Radio Sweethearts

 

I know I promised I’d write about On the Media’s story about the Jonestown Massacre, but honestly, I think I’d rather ignore the coverage.

See, I work for Apple, and though I’m very reluctant to just talk about my job, I do hear a lot of people talking about ‘drinking the Kool-Aid.’ And though the products – and the culture around them – do produce an almost fanatical devotion among many customers, I find the use of the phrase ‘drinking the Kool-Aid’ to be either cliché or distasteful, depending on my mood.

The thing is, I grew up in Indiana, and not very far from where Jim Jones grew up. I know that doesn’t really mean anything to a lot of people, and it doesn’t really affect most other people I know who grew up around me. That said, I’ve lived in four towns in my whole life. Three of those were within 30 miles of each other.

The first 25 years of my life were a slow progression eastward: 18 years in one town, three in the next, and four in the one after that. I’d have to say that being so tied to a physical space gave me a fairly strong sense of place. Things that happen where I’m from affect me still. Even if they happened well before my time.

Which is why Jim Jones and the story of Jonestown resonate with me. I’m not sure I have anything deep and meaningful to say about it, other than that it’s one of those things in history that jumps out at me, not as being particularly important in the grand scheme of things, but as being particularly poignant.

The fact that the People’s Temple began as such a liberal, forward-thinking organization kills me. The fact that the People’s Temple sounds like a church that, at its inception, would have been one that I would have enjoyed being part of makes me wonder if I would have been one of those who packed up their lives in the States and took it all to Guyana, to participate in the suicides there.

Which, ultimately, makes me wonder about any group that I become excited to take part in. It gives me pause every time I begin to feel a sense of belonging.