I've been pondering over it all week. What is it that was so diabolical about Jim Jones and Jonestown? Sometime this week I realized that what struck me as I watched on Monday night was the way Jones (and I think a demonically driven Jones) manipulated hope. His followers hoped for community, for peace, for equality, for freedom. And they were used. There is nothing much more evil than to manipulate and destroy another's hope and dreams for your own end. Scott Peck has identified evil as a psychological category which is essentially narcissistic. I can't help but think of Langston Hughes' poem, "A Dream Deferred" when I think of those victims in the hot Guyana sun.
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
1 comment:
perhaps this is why hope is the most dangerous thing...
and the most essential
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