by Joe DeMartino
Watch the whole video on Network Awesome
If we’re very, very lucky -- and I’m talking here about the kind of luck that would get you rudely expelled from even the highest-class Las Vegas casino -- the star Betelgeuse, located 640 light years away from us in the top-left corner of the constellation Orion, will die within our lifetimes. Betelgeuse is much larger than our sun, which means that its lifespan is correspondingly shorter. Its death throes will manifest in a supernova -- a stellar explosion of such magnitude that it will put out apocalyptic amounts of light and energy. Stars operate on eonic timelines, so Betelgeuse could erupt in the next ten seconds, or the next hundred thousand years. If our luck holds, we’ll see it almost as a second sun -- it’ll rival the moon in the night sky. We’ll be able to read by its light. For a few brief months, Betelgeuse will put on an inspiring show.Most of us will stare at it and see something gorgeous. Others will be quietly terrified -- the heavens rarely speak unless to say something, and nothing good can come of a message sent through the death of another solar system. Still others will marvel for a day, until the wonder of the thing recedes into banality, long before the star itself dims.
For at least one person -- and I don’t yet know who that is, but I’ll near-guarantee he or she exists -- the supernova won’t be inspiring, or terrifying, or banal. It’ll be an excuse. Time to go. Time for everyone to go.
Marshall Applewhite -- slight, wide-eyed, with the calm conviction of an airline pilot -- saw his excuse in the comet Hale-Bopp, whose passing was perhaps the most widely-observed celestial event in human history. Applewhite’s cult, Heaven’s Gate, counted among its beliefs the idea that the Earth was
There’s a certain incongruity to modern cults. We’re not immune to superstition, but we like to believe that we’ll limit ourselves to things like horoscopes or palm-reading -- a little harmless indulgence for the part of the brain that can’t quite reconcile randomness and coincidence. They’re quirks at worst, entertainment at best. Cults upend that framework. The members of Heaven’s Gate were true believers in Applewhite’s sci-fi theology, to the point where several of them actually had themselves castrated* in imitation of him. You can see Applewhite’s conviction in video messages several of these members recorded before their suicides -- they unblinkingly refer to their bodies as “vehicles”, make awkward little jokes, and give you the impression that they’re really, really looking forward to killing themselves.
* It’s probably significant that, out of every other detail about the suicides, the castration (surgical, not chemical) comes up the most. It’s one thing to believe your body is a vehicle; quite another to lop off the stick shift.
It’s the awkward jokes that really get to me. Cults attract misfits. It’s rare for anyone to get involved in one, but a person even the slightest bit secure in his or her place in the world is not cult material. The members of Heaven’s Gate seem normal enough, but there’s a strain running through their testimonials that is heartbreaking. They’re just slightly off, different enough from the norm and unleavened by exceptional talent so that daily life must have been confusing and lonely. What do you do if you never asked to be born in the first place? Do you soldier on, trying to make a little place for yourself in a world that will forever look at you sideways? Or, as Applewhite’s 39 doomed followers did, do you search for kinship?
The members of Heaven’s Gate who are left -- the ones you’ll see in this documentary -- are insistent on referring to the cult as a class. This is instructive, as you don’t commit a complex mass suicide without a little bit of learning, but it also doesn’t quite tell the whole story. The word they meant to say was family.
We create little families everywhere we can--in our group of friends, our sports teams, our military units, or in church or camp or class. They seem to be a prerequisite for true happiness, because we retain large swathes of our DNA that scream at us to buddy up, to huddle around the fire with as many people as possible because the world seeks to harm us and the only way we can face it is with a united front. This is why the lone suicide is despondent, but the mass suicides seem to go with a degree of joy. You may be dying -- leaving this world on a premise that would seem absurd to anyone else -- but you’re dying with those you consider your own blood. Applewhite himself lost family after family before Heaven’s Gate; he was estranged from his children, fired from his job, and lost his confidante -- Heaven’s Gate’s co-founder Bonnie Nettles -- more than ten years before the suicides. Perhaps he wanted this one to end on his own monstrous terms.
I really do hope Betelgeuse goes off within my lifetime. I hope you see it too. I just know that, when it does happen, there will be an elder somewhere on this Earth who will behold it, turn to his flock, and say “My children. Rejoice. It’s time.”
Joe DeMartino is a Connecticut-based writer who grew up wanting to be Ted Williams, but you would not BELIEVE how hard it is to hit a baseball, so he gave that up because he writes words OK. He talks about exploding suns, video games, karaoke, and other cool shit at his blog. He can be emailed at [email protected] and tweeted at @thetoycannon. He writes about sports elsewhere. The sports sells better.
Sorry to go all Neil DeGrasse Tyson on your astrophysics, but...
If Betelgeuse blows up tomorrow, it'll take 640 years for the explosion to be seen on Earth. That's what the distance of 640 light-years is all about. For us to see the explosion tomorrow, it would have had to happen 640 years (give or take a day) ago.
Finally, all those childhood visits to the Hayden Planetarium come in handy.
Posted by: woid | January 27, 2013 at 05:31 AM
so what next????
Posted by: Abdulrahman M. Ghodayah | January 28, 2013 at 07:19 AM
Oh, no doubt. I probably should have made that clearer -- figured just mentioning the star's distance would be enough, but not everyone's literate in what a "light year" means.
Posted by: Joe | January 28, 2013 at 09:11 AM
Well, 640 light years or not, TIME as we know it on Earth is all that really matters for the discussion. "Tomorrow" refers to our perception of time, not Betelgeuse's. For example, Betelgeuse may have already gone supernova, or even went supernova 640 years ago, and we will see it tomorrow. It's not like we can travel to Betelgeuse instantly, we can't even travel at light speed, and if we could then time would have a very different meaning again. It is weird to talk about "now" as a constant throughout the universe; it is an ideal, it can't be experienced the same way "now" can be experienced by people on opposite coasts talking on the phone can experience "now" even though they are in different time zones.
You dig?
Posted by: Dr. Flarkey | January 28, 2013 at 11:15 AM
It might help if you actually knew what you were talking about before you started writing your poorly researched and self-aggrandizing piece. The HG group NEVER stated that they believed with ANY certainty that Hale-Bopp had a companion. The first sentence on their website (still up) states that whether or not Hale-Bopp had a companion was "irrelevant" to them but to this day every self-described writer with a keyboard at their disposal repeats the Hale-Bopp story as if it is the Gospel. You make a lot of judgments about them being "misfits" and "slightly off" as if you apparently are capable of determining what is "on" versus "off" and who is or isn't a misfit. People who call others misfits must not be very "secure" with themselves so they therefore have to place a label on someone who isn't like them just like teenagers do in their infinite wisdom. And what does "unleavened by exceptional talent" even mean? Besides a vehicle for stroking your own ego that is. If you had actually bothered to look into the backgrounds of these individuals rather than engaging in the prototypical and condescending assessment of them because they were part of HG you might actually find that many of them were quite successful by worldly standards. But most humans don't seem to feel "the least bit secure" in the world unless they pity and look down upon things that they have chosen to not understand. Arrogance and hubris will be the downfall of the many.
Posted by: Jared Incognito | January 29, 2013 at 03:07 AM
Hey Joe, I liked the article. Well written and not at all condescending or arrogant. And I don't think it's too big a stretch to say that people who join a suicide cult might be lonely misfits or "slightly off".
And thank goodness the internet offers a place to write anonymous comments about other people's work so that angry jerks have a place to vent their hair-trigger rage!
Have a great day.
Posted by: Zachary George | January 29, 2013 at 02:49 PM
Read best while listening to Vangelis' "Cosmos Theme."
Posted by: mr. mike | January 29, 2013 at 08:28 PM
For further interesting tangents on the subject at hand one might like to read "Truckin' with the Grateful Dead to Egypt" by Robert Nichols and then do a little research on the author. Everyone have a great soundcheck!
Posted by: Chadwick | February 05, 2013 at 02:09 AM
I used to have a copy of this tape on vhs many year ago '96. Made for a terrorizing party tape to be sure. Loved the article Ted don't be taken in by these blowhards trying to bring you down a peg. Its the internet.
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