{"id":93791,"date":"2019-12-31T15:30:17","date_gmt":"2019-12-31T23:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=93791"},"modified":"2019-12-31T15:35:02","modified_gmt":"2019-12-31T23:35:02","slug":"lines-strings-finding-goodness","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=93791","title":{"rendered":"Lines & Strings: Finding Goodness"},"content":{"rendered":"

(This\u00a0blogpost<\/a>\u00a0by Kelly Lavoie was originally published on October 23, 2019, and is reprinted with permission.)<\/em><\/p>\n

In\u00a0a previous article<\/a>\u00a0that I wrote about Jonestown, I honed in on the \u201cAnonymous Letter,\u201d the suicide note thought to have been penned by Richard Tropp during his final moments before taking the poison. I was exasperated with him for the poetic, peaceful images his words evoked. I felt that he was fooling himself. I felt that he wanted to fool future readers; readers like me.<\/p>\n

While working on a term paper for a class (if you know me at all, you won\u2019t be surprised that I\u2019ve incorporated Jonestown into my academic pursuits) I came across\u00a0another letter written by Tropp<\/a>. This one did not exasperate me. This one is giving me that tender feeling that seems impossible to have for someone who had a hand in harming all of those innocents.<\/p>\n

Why, you ask? (Yes, I know no one asked, but I\u2019m going to explain it anyway.) After a lot of reading, writing, talking, and listening, I\u2019ve started to formulate a hypothesis of sorts (disclaimer \u2013 I could be off base, obviously, since I was not there. I was about negative-8 years old when all of this happened<\/em>): that\u00a0most <\/em>people in Jim Jones\u2019 direct orbit were well aware that there was a problem with him \u2013 not just a few. When looking deeper, it seems to me that there wasn\u2019t so much a dichotomy of loyalists versus defectors, but different ways of addressing a problem \u2013 that problem being Jim Jones\u2019 behavior and mental state. Some thought the way to deal with the problem was to go out into the open with it; talk to the media, try to use the law. Others thought it was more prudent to try to finesse the situation without making waves\u2026and without abandoning the settlement in Guyana. I think that the latter was a major factor for a lot of the people who earnestly wanted Jonestown to become successful. So they tried to subtly influence the situation where they could. There is more evidence of this than just the letter that I am referring to now, but\u2026<\/p>\n

Back to Richard Tropp. I believe that is exactly what he is attempting to do in this letter. He\u2019s trying to weave a logical web for Jones without directly criticizing anything.<\/p>\n

The more \u2018secretive\u2019 we need to be, the more vulnerable we are to \u2018defectors.\u2019 If our structure is more able to be\u00a0publicly\u00a0examined, then we are less vulnerable. Suppose we had to function AS IF there were \u2018guests\u2019 here among us\u00a0all the time? What would we have to change in our\u00a0public\u00a0functioning in order for the guests to be able to see it all and not be shocked or feel we are \u2018bizarre?\u2019<\/p>\n

Once we are able to\u00a0modify\u00a0our public functioning so that it would not risk divulging our secret practices, etc., then we would be much safer\u2026But this will still\u00a0not\u00a0keep us from functioning as we need to, I feel. We need to maintain a significant measure of PRIVATE secrecy about our plans, beliefs, functioning. Such \u2018private secrecy\u2019 is\u00a0not\u00a0observable by any guests, and is not manifest in the day to day life of the community, the\u00a0observable, ostensible\u00a0way we conduct our affairs.<\/p>\n

I think it is significant that the first thing that was mentioned in yesterday\u2019s meeting was immediate dismantling of the \u201cboxes\u201d or isolation units. This is precisely what I mean \u2013 we need to do a lot of this sort of modification. Outsiders should be able to walk around the project, observe meetings, etc. I personally think we are too finicky about the conditions here. Even the housing situation, while overcrowded, is not outlandish or inexplicable. In fact, given what we\u2019re trying to do, it\u2019s quite understandible [understandable] and can be justified.<\/p>\n

As you said at the end of the meeting, we need to function on a \u2018day by day\u2019 basis. While this is true, I think that without\u00a0a sense of a possible future, it\u2019s going to be hard to build in the necessary motivation for achieveing [achieving] production goals for the community.<\/p>\n

Finally, again, it will provide a kind of psychological balance for the effect of white nights on the kids \u2013 they will develop the determination to sacrifice for the collective, but also have the accompanying sense that we are\u00a0building\u00a0something, and not just going from one day to the next. I\u2019m afraid that if we don\u2019t do this, many of the young people will be confused about what they will sacrifice their lives for, though maybe here I\u2019m too short-sighted.<\/p>\n

Memo from Richard Tropp, May 1978<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Upon reading this letter, I was struck with the sense that Richard was trying to make a case for 1.) ceasing several of the negative\/abusive activities that went on at Jonestown, and 2.) planning for the future, i.e. not dying. He was trying to make that case to a very sick and paranoid individual, carefully. He couldn\u2019t sound\u00a0too<\/em>\u00a0critical, and he couldn\u2019t sound like he was hanging on to the idea of living\u00a0too<\/em>\u00a0hard, or there would be zero chance that Jones would accept anything he said. This was written just months before the deaths, and Richard was clearly not ready to die.<\/p>\n

Richard\u2019s ideas here were good, in my opinion, if it meant stopping the abuse. If I\u2019d been there, I wouldn\u2019t care so much how it was framed when presented to Jones, as long as the right actions were being taken. I really don\u2019t think anyone back in the U.S. would care much about how Jonestown looked, either; what would always be an issue would be abuse, or anyone being kept there when they wanted to leave. People may have had opinions on the housing and work hours, but if residents were free to go, I do not think it would have been a problem, ultimately. But, tragically, the subtle path couldn\u2019t withstand the kinetic volatility of what was to come.<\/p>\n

So\u2026reading between the lines of this letter, I\u2019ve found some compassion for the likely author of the \u201cAnonymous Letter\u201d that originally pissed me off so much. All because of researching for my discourse analysis term paper. Believe it or not, academia can get you \u201call in your feelings\u201d sometimes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(This\u00a0blogpost\u00a0by Kelly Lavoie was originally published on October 23, 2019, and is reprinted with permission.) In\u00a0a previous article\u00a0that I wrote about Jonestown, I honed in on the \u201cAnonymous Letter,\u201d the suicide note thought to have been penned by Richard Tropp during his final moments before taking the poison. I was exasperated with him for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":89456,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-93791","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/93791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=93791"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/93791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93796,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/93791\/revisions\/93796"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/89456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}