{"id":4609,"date":"2019-11-18T22:30:48","date_gmt":"2019-11-18T22:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=4609"},"modified":"2019-11-19T03:30:16","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T03:30:16","slug":"word-of-the-day-crepuscular","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2019\/11\/18\/word-of-the-day-crepuscular\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Crepuscular"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Crepuscular<\/em> is a\nreally interesting sounding word. It sounds like it should be related to shell\nfish or human musculature or something like that. But this word, the New York\nTimes Word of the Day for today, actually means \u201cof, relating to, or resembling\ntwilight; dim; indistinct.\u201d There is, however, a zoological definition: \u201cappearing\nor active in the twilight, as certain bats and insects\u201d (https:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/browse\/crepuscular?s=t<\/a>).\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to www.etymonline.com<\/a>,\ncrepuscular in the figurative meaning of \u201cdim\u201d or \u201cobscure\u201d is evident in the\nlanguage in the 1660s, but the more precise definition doesn\u2019t come until the\n18th<\/sup> century: \u201cfrom Latin crepusculum<\/em>\n\u2018twilight, dusk,\u2019 related to creper<\/em> \u2018obscure,\nuncertain,\u2019 from Proto-Italic *krepos<\/strong>\n\u2018twilight,\u2019 which is of uncertain origin. It is not certain whether \u2018twilight\u2019\nor \u2018obscure\u2019 was the original sense; de Vaan writes, \u2018there is no known root of\nthe form *krep<\/strong>– from which the\nextant meanings can be derived\u2019” (https:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/search?q=crepuscular<\/a>).\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this date 41 years ago, 909 people lost their lives in the\nJonestown suicide\/murder. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The People\u2019s Temple was a cult established by Jim Jones. The\ncult started in Indianapolis in 1955. After about 10 years, Jones moved the group\nto Redwood Valley, CA, and he eventually opened branches in San Francisco and\nLos Angeles. Jones eventually moved the headquarters of the cult to San\nFrancisco, where he and his followers became more involved politically. They\nhelped George Moscone get elected mayor of San Fracisco, and Moscone paid Jones\nback by appointing him to be chairman of the S.F. Housing Authority. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite his being a cult leader, Jones had numerous\ninfluential and mainstream friends, including Walter Mondale, Rosalynn Carter,\nand Willie Brown (an assembly member in California now most famous for\npromoting the career of Kamala Harris [in exchange for certain favors,\napparently]). But several members of the cult defected, and Jones and his group\nstarted to get some negative publicity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jones decided that he needed to move his cult out of the\ncountry, so he visited Guyana, on the Northeast coast of South America. It was\nabout 3800 acres, but the land was not very good and it was quite removed from\na large body of water. Despite the obstacles, the People\u2019s Temple began\nconstructing their own little paradise on earth. Jones and hundreds of his\nfollowers made the move to the People\u2019s Temple Agricultural Project, or\nJonestown, in 1977. The idea was to escape the investigations being performed\nby journalists into the cult\u2019s activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leo Ryan, the Congressional representative from California\u2019s\n11th<\/sup> district (near San Francisco), began his own investigation into\nthe People\u2019s Temple, even going so far as to visiting Jonestown in Guyana. Leo\nRyan was murdered for his efforts. This disaster led to the mass suicide of the\nmembers of the People\u2019s Temple who had remained in Jonestown. Of course, it was\nnot all suicide. There were many children, including babies, who could not have\ndrunk from the big vat of poison prepared by the Jonestown leaders. The vat\ncontained grape Flavor Aid laced with a variety of chemicals. Indeed, from that\nsuicide we derive the phrase, \u201cdrink the Kool-Aid,\u201d though it is hardly fair to\nKool-Aid. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s what a lot of people don\u2019t remember about this\nhorrible experience. The People\u2019s Temple was not a Christian or even a\nreligious cult. It was a socialist cult, even a communist cult. Guyana was\nchosen in part because at the time it was a socialism nature. Jones even said\nin an interview: \u201cI believe we\u2019re the purest communists there are\u201d (https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=27298<\/a>).\nThree members of the cult escaped the mass murder\/suicide and delivered over\nhalf a million dollars and note to the Soviet embassy in Guyana, which read, \u201cThe\nfollowing is a letter of instructions regarding all of our assets that we want\nto leave to the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.\nEnclosed in this letter are letters which instruct the banks to send the\ncashiers checks to you. I am doing this on behalf of Peoples Temple because we,\nas communists, want our money to be of benefit for help to oppressed peoples\nall over the world, or in any way that your decision-making body sees fit\u201d (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jonestown#cite_note-q050-37<\/a>).\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, here is some speculation. I\u2019m guessing that Jim Jones\ngenuinely believed that he was called upon to build a better world. He just\nchose the wrong philosophy, a philosophy of control and manipulation rather\nthan one of freedom and self-responsibility. But many leaders are like that,\nthough most of them are not as extreme as Jones was. Still, leaders who believe\nthat they are so wise and so good that whatever they say is right are truly\ndangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It doesn\u2019t matter whether such leaders, who believe all that\nthey do is right and that anyone who disagrees with them is evil, \u201cthe voice of\nSatan,\u201d one might say, are dictators, presidents, cult leaders, or even the\ncollege administrators. Such leaders as these will take the people who follow\nthem into a crepuscular world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The image is from an account of Jim Jones\u2019s visit to Castro\u2019s\nCuba where he met Huey P. Newton, the author of Revolutionary Suicide<\/em> (https:\/\/www.conservapedia.com\/Jim_Jones<\/a>).\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Crepuscular is a really interesting sounding word. It sounds like it should be related to shell fish or human musculature or something like that. But this word, the New York […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4610,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4609"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4611,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4609\/revisions\/4611"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}