I didn't watch it, but I've always had a fascination with Jonestown (and Patty Hearst) because I distinctly remember it being the first news story I remember the grownups being all freaked out about. I've also always had a theory that Jonestown and the Patty Hearst case were pivotal events in the rightward swing of the country in decade that followed in that people watching thought 'maybe the world really has gone mad and we need to get back to old-fashioned values' and all taht bullshit. Cult insanity is nothing new, but this guy actually held public office. When I got to be a teenager I devoured books on both incidents and what I walked away with was a deep distrust of anyone, religious or political, who claims to have all the answers.

I don't think I could watch that. I was living in the Bay Area at the time; within a week of Jonestown, the Moscone-Milk murders happened. It was a very weird time, and not in a good way.

Odd thing is my parents and their peers were shocked, but my own generation has grown up with Jonestown, Patty Hearst, the Iranian Hostages, Waco, Columbine, 9/11, serial killers and mass murderers out the yin-yang...I think we're numb at this point. I turn on the news fully expecting to see something horrific.

...for my childhood Hearst and Jonestown (also strangely fascinating to me) were just the topping of the childhood sundae of memories with scoops of Watergate and the Candy Man. And I wonder why I'm an apathetic paranoid wastrel. Heh.

A lot of generational theory references incidents like this as being pretty important to values formation. It's no surprise that trust and idealism are muted in the post-baby-boom population.

Watergate was the first thing I remember a flap about: adults glued silently to long hearings on TV. Jonestown is a fuzz: I remember making fun of Kool-Aid at age nine; we must have picked up dribs and drabs from the news. John Lennon's murder was the most somber moment I remember understanding. And, as jonmc points out, it got worse from there.

I haven't seen it, but I've seen other documentaries on Jonestown. I would imagine it is well done. American Experience always does such a great job.

I saw the last half or so of it (It came on earlier this week for us.) I remember when it happened...

From what I have read, Jim Jones started out as an Assembly of God preacher. Somewhere along the line something went terribly, terribly wrong.

I keep thinking about the children, when I think of stuff like this.

Jones, and Koresh, and people like him, well there is a very special place in Hell for them.

Yep, I remember Jonestown -- one of the first big news stories that really hit me, as well. (The waning days of Watergate and Nixon's resignation are the very first I remember, though.)

I also remember it as the moment I realized that not everyone (not just kids, but adults) actually followed the news, or actually had any interest in factual events. The day or so after the news first broke, I was waiting at the bus stop with my friend Cheri, and I was telling her about what happened. She was appropriately shocked.

The next day, we were at the bus stop again, and she said, "I can't talk to you anymore, sorry." When I asked why, she explained that she had told her parents about what I told her about Jonestown, and their response was that I was lying -- no preacher would ever do such a thing, and therefore I was not to be spoken to or played with ever again. I protested: "but it's all over the news! On TV! In the newspaper! It's a FACT!" She responded, "well, they say it isn't a fact and you're a liar, so I can't play with you anymore. Sorry."

I saw it.

Very very very sad.

The ecstatic (seeming) footage of November 17, the night before the killings -- singing, dancing, speeches. When you know that everyone there (save a tiny handful) will be dead in less than a day.

The stories of Stanley Clayton and Tim Carter, two people who were there on November 18 (the day of the killings of 900 plus people) and who managed to escape.

The years through to Guayana, when Jim Jones was charasmatic and semi-crazy, and promoting social justice and community and music and integration and all of these dreams. And the footage from some of those times -- the hope, the idealism, the giddy excitement of people who joined what they thought was a social justice movement.

The amazing accomplishment of moving hundreds of people into the middle of a jungle!! and clearing acres and building houses and kitchens and sanitation and growing crops and -- wow. (As an adult the sheer magnitude of building and maintaining a somewhat self-sustaining complex for 900 plus people (!!) in the middle of a jungle (!!) is a-maze-ing in a way that would never occur to me when I was a kid reading Time and Newsweek accounts of the massacre.)

The terrible experiences of many people even during the "good" times -- those who were beaten by Jones or his aides, those who were forced to have sex with him, those who were shunned and abused for defying Jones ...

There must be something about idealistic communities -- or maybe just those led by personalities? -- that are susceptible to whatever is the reverse of the ideals.

I saw it when it played in New York--I remember being in the car with my family listening to the news on the radio and then that Christmas our first housekeeper telling my parents she had lost friends there.

When Harvey Milk(with who I, essexjan and JanetLand share a birthday)and Moscone were killed, my fifth grade teacher read the fable about the poor man who sat in the king's chair for a day and noticed the sword hanging over his head. It turned out he was gay and took out his anxiety about the Briggs initiative (which would have banned gay teachers) on me: he didn't give me a note from my parents one day about what time I was supposed to come home and then claimed that he had and I was lying. I remember seeing a commercial at the time with a teacher saying she would lose her job if this passed, but it didn't say why--in retrospect I think it would have been more effective if the parents of kids she had taught had appeared with her.

I haven't seen that one, but other documentaries. I too am fascinated by Jonestown and Patti Hearst (I have a huge image of her robbing a bank on my wall which I've moved around with for 10+ years). Maybe it is because it was on TV news when I was small, maybe it is because both cases are so weird.

What jon said. Jonestown had a profound effect on me as a kid. Not only did it teach me to distrust religion and authority figures, it taught me that not even parents can be trusted. Your parents will kill you if they think it will bring them closer to god. Fortunately, my parents were pretty irreligious. But something as simple as going to a friend's house and having to say grace could give me the heebie jeebies big time. Still does, actually.

In high school, I wrote a paper on why people are willing to die for their religion. Doing the research for the Jonestown section was brutal. The aerial picture of the bodies in one of the news magazines was so big that it had to be a fold out. My teacher found the paper offensive--particularly the part where I suggested that Joan of Arc may have been mentally ill. He gave me a C. And I remember thinking that we'd never be able to prevent another Jonestown if true believers were so unwilling to discuss it and events like it and how appropriate it was that Jones had "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it" hanging prominently above his chair.

I keep thinking about the children, when I think of stuff like this.

Jones, and Koresh, and people like him, well there is a very special place in Hell for them

Yes; what saddened me most were the deaths of the children. But I can't blame Jones solely. Certainly he was criminally insane, but what has left the most uncomfortable dis-ease in my heart is that parents gave their children a cyanide-laced beverage and then held them as they died. Parents murdered their own children (and then took their own lives) because they had lost track of where their individuality and responsibility ended. What was chilling was hearing the massacre survivors and former Temple members reflect on how each of them had doubts and felt afraid to express him/herself, how anyone who spoke of leaving was to be turned in. They knew it wasn't right, though. There were two people who managed to pass notes to the Congressman who came there to investigate, asking to be taken home, and they were on their way when they were killed at gunpoint. Nine hundred and nine people - even a minority of them could have overpowered the armed contigent. Even a small number could have stolen enough provisions to walk through the jungle and either escape or bring word of the twistedness to the larger world (though that might have turned into a Waco, too).

It was yet another demonstration of the tendency of many human beings to follow, to be obedient, to accept the status quo. It is a cruel, two-edged sword - the same human need for belonging and group affiliation that allows people to do things like build and maintain a jungle compound (I agree, Claudia S_F, it was amazing!) or even band together to make schools and hospitals and churches, is the same need, when unchecked by reason, that allows manipulators to use people as tools for gratifying their ego or satisfying their megalomania.

The cultivation of independent thought, and enough confidence to resist and rebel when you hear/see/are asked to do something that feels wrong, are personal qualities which we should mindfully cultivate in children at the same time that we socialize them and teach them how to behave in groups. Scody's story about the nieghbor girl is an example: her parents asserted that their group identification and obedience to authority was more important than concrete reality. Danger, danger.

So interesting to read the comments here. Also, in every part of my world (work, other lists), it seems as though people have seen this documentary and are talking about Jonestown again.

I don't have an individual-over-the-group reaction to Jonestown, exactly. I'm still inspired by people and groups who try to create communities based on social justice and idealism. To some extent I am part of such groups/movements (as a civil rights and disability rights lawyer), and find them to be meaningful.

When I think about Jonestown, I think about how to keep the groups and the collaboration and the idealism but fight the abuse. Like -- Keep process transparent. No cults of personality. No one above the rules. Permit dissent. Stuff like that.

Yeah, good point, and that's kind of what I mean about "how to behave in groups." Groups are pretty important to my identity, as well, and I think they're incredibly powerful - but so powerful they need to be balanced with individual strength, so the exceptional thought is not subsumed. Both intense individualism and intense group affiliation have their inherent dangers. As with everything, extremes are unhealthy.