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Primitive Christianity Revived, Again

Danger of isolation and absence of other-minded people.

I watched “Jonestown: Paradise Lost” documentary two weeks ago. This movie told about religious organization, which called “Peoples Temple”. 918 members of the organization, including 276 children, suicided or were killed in 18 Nov 1978. I was shocked by this movie. I’d like to share my point of view about this.

There weren’t intrinsic evil in the organization. On the contrary, the organization helped poor, homeless people and wanted to build better live. Unfortunately, isolation, not only distance isolation, but cognitive isolation, suppression of other-minded people and concentration of power lead to such devastating consequences.

I think, this is vital to have other-minded people and give some power to them.

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Comment by Pat Pope on 10th mo. 15, 2011 at 10:53am: AMEN! Unfortunately, some people are threatened by other-minded people, so instead of sharing power, they hoard it. You almost have to have an other-minded person in power to have some of the power shared with other-minded people. Otherwise, it can turn into a cult of single-minded people.

Comment by William F Rushby on 10th mo. 15, 2011 at 12:15pm: Hello, Igor!

Welcome to QuakerQuaker. Your command of English is impressive! I hope that you will continue to participate in QuakerQuaker, for our benefit as well as yours.

Comment by Igor Klimov on 10th mo. 16, 2011 at 6:17am: Thank you for welcoming : )…

An example of the Peoples Temple is extreme and marginal case. In our ordinary life we have much milder cases. It’s almost impossible to persuade somebody to suicide and probability of such mass suicide is zero. Human being has gene based and very strong instinct of self-preservation.

It’s mysterious, there weren’t heavy other-minded repressions. There are much heavier fight against other minded person in totalitarian regime. However, the organization has sophisticated multilevel mechanism of same-minded people selection. Thus, in the last level of selection, Jonestown agricultural commune, there were very homogeneous group.

I guess, we have to care about cognitive diversity of our companies.

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