“Don’t drink the Kool-Aid!”
Forty years ago, this expression became known as a description of blind obedience. Source: Los Angeles Times On November 18, 1978, members of Peoples Temple, a cult group in Guyana, drank Kool-Aid drink laced with cyanide to commit a mass suicide “at the behest of their charismatic but paranoid leader, Jim Jones”. [1] According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica , “The death toll exceeded 900, including some 300 age 17 and under, making the incident one of the largest mass deaths in American history. ” [2] What made those people submit to such atrocity? According to Stella Morabito, a senior contributor to The Federalist online magazine, Peoples Temple is “Exhibit A… [of] the dangers of the cult mindset or how vulnerable all people are to cult tactics.” [3] She pointed out that, Coercive persuasion has immense power to shape and twist the human mind. …[Jones’] utopian preaching of a humane world in which all ...