Making Sense - Sam Harris - March 25, 2015


#7 — Through the Eyes of a Cult


Episode Stats

Length

11 minutes

Words per Minute

144.46748

Word Count

1,649

Sentence Count

84

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary

In this episode, I talk about cults, mostly about the cults that have been around for a while: Heaven's Gate and Scientology. And why it's so fascinating to see members of these cults leave their final testimony on why they did what they did, and why it matters so much to the rest of the world. I also talk about the tragic story of the Heavings Gate cult, and how they tried to cover up their crimes in order to keep their members happy and secure in their cult-like beliefs. And how they managed to do so in spite of the fact that they were responsible for one of the worst mass suicides in U.S. history, in which 39 members, including the chief member, Marshall Applewhite, who was known as Doe, took their lives in a mansion near San Diego. And I think we can learn a thing or two about why cults are so important to the world, and what it really means to be a member of one. And why you should pay attention to the people who lived in isolation, who lived under a crazy project, who are under the sway of crazy ideas, and who are obviously under the total control of crazy people who are depriving themselves of their whole life of a total and complete freedom which is what cults really are, on its face is a project which is hard to live up to in the eyes of the public. . We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our listeners. Please consider becoming a supporter of what we're doing here, by becoming a patron of the podcast. You'll get access to all sorts of great shows, including The Making Sense Podcast. and much more! and all kinds of great resources that help make the world a better place to make sense of the things we can all live in the world we're all living in the best way we can be better together, not just better, not better, better, more of a place to be better, and more of us all together, more like a better, we're making sense of things we're talking about things we all can all of us are making sense, more together, and we're better together. -Sam Harris Sam Harris is a writer, and I hope you enjoy what we re doing, not less of it, and it makes you think about it, not more of it. Thank you for listening.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.
00:00:08.980 This is Sam Harris.
00:00:11.040 Just a note to say that if you're hearing this,
00:00:13.180 you are not currently on our subscriber feed
00:00:15.300 and will only be hearing the first part of this conversation.
00:00:18.380 In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense Podcast,
00:00:21.620 you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org.
00:00:24.280 There you'll find our private RSS feed
00:00:26.100 to add to your favorite podcatcher,
00:00:28.120 along with other subscriber-only content.
00:00:30.700 We don't run ads on the podcast,
00:00:32.540 and therefore it's made possible entirely
00:00:34.080 through the support of our subscribers.
00:00:35.960 So if you enjoy what we're doing here,
00:00:37.820 please consider becoming one.
00:00:46.700 Today I'm going to talk about cults, mostly.
00:00:50.120 I've been in a cultish frame of mind in the last week,
00:00:53.660 getting over bronchitis,
00:00:54.960 so my apologies for my voice being even raspier than it usually is.
00:00:58.920 But I've been paying attention to cults for some reason,
00:01:03.400 and I've focused on two cults that have been around for a while,
00:01:06.900 Heaven's Gate and Scientology.
00:01:10.000 I recently saw the film Going Clear,
00:01:12.800 based on Lawrence Wright's book by that name.
00:01:15.780 And the book is well worth reading.
00:01:18.460 The film is really a devastating takedown of Scientology.
00:01:22.080 I can't imagine it won't do the organization lasting harm
00:01:26.180 if enough people see it.
00:01:28.460 It just exposes how goofy L. Ron Hubbard was
00:01:32.480 and how sinister his organization soon became
00:01:36.260 under him and his successors.
00:01:37.780 So I do see that film.
00:01:40.040 It's playing on HBO and had some theatrical release as well.
00:01:44.260 But I've mostly been thinking about the Heaven's Gate cult,
00:01:47.300 which, as you might recall, about 18 years ago,
00:01:50.620 came to the world's attention because 39 members,
00:01:53.640 including the chief member, a man named Marshall Applewhite,
00:01:57.100 who was known as Doe to his devotees,
00:02:00.020 all took their lives in a mansion near San Diego.
00:02:03.960 They all donned identical pairs of Nikes
00:02:06.960 and drank a cocktail of phenobarbital and vodka, I believe,
00:02:12.920 and then got in their bunk beds
00:02:14.780 and covered themselves with purple shrouds
00:02:17.280 and departed, they imagined,
00:02:20.620 for a spaceship that was following in the tail
00:02:25.340 of the comet Hale-Bopp.
00:02:27.800 So this was a rather horrifying and peculiar news item.
00:02:32.080 I think it remains the largest mass suicide in U.S. history,
00:02:36.480 although I recall my reaction to it at the time
00:02:39.200 was a little bit less than reverential.
00:02:42.560 I remember sitting on my couch watching this first footage
00:02:46.180 that came out of this house of everyone in their bunk beds
00:02:49.300 with their Nikes and hearing the voiceover announcer say,
00:02:54.780 and in their freezer they had nothing but quart after quart
00:02:59.140 of Starbucks java chip ice cream.
00:03:02.060 And I remember sitting on my couch alone
00:03:04.640 and saying out loud to myself,
00:03:08.180 wait a minute, Starbucks makes ice cream?
00:03:12.460 And then I leapt to my feet
00:03:14.580 and drove straight to the supermarket
00:03:17.040 and bought some Starbucks java chip ice cream.
00:03:19.940 So I guess we all draw from certain tragedies
00:03:25.200 the lessons we need at the time.
00:03:28.620 Obviously I've become more sympathetic
00:03:30.360 with the plight of these people in the intervening years
00:03:32.700 and more interested in the phenomenon of cults
00:03:36.020 and have drawn other lessons from this one.
00:03:39.460 In any case, the most fascinating thing about Heaven's Gate
00:03:42.540 is that the members of this class, as they called it,
00:03:46.060 left final video testimonies as to why they were doing
00:03:50.240 what they were doing
00:03:51.100 and how satisfied they were to be doing it.
00:03:54.760 And this is, of course, analogous to the video testimonies
00:03:57.440 one often gets from jihadist suicide bombers.
00:04:00.520 But these were people who were really aware
00:04:04.160 of how inscrutable their behavior was going to seem
00:04:07.260 to their loved ones and to the rest of the society
00:04:09.880 in which they were living.
00:04:10.620 And they really made their best effort
00:04:12.760 to defend their actions, if not explain them,
00:04:17.460 and to simply bear witness
00:04:19.560 or demand that the world bear witness
00:04:22.280 to the psychological fact
00:04:23.840 that they were absolutely unconflicted
00:04:25.920 in doing what they were doing.
00:04:28.060 They just felt immense gratitude
00:04:30.640 for the experience of living for decades
00:04:33.100 with their other cult members
00:04:34.320 with whom they had formed an obvious bond,
00:04:37.200 and for the guidance of Doe and Ti,
00:04:41.840 the woman who had been his partner
00:04:43.840 who had died a decade earlier.
00:04:46.560 And these were people who, for the most part,
00:04:49.420 were clearly happy
00:04:51.020 and approaching their deaths
00:04:53.780 with genuine enthusiasm.
00:04:56.840 They were gleeful about the prospect
00:04:59.860 of departing this world
00:05:02.640 and arriving elsewhere in the galaxy.
00:05:05.820 So these videos are really an amazing document,
00:05:10.380 and I was tempted to put some audio
00:05:12.520 in this podcast,
00:05:14.980 but there really is no substitute
00:05:16.580 for seeing the videos themselves,
00:05:18.460 so I will embed those on my blog.
00:05:21.420 And there's about two hours of video.
00:05:24.280 There's additional hours of Doe himself
00:05:26.700 giving his final testimony,
00:05:29.220 and that's also fascinating to watch.
00:05:31.080 But the videos of the cult members
00:05:34.120 are really profoundly strange
00:05:37.100 and unnerving
00:05:38.480 when you see just how sanguine they are
00:05:42.560 about their whole project,
00:05:44.880 which is, you know, on its face,
00:05:47.340 really the most profligate misuse
00:05:49.260 of human life imaginable.
00:05:50.680 These are people who lived
00:05:51.880 in total isolation for decades
00:05:55.380 under the sway of obviously crazy ideas,
00:06:00.220 depriving themselves
00:06:01.160 of most of life's experience.
00:06:03.900 And these are people
00:06:05.120 who had abandoned children,
00:06:07.320 they had abandoned
00:06:07.960 the rest of their families,
00:06:10.480 and abandoned every other human project
00:06:14.460 that we might deem worthy
00:06:15.760 of a person's attention and energy,
00:06:17.240 and then killed themselves
00:06:19.780 in the most carefree state of mind.
00:06:23.220 And it was entirely the result
00:06:25.100 of what they believed
00:06:26.040 about the nature of the soul,
00:06:28.080 about the nature of the kingdom of heaven,
00:06:29.860 about the hideous condition of the world,
00:06:32.460 and about the coming apocalypse
00:06:34.600 that Doe assured them was imminent,
00:06:38.740 and that this represented
00:06:41.020 their last chance
00:06:42.580 to migrate to the kingdom of heaven.
00:06:45.680 And if they didn't seize it now,
00:06:47.480 everything would be lost.
00:06:49.240 So these videos really are quite unique,
00:06:52.100 and above all,
00:06:53.040 they offer an insight
00:06:54.160 into just what it's like
00:06:56.640 to be totally convinced of paradise.
00:07:00.120 The most shocking thing about this,
00:07:04.060 well, there are a few things.
00:07:04.820 One is the undeniable fact
00:07:07.480 that most of these people
00:07:09.880 were clearly happy
00:07:12.000 in some basic sense.
00:07:13.840 You struggle to detect
00:07:17.020 in their faces
00:07:18.360 and in their deliveries
00:07:19.920 some clue
00:07:21.580 to their deeper psychopathology.
00:07:25.300 And in many cases,
00:07:26.680 I think you will come up
00:07:28.840 entirely empty.
00:07:29.920 Now, these people
00:07:30.640 bear all the signs
00:07:32.240 of having spent in,
00:07:33.760 as most of them had,
00:07:35.620 20-plus years
00:07:36.900 living in total isolation
00:07:38.840 from the world.
00:07:40.240 Most of these people
00:07:40.900 had been part of this cult
00:07:41.920 since the mid-70s.
00:07:43.840 And this was in 1997
00:07:46.300 that they killed themselves.
00:07:48.400 They all wore identical,
00:07:50.120 terrible haircuts
00:07:52.060 and all had androgynous clothing
00:07:55.360 that they buttoned up to the neck.
00:07:57.460 I believe they shared
00:07:59.060 all their clothing in common,
00:08:00.680 including underwear.
00:08:01.460 So they had a dogma
00:08:03.420 of non-attachment
00:08:04.800 that was operating here
00:08:05.980 that led to a kind of
00:08:08.160 self-effacement
00:08:09.120 at the level
00:08:10.000 of their presentation.
00:08:11.280 They all wore
00:08:12.060 equally terrible eyeglasses,
00:08:14.420 those who needed them.
00:08:15.700 Like they all wandered
00:08:16.560 into a lens crafters
00:08:17.680 and just asked
00:08:18.460 for the worst pair of glasses
00:08:19.820 that could possibly be
00:08:20.960 pulled out of the box.
00:08:22.800 So there's something
00:08:24.060 about these people.
00:08:24.840 They are misfits
00:08:25.860 of a sort.
00:08:26.540 And it's tempting
00:08:28.580 to imagine
00:08:30.040 that they were
00:08:31.040 socially marginalized
00:08:32.160 to a degree
00:08:33.240 that somehow explains
00:08:34.460 how they were recruited
00:08:36.360 into this circumstance
00:08:37.500 and therefore
00:08:38.180 how they met their end.
00:08:39.740 But that's not to say
00:08:41.460 that these
00:08:42.540 aren't
00:08:43.420 happy,
00:08:44.480 intelligent,
00:08:45.500 relatively high-functioning
00:08:47.200 people
00:08:47.560 who could have succeeded
00:08:49.460 in other contexts
00:08:50.880 in life.
00:08:51.360 and I think
00:08:52.680 that's to some degree
00:08:53.780 obviously true
00:08:54.740 of some of them.
00:08:56.160 One thing is clear
00:08:57.480 that many of these people
00:08:58.860 were parents
00:08:59.600 who entirely
00:09:01.580 abandoned
00:09:02.220 their children
00:09:03.140 to join
00:09:04.140 Doe and Ti
00:09:05.040 and submit their lives
00:09:07.180 to this experiment,
00:09:09.000 which
00:09:09.320 when you look
00:09:10.980 at the details
00:09:11.900 is rather shocking
00:09:13.520 to consider.
00:09:14.140 It's shocking
00:09:14.640 especially because
00:09:16.280 when you listen
00:09:18.320 to the teachings
00:09:19.040 of Doe,
00:09:19.880 you can also
00:09:20.580 watch
00:09:21.460 hours of video
00:09:22.580 where he describes
00:09:24.500 all that he knows
00:09:26.260 about the workings
00:09:27.020 of the universe.
00:09:28.480 Some of this video,
00:09:29.360 at least an hour of it,
00:09:30.260 is his final testament
00:09:32.080 given
00:09:32.520 with the full knowledge
00:09:33.680 that they're going
00:09:34.100 to commit suicide
00:09:34.680 in the coming days.
00:09:36.240 And in watching
00:09:36.980 Doe's performance here,
00:09:38.860 I think you'll also
00:09:39.760 look in vain
00:09:41.540 for an obvious reason
00:09:43.880 why people would give
00:09:45.560 their lives over
00:09:46.640 to this man.
00:09:48.080 A few things
00:09:48.720 are conspicuous.
00:09:49.620 One is
00:09:50.320 the total absence
00:09:52.900 of compelling
00:09:55.040 intellectual content.
00:09:56.640 This is not
00:09:57.340 a brilliant person.
00:09:59.600 He's not
00:10:00.180 bowling you over
00:10:01.400 with his ability
00:10:03.180 to connect ideas
00:10:05.520 or to turn phrases.
00:10:08.260 The only clue
00:10:09.220 to his powers
00:10:10.660 of mesmerism
00:10:11.500 is his quality
00:10:13.660 of eye contact,
00:10:14.700 which,
00:10:15.400 as I discussed
00:10:16.060 at one point
00:10:16.860 in my book
00:10:17.320 Waking Up,
00:10:17.900 is a feature
00:10:19.140 you find
00:10:19.940 in gurus
00:10:21.420 in general
00:10:22.360 and in people
00:10:23.120 who are making
00:10:23.600 heroic efforts
00:10:24.560 to persuade.
00:10:26.220 And in Doe,
00:10:27.100 this is conspicuous.
00:10:28.520 The man rarely blinks.
00:10:30.340 He's looking at
00:10:31.140 a camera lens
00:10:32.340 for this video,
00:10:33.240 but one can well imagine
00:10:34.240 that this is the style
00:10:35.180 of eye contact
00:10:36.380 he used
00:10:37.080 when talking
00:10:37.700 to people directly.
00:10:39.000 Maybe I'll offer
00:10:39.840 a brief digression
00:10:40.880 on this topic.
00:10:41.640 There's actually
00:10:42.080 a section in my book
00:10:43.160 Waking Up
00:10:43.700 where I talk
00:10:44.180 about eye contact
00:10:45.060 and I'll just
00:10:46.840 read it to you.
00:10:48.160 A person's eyes
00:10:49.060 convey a powerful
00:10:50.100 illusion of inner life.
00:10:51.900 The illusion is true,
00:10:53.140 but it is an illusion
00:10:53.960 all the same.
00:11:00.160 If you'd like
00:11:00.820 to continue listening
00:11:01.540 to this conversation,
00:11:02.840 you'll need to subscribe
00:11:03.760 at SamHarris.org.
00:11:05.580 Once you do,
00:11:06.300 you'll get access
00:11:06.800 to all full-length episodes
00:11:08.080 of the Making Sense podcast,
00:11:09.760 along with other
00:11:10.320 subscriber-only content,
00:11:11.520 including bonus episodes
00:11:13.360 and AMAs
00:11:14.440 and the conversations
00:11:15.480 I've been having
00:11:16.060 on the Waking Up app.
00:11:17.620 The Making Sense podcast
00:11:18.520 is ad-free
00:11:19.380 and relies entirely
00:11:20.780 on listener support.
00:11:22.260 And you can subscribe now
00:11:23.440 at SamHarris.org.