"Kingdom of Heaven"

How members of a Kingdom of Heaven were thought to appear.

Now that we have a clearer sense of Heaven's Gate in relation to the Internet, we can better look at what the group and their tragic end might tell us about ourselves as people who use the Net, better known as "users," and perhaps as members of cyberculture. Do we become, as if by default, "cybercultists"? As one of the popular jokes going around on the Net would have it, what are the top ten signs that you've become "one of them," or an Internet addict, or whatever other negative spin that can be placed on life online?

• Are we, as Heaven's Gate would have it, doomed?

• Are we, as some sectors of the mainstream media might have it, weird? Alienated? Lacking in social skills?

• Is cyberspace our electronic Kingdom of Heaven?

• Could Heaven's Gate happen again?

• If you are a parent and have a child who spends time online, how might you feel about Heaven's Gate?

• Does Heaven's Gate point up the dangers and risks of Western society's increasingly reliance on technology?

  
  

For instance, many people believe to some extent in astrology (and it's worth noting that Bonnie Nettles was an astrologer). The stars, then, are thought to portend the future at least somewhat for many of us. From this standpoint, the Heaven's Gate cult members may be seen as taking their belief in the stars and reading cosmic signs to an extreme, but they aren't that different from many of us, just further out on the continuum. And given their predilection for UFOs and science fiction, they may have been more astute observers of the nighttime sky than many of us. The cult members, however wrongheaded or superstitious, obviously deeply wanted to find an or The Answer in the heavens.

• Do you have a gut-level feeling that the appearance of Hale-Bopp signifies something cosmic?

• Does the idea that we're approaching the year 2000 fill you with awe or apprehension?

• Do you feel hopeful or gloomy at the idea of a New Age?

• Do you think that Heaven's Gate may be part of a turn of the century or millennial movement?