39 Dead at Heaven's Gate -- but was it suicide or murder?

[LiberalHeart]

I must be getting very old because a whole decade just zipped by in what feels to me more like a year and a half. Now with the anniversary of all those Heaven's Gate deaths rearing its ugly head, I'm wondering where individual responsibility begins and ends when it comes to the influence exerted by cult leaders.

Were the deaths suicides, as was so widely reported, or was it really mass murder? I guess it depends on how much weight you put on free will. But then the question is how much free will do some susceptible people really have when under the influence of a leader like Applewhite or, say, Jim Jones?

http://newsgrinder.blogspot.com/2007/03/heavens-gate-was-it-suicide-or-was-it.html

[Warpy]

1. Suicide is an act of madness and/or desperation

They were voluntarily mad and desperate to leave this ordinary world.

They adored their leader and couldn't bear to be parted with him. They all went together.

Tightly cohesive groups can offer a tremendous amount of social support or they can be fatal.

This was all voluntary. They chose to die rather than lose each other.

If they'd taken up weapons and taken people with them who didn't volunteer for the trip, that would have been murder.

[LiberalHeart]

2. I see your point, but would add...

...that suicide can also be a decision arrived at sanely and with logic. People look at me like they think I need to be locked up when I say things like this, but in my view suicide would be the ideal death. It's that last smidgen of control one can exert over one's fate. I can easily envision someone just being ready to stop, but not being particulary desperate or sad or any of the other thing normally associated suicide.

[Warpy]

3. A lot of cultures realize that

An example would be the non Buddhist Japanese.

The local tribes people and some of the Hispanos walk out into the desert when they get so old and sick there's no enjoyment in life. We hear about a few cases every year.

I think most sucides have a damn good reason. It's just very sad when a healthy young person whose psychic pain could have been treated commits suicide.

Criminalizing is is futile and cruel.

[Igel]

4. I agree with that.

But I also refuse to play Grand Inquisitor (q.v. Brothers Karamazov) with other people.

Unless the Heaven's Gaters are shown to have greatly diminished capacity on other grounds, they simply made a choice. I may decry their choice, or approve of their choice; my opinion doesn't matter. It was their choice; to diminish their responsibility, and therefore their personhood, is not my choice.

[LiberalHeart]

5. I tend to side with you on this, but I also see that cop's point of view.

Legally, it might a matter that had to be sorted out on a case by case basis.

I've been trying to remember something I read years ago. Wasn't there a surivivor? Some guy who later died via suicide elsewhere? (memory is the first thing to go...)

[hashibabba]

7. I think you're right, but there was also someone who'd recently left the group

who is still around. See:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/03/21/sole-survivor-of-heavens_n_44003.html

[leftofthedial]

6. it was religion

[davsand]

8. Ummm, in a word they were all nuts

--or rather without nuts, as a matter of fact.

Sorry--but I think I remember reading that the men were all voluntarily castrated prior to the suicides. I have never met a man anyplace that would submit to that voluntarily unless there was an illness of some sort at work. I honestly think it was a form of mental illness.

I think it is entirely evident that there is a form of "madness" that comes up in some cases. Consider Jonestown or these guys--but also think about the Branch Davidians and even the Manson Family. It isn't always related to a religion it is a cult of personality circled around one main "prophet" or cult figure.

Just my two cents.


Laura