A CROWD STUDY ON THE MEMBERS OF JONESTOWN

Good morning Everyone, I’m here today to give my response and insights about an
American cult leader, preacher and self-professed faith healer named James Warren Jones, and
how he successfully convinced people to join his cult that ended as one of the biggest mass
suicides in history.

Before I proceed to the kind of person and speaker Jim Jones was, and the characteristics
of the crowd he recruited to join his cult, let me first discuss the concept of Pathos, which is
believed to be Jones’ technique to generate polarizing emotions of fear and love within his
audience.

Pathos is Greek for suffering and experience. Empathy, sympathy and pathetic are
derived from pathos. Pathos is to persuade by appealing to the audience's emotions. As the
speaker, you want the audience to feel the same emotions you feel about something, you want to
emotionally connect with them and influence them. If you have low pathos the audience is likely
to try to find flaws in your arguments.

In the case of Jim Jones, his manipulations caused hundreds of deaths that day. It is
unthinkable to imagine that one man could be responsible for the deaths of a near thousand
people just because of his impeccable ability to deliver speeches full of persuasion. Jones
mastered the techniques to control minds that enables him to gain his followers' obedience and
loyalty. These mind control techniques are coupled with the creation of a new social
environment that provided Jones with a powerful influence over his followers.

People are all susceptible to the influences of others, but there are certain individuals that
are more vulnerable to the predatory call and false promises of dangerous individuals like Jim
Jones. His followers are those people who considered themselves neglected and rejected by
society. These people cannot see the meaning of life from a brighter perspective. Therefore, they
need a leader who can make them believe, affirm their decisions, and prove their mindsets right.
The vulnerability of these people brought by their different emotional conditions are the tool of
Jim Jones to attract them to be involved in his cult.
According to Gustave Le Bon the characteristics of the crowd are produced by three
causes first is the anonymity where people lose fear of consequences, moral responsibility and
temporary feelings of invincibility. Second the contagion wherein an individual sacrifices his
own interest for the interest of everybody. But the characteristics of the crowd Jim Jones
successfully recruited is the third one, the suggestibility where individuals enter a hypnotic-like
state mesmerized by the leader because the leader can influence the crowd to think and feel a
certain way and the crowd can turn those thoughts into acts.
 In conclusion, what happened to the people’s temple and Jim Jones is a proof that our
desires to become great, powerful, and appreciated by many are dangerous things. As Marianne
Williamson once said; our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we
are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.