True Believer Syndrome

There's always that little doubt

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Yesterday really was my birthday and I'm not Richard Dawkins or Leonard Nimoy... am I?

 

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If you are not sure, you might be suffering a disorder.

 

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I better go and get that checked...lets see, get my wallet, pull out my driver's licence and it says expires in 2013...... goodnite

 

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One could interpret this post as having symbolic suicidal ideation. Please call the appropriate hotline.

 

The mind is a tricky thing. I suppose conversely you could just as well argue the exact opposite - it's impossible for a flexible, amorphous personality (i.e. a human being) to maintain an inflexible belief for more than a decade. Look for instance at how common crises of faith are in the church; William James wrote quite abit about these and they seem to be staggeringly common. I think someone who (for the purposes of this example) has an unshakable belief in God and never wavers once in their conviction, would if anything, be the anomaly rather than the person who doesnt have any clear attachments to their beliefs.

Maybe that's an interesting sub-topic in itself: is belief possible? Personally i think its quite natural for most people to alter their prejudices and convictions overtime, so in that sense beliefs by their very nature would be little more than provisional guesses of 'sketches'.

 

Yeah i suppose it would be quite incorrect to say something like 'all mystics/gurus are merely the western man's schizoid' as you say there are probably too many counterexamples for that assertion to ring true. Perhaps it would be safer to say that the ascetic or a monk is a prime candiate for schizoid personality disorder. I also think the arts and philosophy (academia in general?) have classically proved to be a tried and tested safe haven for these personality types as well. People like Kant or Schopenhauer for instance might well have been diagnosed as schizoids if they were around today - spending alot of time alone, focusing on very narrow areas of interest, avoiding intense physical/emotional relationships.

 

You needn't look far: On a daily, hourly basis, it is proven to us that the way we usually live, the consumerist/materialist lifestyle, trying to find ultimate happiness in pleasing our senses, is a false one. Yet the vast majority continues, despite consistent disappointment.

How do you know they stopped because they became convinced it was false?
There could be a number of other reasons for stopping Sun worship. Perhaps the paraphernalia needed for it was no longer available, or the headpriest died, or they just became complacent, or something else.

 

I think it is more than that. Just consider the battered wife: she continues to stay with her husband who is beating her every day.

There are some things that are so crucial to a person that admitting one was wrong about them would cause a complete breakdown of that person ontology, epistemology and ethics. In such a case, the reasoning "It is right, I just haven't applied myself enough, this is why it seems wrong" takes over.

"The ego going into self-protection mode" - This is really flimsy. As if the ego would be something we should be willing to dismiss at any time, and could do that without any significant damage to ourselves.

Can you hold such "provisional beliefs" for anything that is actually important to you?

Provisional beliefs are okay for things that we don't consider very important. In fact, people sometimes get involved with a number of unimportant things in order to distract themselves from the real problems of their lives, problems that would require some actual, strong, unflinching stances.

 

It is called hope, and sometimes it can take on proportions that make it seem look ghastly and insane to many other people.
And interestingly, such hope sometimes actually leads to the desired result, against all odds.

 

You seem to think that all humans are basically the same, as if they were all the same model of a robot, with essentially the same physical, emotional, mental and spiritual needs, interests and concerns, and that whatever differences there may be among individuals, are just superficial, circumstantial; and that there is an objectively identifiable point at the dissatisfaction of those needs, interest and concerns, where every human would break down and become schizoid.


As if, for example, a Buddhist monk would basically feel as frustrated after one year of sexual abstinence as an average American would, except that, at best, the monk would have a few more tricks up his sleeve to deal with that frustration.

 

The only thing im asserting is the persistence of certain temperaments throughout various cultures. The only real difference between each culture seems to be the way in which each personality type is dealt with.

Infact i think we're virtually arguing for the same thing - for a Buddhist monk sexual and narcotic abstinence are not outward signs of something that has gone terribly wrong, whereas in our (western culture) both of these things could be taken as symptoms of severe depression.

 

Or the amount of scientists/engineers/programmers who were and are Asperger's Syndrome (sufferers?). Or perhaps simple, humanistic words would be the more humane descriptions. Sadly people seem to like 'scientific' categories and an related pill for all character types.

 

Yes, all sorts of 'psychotic' experiences are just parts of everyday experiences in other cultures and even subcultures of our own. Being possessed by a god, various kinds of auditory and visual 'hallucinations', seizures, fasting, cloistering oneself, etc., could all be considered very severe symptoms in the psychiatrist's office, but the people who experience these things can shift easily from these experiences directly to responsible work, family life and leisure activities. Within the West much of the alternative therapy movements involves processes that would have been considered psychotic not too long ago.

Take holotropic breathing as one example amongst many.....

http://www.holotropic.com/about.shtml

People reexperience their births, past lives, union with deities, attacks by demons, psychic experiences, ego loss, the return of memories and more in this process
get up,
pay someone 75 bucks
and go to work, perhaps invigorated and looking forward to the next session.

I remember watching a film about a classic psychological test run on monkeys. This was probably the 50s in the US. Some monkeys were 'raised' by a wire mother. Some monkeys had wire mothers with a soft pillowlike tummy. I think there was a third 'mother' that was a little more lifelike. Needless to say the ones with jsut a wire mother were absolutely traumatized and did not know how to relate to other monkeys when later introduced to them. The one's with the soft tummy mothers - even though these did not move - were more able to socialize.

here's the thing.

It was one damn cruel experiment.

When the scientists who ran the experience came on screen, they were total ciphers. They spoke without affect, seemed not very socially competent and rather empty. IOW they struck me as nuts. Of course they simply could have been shy. But coupling their behavior with the cold way they described the tortures of the monkeys, I felt like they deserved a diagnosis. That there was something wrong with this picture. Of course they were successful members of 'our society' and would not have been diagnosed. At least not then.

 

this is something i've discussed with many a neurologist and the occasional psychiatrist: why is it that i seize far more frequently than so many other patients and take no medication, while these other patients take massive dosages of massive cocktails--often including three or four anticonvulsants?

the responses i've received have been fairly consistent. they remark that on the one hand, i don't seem to be terribly bothered (ashamed, inconvenienced, psychically disturbed) by periodic departures from "normalcy"; and on the other hand, i work in fields (music and various self-employments, i.e. writing, editing, proofreading) and inhabit "subcultures" which are far more tolerant of "aberrant" behaviors, personalities, etc. than is the mainstream working world.

i think were i to have "normal" jobs and co-mingle with "normal" sorts of people, i probably wouldn't fare terribly well unless i were doped up on a massive cocktail of anticonvulsants as well.

 

I've spent a good deal of my life around creative people or would be creative people. To a great degree I am spoiled by this. If I move into situations - say, corporate offices - that are quite different Western subcultures and for a significant amount of time I can experience derealization, amongst other symptoms, like feelings of panic. If I have a very specific role in such an environment and the role involves clear tasks, I can usually muddle by. But otherwise it can be a problem. Or could be when I was younger. As another example of this I was once in a rather depressed state - over a recent relationship event - and watching a documentary on the industrial production of food. There was a long sequence where they filmed the discussion by the Innovations department of how to make the food and what it would be. It had some sort of starch crust and they were brainstorming fillings in a horrifying mix of business speak and scientific jargon. I was in an auditorium at a university and everyone watching was very quiet.

I turned to an acquaintance and asked: is this film a comedy?

She said no.

This frightened me. I was not in a mood to laugh, but up until then I had assumed the people were joking, that it was some sort of satire.

The combination of my mood, which was very low, with what seemed really quite insane to me being taken seriously - not striking people as insane or hilarious - freaked me out. I had to leave the room. Soon I returned to a nice, everyday sadness.

I often find myself much more comfortable with other cultures or even certain subcultures that I have previously had little contact with than certain mainstream Western cultural settings. I also tend to feel at home in multicultural settings, where there is no real normal and we are all groping about to find pleasant ways of dealing with each other.

Environments that demand a consistant false smile and displays of enthusiasm and confidence - especially if there are regular rituals of dominance and submission - and where other emotions are taboo
make me crazy.

EDIT: implicit in the above for me is that normal has a good chance of being insane.

 

A while back, an esteemed Swiss radio station performed an interesting experiment.
The station regularly hosted shows with renown literature scientists, critics and authors who discussed literature and art. All very high, esteemed, the creme de la creme of European intelligence.
Once, the station gave the literati a text to read (without revealing author and title), and asked them to judge whether that text was literature or not. They discussed it, and the majority of them agreed that it was proper literature, of value.
Then the station revealed the source of the text: It was an official police report of a runaway cow that the police then chased and captured, in a series of some bizzare incidents.
But it was an official police report. That the literati judged to be art.

I'm not sure they "demand a false smile and displays of enthusiasm and confidence". I think that esp. in the business world, people simply are like that. They smile, they are confident and enthusiastic.
I cannot relate to how someone can be interested in selling, but I have come to realize that some people just genuinely are interested in selling.

I think there are different types of people, with different inherent interests, and the differences between the types are radical - but that our society does not acknowledge this; instead, it acts as if everyone would basically be the same and that any person could potentially do any kind of job (and that the differences are merely superficial).

Thinking like this actually helps me deal with different kinds of people, and I am not confused or overwhelmed by the "fake smile" of a sales clerk.

 

It would be interesting to see the actual report.

There is a reward and punishment system in place. Though I think you are also correct about the tendencies of some of the people drawn there.

I can understand this interest if one really likes the product. But to simply like selling unto itself seems very odd to me.

I agree. I think leads to unnecessary discomfort. I think it is acknowledged that certain skills are not distributed evenly, but the temperments are seen to be somehow neutral.

Me neither. But if I must collaborate/perform longish term tasks that are strongly social in nature in such environments, then I can still have problems.

 

I have heard it, I am not sure it is translated into English, though.
A literature professor once presented it to us, basically repeating the experiment with us.
Personally, I could not decide whether it was literature or not. I found the whole experience rather confusing, overly demanding.

To me too.

So do I - I just had a clash with someone today.
It's difficult when one doesn't fit in. I often wonder whether it is I who is razy, or them, or what on earth is going on.

 

I can imagine. It would also matter if one was told it was an except or the whole piece of literature. I am quite sure short portions extracted from many considered great, classic authors would seem unliterary on their own. context plays a huge role. Further we the readers, having built up some trust, play a huge role in the aesthetic experience.

On a tangent I often come across found poems or found literary prose in non-fiction and even product information.

One could be egalitarian and say that sanity/insanity is simply a measure of how a part connects/does not connect to a given whole and has no essential meaning about the individual in question, other than that they might be in the wrong location. I think in practical terms this is often the case, but I also think it is oversimplified.

I think there are individuals, for example, who can, to a great degree, understand more of the version of sanity around them, than the individuals with that version of reality have the return ability. Further the first individual may notice the gaps and confusions in both their own knowledge and the knowledge of their milieu better than the individuals around them. I hesitate very strongly granting the two forms of 'sanity' equal standing.

 

this is why it never ceases to amaze me that there are people who inhabit worlds which sustain many cultures and subcultures in a relatively small geographic region (IOW they don't live in a small tribe literally removed from the rest of the world) who fail to recognize the degree to which reality is culturally constructed. all one has to do is step outside of one's "comfort zone" and try to inhabit a "foreign" culture, and this should be blatantly obvious.

for me, certain subcultures--within my own broader western culture--are virtually impossible for me to penetrate without suffering real, and debilitating, psychic distress. any sort of corporate culture or very mainstream, commercialized arenas are the most striking examples: i cannot set foot inside of, say, a "sports bar" or one of those restaurants that are advertised on television (big, national chains like chili's or appleby's) without feeling overwhelming anxiety. and it's not simply the physical environment it's every bit the "dealing with people" aspect. of course, i'm also terrified of american-style suburbs, strip malls, and "big box" stores--and the "culture" which surrounds them.

many might interpret this as a sort of snobbery, but this misses the mark entirely (moreover, my annual income is barely even 5 digits). these "worlds" are largely sustained by those whose beliefs, values, and ways of thinking seem very much at odds with my own. the denizens speak a different language entirely. and "being myself" in such places often invites more trouble than it's worth--best to avoid such places entirely if possible.

and this is very much why temple grandin remains an enigma: one would think she would find it impossible to work in the industry she does--or at least, her "work" would be more about dismantling the industry altogether. (edit: i realize this is quite vague--well, beyond vague--but i figure you probably know what i mean anyways: the whole not seeing something for what it is, especially by a person who would seem to be quite capable for seeing it for what it is.)

i often question why i am presently living in the u.s. when i am extremely uncomfortable around more than 99 percent of the populace; whereas with most of europe, asia, and central america, i am only extremely uncomfortable around perhaps 85 percent of the people (obviously, there is enormous variance between specific countries)--and this "discomfort" i experience elsewhere is far less deleterious to my mental health.

the ways in which people read and misread other cultures, and impart their own values and interpretations upon them, is fascinating (and i'm hardly excluding myself from this practice). within the continental u.s. for instance, i find navajos to be amongst the friendliest and most hospitable of peoples. yet i've encountered countless individuals who are of the opinion that navajos tend to be cold, unfriendly, and even hostile. these people interpret the habits of not looking directly at the person you are talking to, saying very little, lacking overt enthusiasm and not spewing all the usual "niceties" as hostile and unfriendly.

by the same token, i vastly prefer scandinavians, germans, and the dutch to italians, portuguese, and spanish--and i'm inclined to interpret the mannerisms of the latter bunch as somewhat forced and insincere. though i actually think their behavior is very much genuine, it's difficult for me to perceive it that way because all that smiling and touching and hugging simply isn't my way.

returning to the theme of the OP, and considering just one simple aspect (beliefs): apparently, while not a majority, still a substantial portion of americans believe that barack obama is muslim, foreign born, and the antichrist. (at least, according to a story i heard on NPR the other day) i think more than adequate evidence has been presented by various mainstream media agencies to counter the first two, and as to the last, well? honestly, one could spend hours--or even days--compiling a list of falsehoods which either a sizable percentage, or a majority, of americans believe--and this list could be comprised solely of very basic factual-type information. were one to expand the list to include delusions based upon a much broader ignorance--like the belief that obama (or obama care) is socialist, or that obama is doing "many of the things which hitler did" (also from the NPR story. quite vague, but i suspect they don't mean things like straightening out railway time tables.), one could probably spend a lifetime compiling such a list.

granted, americans are an easy target. regardless, i can confidently say that i believe that most people in the world believe quite a substantial number of things which have been more than adequately established as false.