the fantasy world, they would act in ways that they would not act outside of the collective. Conclusions Mass suicide in cults is actually very rare. The consequences of obedience, however, are long reaching and have been historically shown to be very powerful in collectives where a leader has taken a position of absolute authority. The evidence of Jonestown shows that not only can a leader take control of a group and demand obedience against common reason; the event can then have long reaching social impact. The colloquialism in saying someone has “drank the Kool-Aid” is proof that the power of these events is far more influential than just from within the group. The evidence of fanaticism and how it creates collective responses can be seen in a number of different cults like groups. Churches in the Christian religion that practice speaking in tongues show that belief can be hypnotic and contagious. While the utterances did not seem to be any known language, an interpreter was provided so that the congregation could know what the speaker was saying. Seemingly benign groups like Girl Scouts and television fan groups also show signs of obedience and conformity. The implications of this study are that conformity and the need to belong is a strong force in human existence and that power must be held in check so that people are not swept away. Works Cited Bardsley, Sandy. Women's Roles in the Middle Ages. Westport: Conn, 2007. Print. Brainz. 10 Most Notorious Suicide Cults in History. 2010. Web. 14 April 2013. Chidester, D. Salvation and Suicide: Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and Jonestown. Bloomington, Ind: Indiana Univ. Press, 2003. Eyre, Anne. Religious Cults in Twentieth Century America. Westminster College. 1996. Web. 14 April 2013. Forsyth, D. R. Group Dynamics. Belmont, Calif: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2010. Print. Milgram, Stanley. Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. New York: Perennial, 2009. Print. Nelson-Jones, Richard. Theory and Practice of Counseling and Therapy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Cassell, 2010. Print. Weiten, W. Psychology: Themes and Variations. Australia: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2011. Print. Williams, T. America's Beginnings: The Dramatic Events that Shaped a Nation's Character. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010. Print. Read More