Well, this will certainly cheer you right the fuck up*
chief on Saturday, June 27, 2009 · 2 Comments
There certainly seems to be no end to the crazy shit you can stumble upon when roaming the Internet. Here’s one of those things that you might wish you didn’t know about. Apparently, an audio recording of the final act of the Jonestown death cult was caught on tape and later recovered. And naturally, it has found its way onto YouTube. It’s infinitely disturbing on several levels, from the progressively louder cries in the background to the comments by the brainwashed cultists about how excited they are about committing mass suicide. Not recommended for those with a weak stomach.
Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5
* Not.
Man…that’s a hard pill to swallow. People can be so screwed up. (Haven’t listened, and probably won’t…)
On the topic of suicide, I recently re-read one of the most personally influential essays I’ve ever read. I think I’ve told you about it before, but it’s about Islam and the threat that it poses to civilization. Another hard pill to swallow.
http://www.dansimmons.com/news/message/2006_05.htm
I quote:
“The innocents who must die mean nothing—literally nothing—to the 9/11 hijackers or to the suicide bombers in Palestine or in Iraq or to the Al Qaeda operatives planning the next bombing in Madrid or London or elsewhere. It is their martyrdom—their magical transformation and their immediate ascendance into paradise—that is first and last in their minds, even unto the moment of impact or detonation, and if the Caliphate just happens to be restored through the transformative magic of their martyrdom or the Cause of destroying and supplanting Israel incidentally furthered, so much the better.
…
But in the fantasy ideology of radical Islam, suicide plays an absolutely indispensable role. It is not a means to an end but an end in itself. Seen through the distorting prism of of radical Islam, the act of suicide is transformed into the act of martyrdom— martyrdom in all its transcendent glory and accompanied by the panoply of magical powers that religious tradition has always assigned to it.”
Ahh, Dan Simmons. Definitely going to sit down and read through that one next chance I get. From your quotes though, it sounds like Simmons is of one mind with what Sam Harris has to say about radical Islam. Not to turn this into an atheism pitch, but Harris discusses this topic quite a bit in his latest book:
http://www.samharris.org/site/book_end_of_faith/
Or if you’re looking for a slightly more distilled format, there’s a great talk he gave on this topic a while back:
http://fora.tv/2007/07/04/Clash_Between_Faith_and_Reason