Collective Self Deception

Rule Number One: Do Not Drink Kool-Aid While in Guyana

If someone can believe their own "lie" the theory goes, they will consequently be better able to persuade others of its "truth”. In humans, awareness of the fact that one is acting deceptively often leads to tell-tale signs of deception. Therefore, if self-deception enables someone to believe their distortions, they will not present such signs of deception and will therefore appear to be telling the truth.

The People’s Temple, a cult founded in 1955 is one of the more gruesome cults to use this ability. The church was initially incorporated as the Wings of Deliverance in 1954. In 1960 the organization affiliated itself with the Protestant denomination, Disciples of Christ. This affiliation was a successful attempt to both raise the dwindling membership and restore the reputation of the group. The membership within the church increased rapidly from about 700 people to about 2,200, all in the name of Jim Warren Jones, also known as Jim Jones.

Soon after, the People’s Temple sought to seek an even more pretentious reputation by aiding the cities’ poorest citizens, racial minorities, drug addicts and even the homeless. Members of the People’s Temple lured desperate souls in with food, help, and shelter. The People’s Temple ran homes to care for the elderly, half a dozen foster homes, a ranch licensed to care for the mentally disabled, soup kitchens for the homeless and day camps for children. The people’s temple was looking for people of every type and gender to have an integrated congregation from white to black, to poor and rich. By 1968 Jim Jones took advantage of societies insecurities brought on by three high profile assassinations that killed Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Malcom X. one observer at the time of this turmoil had this to say: "Robert Kennedy had been killed. Malcolm had been killed. Martin Luther King had been killed. So you're looking at a period of time of civil rights consciousness when there were those in this country that were trying to stomp [racism] out, and you had somebody here who was not only speaking about it, but as far as I could see, it was being demonstrated before my very eyes.” The African American people of America were easily fooled by this faÐ"§ade of deception, a deception in which Jim Jones lured them all in and made himself to look like he was turning Martin Luther King’s speech “I Have A Dream” into a reality. He had succeeded in bringing together his integrated congregation; Peoples Temple welcomed every race and ethnicity "He preached a 'social gospel' of human freedom, equality, and love, which required helping the least and the lowliest of society's members. Later on, however, this gospel became explicitly socialistic, or communistic in Jones' own view, and the hypocrisy of white Christianity was ridiculed while 'apostolic socialism' was preached." (Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and the People's Temple)

Jim Jones coaxed just about every believer in him that he was this god-like person, a person to not say “No” to. By late 1977 Jim Jones had founded Jonestown, a 3,800 acre settlement in Guyana. Like Moses led the Jews to the Promised Land, Jim Jones led his believers to Jonestown, the remote settlement in Guyana. Those who moved there were promised a tropical paradise, free from the supposed wickedness of the outside world. Little did they that this