Culture Notes

Cults and the new media

The mass suicide of 39 members of the Higher Source cult in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., demonstrates how the new information media can be abused. The group, which raised money by designing websites and offering other computer services, had a substantial presence on the Internet. The "Heaven's Gate" website served as a publishing center, bulletin board, and outreach tool. Most disturbingly, the cult apparently recruited new members by posting links to the website on Internet bulletin boards for child-abuse victims and people struggling with depression. Such troubled souls, apparently considered prime targets for membership in the New Age UFO cult, only had to click on a keyword and they would find themselves at "Heaven's Gate." Another part was played by talk radio. In a discussion of the Hale-Bopp comet, late night radio talk show host Art Bell received a call from a Houston UFOologist who claimed that he had photographed a large object with Saturn-like rings flying behind the comet. Immediately, the talk show and internet discussion groups were buzzing with the news about a genuine alien spaceship and the government's attempt to keep it secret. Astronomers responded to the circulating photographs by pointing out that they simply showed a star photographed with the "diffractive effect" normally filtered out by professional-quality telescopes. But to members of the Higher Source, led by 72-year-old Marshall Applewhite, who claimed to be an alien, the news was a theological catalyst. The long-awaited spaceship was finally coming for them. It was time to leave their "human containers"--that is, their bodies--and rejoin the mothership. This they thought they were doing by swallowing phenobarbital and vodka and putting plastic bags over their heads. With all of the access to vast amounts of information opened up by the new media, this gruesome event shows that discernment has failed to keep pace.