November 4, 2022
LOVING THE TRUE BELIEVERS:
How to Love People Who Love Conspiracies: Fighting over the facts is unlikely to convince anyone. (Arthur C. Brooks, NOVEMBER 3, 2022, The Atlantic)
Conspiracy beliefs can also bring tangible benefits for well-being. For example, they can provide a sense of control in a chaotic world. Research has shown that people who feel they have little control over their lives are more likely to hold superstitions (for example, that the number 13 is unlucky), see spurious correlations (in, say, the stock market), and believe in conspiracies. Similarly, people with a need to feel unique and special may gravitate toward unusual beliefs, such as conspiracies, held by a minority of people.These beliefs can also provide a sense of community, as Kelly Weill wrote earlier this year in The Atlantic in an article about people who believe in a flat Earth. Even though conspiracy theories can drive a wedge between those who believe them and their friends and family who don't, at the same time, these unpopular views can create a sense of kinship among people who hold them--sort of like unpopular tastes or esoteric knowledge. For more than a century among some social scientists, this has been called the "sociology of secret societies."
Shorter version: "Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden...We join
a mass movement to escape from individual responsibility, or, in the words of an ardent young
Nazi, 'to be free from freedom.' It was not sheer hypocrisy when the rank-and-file Nazis declared
themselves not guilty of all the enormities they had committed. They considered themselves
cheated and maligned when made to shoulder responsibility for obeying orders. Had they not
joined the Nazi movement in order to be free from responsibility?"
Posted by Orrin Judd at November 4, 2022 7:24 AM