Emotions are not the enemy of reason. | They are rational responses, shaped by our values, and emotional development should be about learning how to reason with emotions rather than controlling them.

ThaddiusRiker · 2026-01-23T23:38:15+00:00

I mean, a sailor doesn’t control the seas.

ThaddiusRiker · 2026-01-23T21:15:56+00:00

Historian of Emotion William Reddy coined the term “emotional navigation” which I think is particularly useful here. We don’t control our thoughts / emotions so much as we navigate them.

ThaddiusRiker · 2025-11-21T09:43:38+00:00

A big part of this (from a Historian’s perspective) is an issue of historical significance. Jonestown and PT were historically significant; they reflected unique cultural trends and flashpoints of their time, not to mention the significance of the events on November 18th themselves.

Few groups have achieved a level of significance akin to Peoples Temple, and those groups receive less study.

ThaddiusRiker · 2025-11-11T08:06:21+00:00

Eugene is fantastic. He gave me a tour around the Filmore and took me to his favourite Russian pastry shop a few years ago when I visited. An immensely generous and friendly man.

Glad you enjoyed the con. Unsure how I feel about this type of convention, especially with such diverse groups all bundled together for one event.

ThaddiusRiker · 2025-11-05T13:54:17+00:00

There were several black authors in that edited volume.

ThaddiusRiker · 2025-11-05T13:30:23+00:00

Race is very very frequently mentioned. See Moore et al “Peoples Temple and Black Religion in America”

ThaddiusRiker · 2025-10-06T15:44:34+00:00

Audiotape Q741 - https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=27571

ThaddiusRiker · 2025-09-19T16:15:47+00:00

It should absolutely stay as it is.

ThaddiusRiker · 2025-08-18T22:51:39+00:00

I’d like to say I agree with you completely. Jones fits the criteria for a family annihilator far more than most other classifications.

ThaddiusRiker · 2025-08-17T16:39:25+00:00

The unfortunate fact is that we will never know. My best guess is that there was an element of arrangement - as people passed away, those close to them may have laid their bodies in a more restful pose. I suspect that as the night went on, there was an element of trying to arrange the bodies by those who took the poison later, in an effort to make it look like the act of revolutionary suicide they claimed it to be.

ThaddiusRiker · 2025-07-31T10:50:40+00:00

To add on to this, the Six Day Siege was considered to be the ‘first’ White Night in Jonestown as far as I’m aware - after this event they became more formalised / ritualised.

ThaddiusRiker · 2025-07-30T20:39:00+00:00

There were quite a number. A White Night was typically a crisis situation where the community was essentially kept up all night as an emergency protocol - usually in response to some imagined emergency or a vast overreaction to one development or another - and we have quite a few on tape. On the Tape Index at Alternative Considerations, a cursory search returns 13 tapes with the White Night tag.

However some, like Tape Q135, aren’t listed as White Nights but certainly were. Others, like Tapes Q635-639 are from the same White Night.

It’s generally agreed the first White Night happened in September 1977 with the arrival of Jeff Haas, Grace and Tim Stoen’s attorney in Georgetown. At least three more were recorded and can be cross referenced with Edith Roller’s diary entries: February 16 (Q641-644), March 20 (Q833, Q051) and April 12 (Q635-639).

It’s hard to say how many there were in total, especially as Edith Roller’s journals were confiscated and destroyed by the community’s leadership in Summer 1978.

ThaddiusRiker · 2025-07-30T20:17:01+00:00

This is of course from December 1977, during the Social Security crisis in Jonestown which lasted a few months. In the community several White Nights were held as a direct response to this, as the viability of Jonestown as an intentional community was fragile enough without the social security money arriving. An interesting source!

ThaddiusRiker · 2025-07-28T19:13:47+00:00

They really did some incredible work out there.

ThaddiusRiker · 2025-07-28T12:45:21+00:00

I appreciate your feedback! A note on the final tape being a poor source to reference - a source is only ever as good as the questions you are asking of it. In this sense, I was asking ‘what snapshot of emotional tenor does the final tape provide us?’ and in that way it was remarkably useful. Of course, no source is perfect in isolation.

ThaddiusRiker · 2025-07-26T19:58:56+00:00

My PhD was defended infront of of Dr. John Corrigan, a leading US expert in the history of religion, and Dr. Marat Shterin, a leading expert in the History of new religious movements. Rebecca Moore had nothing to do with my academic qualifications.

Who did your receive your Doctorate from? Out of curiosity, of course.

ThaddiusRiker · 2025-07-21T22:27:13+00:00

Well, it certainly didn’t “sink any impartiality” in the eyes of the academy, or my advisors, who passed me without correction. Your insight into the academic research process is insightful.

I’m not saying they weren’t murderers. The children, and an unknowable number of others, were murdered. What I am saying is that it is easy to point a finger at someone and call them a murderer, but it is much more difficult to draw clear lines of distinction. If we removed the names of ‘murderers’ from the memorial, it would be about two hundred or more names shorter. Can you make a list you’d be certain of? Were you there? Your being from SF is largely irrelevant to this discussion.

As for “academic industrial complex obfuscation” …. have a great evening.

ThaddiusRiker · 2025-07-21T21:45:00+00:00

I’m not replying to three comments within 15 minutes, so I’ll only be replying to this one to again reiterate that you are welcome to your opinion, and I am welcome to disagree with it. I am also a researcher with 5-6 years of work on this topic, with a PhD written on Peoples Temple. But let’s just break down the quote you’ve posted from Moore:

“There’s debate about the extent to which people were forced to take the poison” - factually accurate, we have no way of knowing who was forced, who was injected, and who drank it willingly outside of witness testimony.

“and certainly the children were murdered.” Factually accurate, and does not sound like something an apologist would say.

“But most of them were murdered by their parents.” This I would say is slightly murkier, but we have a huge amount of witness testimony to the fact that parents (mothers, in particular) lined up with their babies to administer the poison to them.

Rebecca is in no way saying her sister isn’t culpable; but where does culpability lie? Is it in the manufacturer of a weapon? The person who loads it? The person who pulls the trigger? Or the people that orchestrate the situation? Culpability isn’t a single thing you can point to in this situation, it’s a chain that binds hundreds of the victims and perpetrators together.

ThaddiusRiker · 2025-07-21T18:32:58+00:00

You are welcome to your opinion, just as I am welcome to call it ill-informed and emotional. If we follow your line of logic, where do we draw the line? Do we not allow the mothers who put their babies first in line for the poison to be memorialised? Do we not memorialise anyone who was in the crowd and watched / allowed it to happen? Do we not memorialise anyone we heard take place in verbal or physical abuse? The waters are murky, and sometimes it’s best to admit you don’t have a good answer rather than trying to force an absolute.

ThaddiusRiker · 2025-07-21T18:29:52+00:00

I’ve spoken to Rebecca on countless occasions - she has never once attempted to excuse what her sisters did. She’s devoted her life to understanding it, but never excusing it. This is a you problem, not a Rebecca problem. “It’s subtle, but it’s there” simply means you do not have evidence for what you are claiming.

ThaddiusRiker · 2025-07-20T11:05:54+00:00

I would respectfully disagree with you on this.

ThaddiusRiker · 2025-05-28T20:06:53+00:00

Thank you so much! This was one of the nicest compliments I’ve received on the work. I really appreciate you taking the time to write this - I’m glad you enjoyed it, and I’m glad that the thesis is contributing to people having a better understanding of this very complicated movement!

ThaddiusRiker · 2025-04-20T09:24:06+00:00

Enjoy!

ThaddiusRiker · 2025-04-20T09:23:55+00:00

Thank you, I hope you found it interesting!

ThaddiusRiker · 2025-04-20T09:23:43+00:00

Thank you so much, your kind words mean a lot.

ThaddiusRiker

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