The Shawshank Redemption And Exploring The Espoused Values...

After viewing the film The Shawshank Redemption and exploring the espoused values of the religion inside the prison, and how the leaders proclaimed to stand for certain beliefs but their actions counteracted that, then exposing a system of oppression. I was encouraged to think about groups that display a false sense of kindness but are manipulative in their actions. Gloriavale is a religious community in New Zealand that claims to stand for God and proclaim to be goodness and light. However they in reality, the leaders of the group use their religion to oppress a community of people. These ideas lead me to explore cults. I have always had the perception of cults as being shady, underground groups of people chanting manically and performing†¦show more content†¦This group fits the definition of a cult perfectly, they were a small select group of people with beliefs that were to the rest of the world, outlandish and strange. They also became dangerous after the leader, Marshal l Applewhite, told them that suicide was the only way to ascend to the spaceship awaiting them to take them to heaven. Not all cults are small groups for example the People s Temple more famously known as Jonestown, had just over 900 members. It was â€Å"a religious group based in California which moved to Guyana in the late 1970s to establish a communalistic utopia. This group became very dangerous as it caused the deaths of 918 people. Nine people died attempting to escape Jonestown including U.S. senator Rep. Leo Ryan, the remaining 909 died in Jonestown of either poisoning or were shot.† I personally was very shocked at how many people died and why it wasn’t investigated properly, the government had information that things were not as it seemed. Instead of investigating they sent senator Ryan, I believe that this was a huge mistake and perhaps if the matter was taken more seriously so many lives wouldn’t have been lost. It does also make me question whether this kind of neglect towards potentially dangerous cults is still occurring. There many methods that cults use to indoctrinate new members and to keep them devoted to the cause and