Had a conversation today that put me in mind of this post I wrote. Like in that one, this one has to contain ableist language, but hopefully not be seen as an endorsement of such, or an invitation to do that in my comment section. In fact, read that post first, because I don’t wanna repeat the same junk. Long story short, what if the things we rate as cognitive deficits and malfunctions are vastly vastly more commonplace than we assume? What if, as an emotionally stable person without any major risk of delusions, you were in a minority? Can we sane few right the world gone mad? Can we steer this ship of fools unto the safe harbor of sanity?
Nope. There are no cures for most of what can ail a mind, just a life of care and carefulness. Assuming we are even fortunate enough to know how bonkers we are. A lot of people who are walking around assuming they are fairly normal or similar to others, not susceptible to delusions, are one weird day away from joining a cult and giving their lives over to it. One moment away from being told “the truth” on a facebook post and forever thinking something that would make a gullible child look twice.
Atrocity Guide on yewchoob has a video about a cult that includes interviews with an ex-member who got out and is doing well. Nice. But what happened? At a seminar the cult leader gave, he saw a golden light radiating from the man. The deeper he got into it, the more impossible things he bore witness to. And yet, on the other side, he realized those were all hallucinations, provoked through the power of suggestion. Hearing this sensible guy say these things, you have to wonder, could it happen to me?
If it’s never happened to you before, well, probably not. I think some people just have wild imaginations, or are more prone to influence. But who knows? Also, as you age, who is to say how your faculties might change? As an atheistical type, formerly of the fiery brand, I used to imagine we could eliminate magical thinking from the world by getting everybody hip to philosophical materialism. The holes in the logic of religion are trivially easy to point out, to talk under the table.
But nobody is impervious to bullshit, and it’s so pervasive in the world that it deforms the perception of reality on an everyday basis for vast swathes of humanity. They’ll never buy reality because the fantasy everybody around them was taught every day forever just feels more correct, in their hearts. Words to the contrary, they just sound like silly noises. Maybe they don’t have the exact words to argue against you in the moment, but they’re sure somebody smarter in the faith, some preacher would be able to get you to see the light. Because they have the same point of view as I do, at the end of the day. Their truth is so obviously self-evident, it doesn’t need a rationale. You don’t see me doing atheist apologetics much. We all know what’s what, right?
The misguided person I spoke with today, she felt mighty foolish and didn’t know what to do with herself. Not her fault. I got the same conclusion here as I did before, but feel it more today than the last time I wrote it. We need laws against lying. The ACLU will say no, reaching across the aisle to join hands with political propagandists and corporate salesfuckos, but nay.
We can’t prevent all types of exploitation forever, we can’t protect people from themselves perfectly, but if human life and well-being has any value at all, we, as a society must find a way to reduce the harm caused by dishonest persuasion, better than we do now. It’s like how we have laws against murder, knowing full well it will still happen at some point, no matter what we do. But the laws give us a mechanism of enforcement, a disincentive. Right now, in the USA, you’re literally praised for being the biggest con artist. It’s fucked up and I hate it.
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Your link brings me back to this post (the Feb 2nd one).
I feel like there is a certain degree of innoculation/resistance to such things that can come from humility and accepting that brains are imperfect, and highly prone to error. Like, if we are willing to accept that our brains are prone to weird errors (like hallucinations, etc.), we are more likely to perceive them as the weird errors that they are, and not something supernatural or whatever.
Kinda like the inverse of the “Mandela-effect” nonsense – like, if I encounter something (a book title, a snippet of history, some bit of trivia) that turns out to be different than what I remember, whelp, guess I remembered it wrong, that’s interesting. But there is a non-insignificant number of people who, when faced with that discrepancy, decide “nope, I couldn’t have remembered it wrong, all of reality must have shifted when I wasn’t looking” That’s some sort of absurd level of arrogance and/or hubris…
1 – thanks! the posts are repetitive so what diff does it make? heh i fixed it..
2 – that’s an interesting point that opens up a whole other can of worms about our sense of self, like, a lot of us are depending on a level of confidence in our own faculties to feel worthy, maybe this is something to interrogate.
In my experience, some cognitive issues are also caused by environmental factors. Sometimes it’s a brain chemistry thing and neither you nor anyone around you had any control over it. Other times you just get mistreated badly enough for long enough that some of the awful sticks in a bad way. And while not all of these sorts of problems and traumas seem like they would lead to any obvious path to delusional thinking, they do alter how you percieve reality. And I think that does make it that little bit easier for someone to sell you on a fantasy that happens to align with your preconceptions and prejudices.
I think this in particular is something an awful lot of people deal with. Yes, sometimes people set you up to believe wrongheaded nonsense but it’s also not uncommon for someone to treat you badly enough that you want to find some refuge to get away. And many of the world’s major religions have been specialized in preying on vulnerable people for at least hundreds of years. Politics has as well. Both of them thrive in fact when there are a lot of people who aren’t doing well. People who then depend on political or religious groups to help them.
Another reason we don’t do a better job of teaching the general population how to deal with predatory practices like these is because it would make advertising harder and even less certain. If you can logic your way out of being vulnerable to religious and political predators then you can logic your way out of buying a car because of a commercial with balloons and colorful tents. And nobody with money wants that to happen.
You nail what I regard as the main reason we don’t have stronger protections – reserving the right to lie protects business. The main reason for my posts tho is that I don’t think we should overestimate the ability of the average person in the peak of their mental powers to protect themself from bullshit. Desperation makes judgment worse, but even at our best, I think the average person is kinda dim, and we should structure society to make it safer for them.
-edited for a typo and clarity
There are efforts to do some of that. Such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Of course there’s also lots of protectionism going on to make sure the current rackets are able to operate unchallenged. They aren’t specifically trying to make the case that consumers aren’t that smart but when you rule out enough of the deceptive shenanigans the end result is similar.
Jordan Klepper and others who like to record conversations with Trump supporters have a talent for straining my faith in humanity but it looks like most people can still manage to see through obvious con games. Even if they have to fall for them first (2016) and learn from their mistakes (2020). I guess we’ll find out whether I’m just hitting the copium later this year.
ugh, hoo boy. can’t wait.