Lord777
Professional
- Messages
- 2,579
- Reaction score
- 1,513
- Points
- 113
Once again, everyone started talking about Scientology. Why not? It is a billion dollar cult. And, apparently, his main task is to convince the actors that they have superpowers. However, there is no reason to single out the actors. Just look around and you will see that the world is full of brainwashed people who do either something weird (like yoga too much) or something murderous (like joining ISIS, for example).
But surely you would never do anything like that, would you? So how are all these people different from you? Why do all sorts of stupid (or terrible) movements so easily gain followers, including among the intelligent and educated people? Here's what happened when trying to figure it out.
1. Ideas don't matter - people only care about what "works"
Most people reading this probably think Scientology is pretty funny bullshit, so let's use that as an example. You've probably heard all these crazy myths that 75 million years ago the evil ruler Xenu froze billions of his own kind and buried them in earth's volcanoes. If joining Scientologists means believing in such nonsense, then why among Scientologists, along with tens of thousands of ordinary people, are there people who are successful, wealthy and have not previously suffered from mental illness?
Let me show you how Scientology works its wonders. For example, what Scientologists advise to do when work or life becomes unbearable. And this advice is not limited to "perform the thetan summoning ritual" or anything like that. Instead, you will be asked to focus on a single task and try to complete that task correctly and quickly. So you will not think about the hated work, but about the task that needs to be solved right now. And after solving this task, you will have the confidence to move on to the next task. And this is great advice: every successful person does just that. “But wait a minute,” you say, “Scientology didn't invent anything, it just borrowed it all from the 10 Tips to Work Better mailing list. It's just common sense and nothing more. "Right. Mythology is completely irrelevant if all these rituals make our life easier. Every cult, political party, group of people united by hatred of something has long understood that people can be easily trapped by taking strange things and tying them with common sense threads so that in the end everyone will agree with them. But why don't the trapped people go anywhere even after the members of their group start doing something repulsive? Well ... how do members of their group start doing something repulsive? Well ... how do members of their group start doing something repulsive? Well ... But why don't the trapped people go anywhere even after the members of their group start doing something repulsive?
2. Mostly out of fear
Let me return to a favorite example. At the beginning of the film, "The Lord of the Rings" shows a large-scale battle between elves and orcs. You don't have to listen to a voiceover to know who to root for in this battle. If you come across a group of guys beating up the orc in the alley tomorrow, you will join them without even asking about the reason for the fight and not knowing that the guys themselves stole the bike from the orc. It just doesn't matter if you would fight on their side, even if these people were neo-Nazis. People justify their terrible actions by thinking that they are fighting some enemy that is much worse than them. But always remember: people are primarily determined by what they hate.
Think about how few people online talk about their favorite bands, and how many who talk about their hatred of Nickelback, for example. The tough guys in high school didn't care about being athletes, but they did care about not being nerds. You can never figure out who you really want to be, but you know exactly who you don't want to be. All you know - no matter how stupid or destructive your beliefs are - is that they just help you not side with some villain you think you are.
Wait, does this mean that the members of a group united by hatred of someone are actually feeding each other and that the opposing sides are actually in a strange symbiosis that ultimately ensures their survival? Yes! This is why we always attribute negative traits to people we disagree with. It is not enough for us to simply say that anti-feminists are wrong. We have to say that they are all fat and sexless. Conservatives are backward goons, liberals are hippies who have no power. And we are willing to forgive a lot of our own movement, because no matter how corrupt we are, at least we are not orcs.
3. Friends matter more than politics
If you talk to someone who was in the war and ask how he got through it, you are unlikely to be told anything about love for their country or beliefs. No, he will talk about the guy next to him. They covered each other's backs, that's how they managed to survive. I recall an interview with a former neo-Nazi who joined skinheads before realizing who they were. A couple of months later he was asked: "Well, now you hate Jews, don't you?" And he, like everyone else, answered: "Of course." Over time, he really learned to hate Jews, but this came much later. In the beginning, it was about just supporting your friends.
"I would never agree to destroy an entire nation just to please my friends!" - you say. Maybe, but there are more subtle processes due to which you can get involved in something that is alien to you. Tell me honestly: how many of you really see the arguments put forward by the opposing sides? When a serious dispute arises, most people do not seek to understand its details in order to understand how to act more effectively. They just follow their group. This is because, for the most part, people accept those opinions that allow them to better fit into their social group, because fitting in is much more important than any abstract nonsense about taxes and foreign policy. We always choose what matters most to us.
4. The moral code is the same for everyone, it is just used in different ways
Do you consider yourself morally superior to the people who burned witches? I would like to hope that this is so, because those people executed innocent women based only on ridiculous superstition. But what if it suddenly turned out that witches not only really existed, but everything said about them was true? And that the only way to stop them was to kill?
And then it becomes clear that you are not necessarily more tolerant compared to witch hunters, you just do not share their belief in witches. And your moral code may actually be the same as theirs, but you just disagree with them in this particular case. And facts can be true or false, but they are not moral or immoral. Now let's look at one serious political controversy. Liberals and conservatives alike agree on the moral principle that government tyranny is bad. However, they disagree on whether the president's health care reform is an example of such government tyranny. And this does not mean that the position of one side is moral, and the other is immoral. This only means that the parties proceed from different factual premises.
It also happens that some side simply lies about what they believe in. Witch hunters didn't really believe in witches. They just enjoyed mutilating women. Conservatives don't really think that health care reform is an example of tyranny. They just need an excuse to leave all poor people sick.
But if you ask all these people about their moral values, the list in all cases will be the same: minimizing damage, ensuring justice, respecting authorities, maintaining the purity of body and mind. If there are any differences in the lists, then they will be very insignificant.
5. Most people fall into their groups by accident.
When someone wants to objectively find out which group is the best, for some reason the one to which this person belongs is always recognized as the best. Quite strange, isn't it?
Read the discussion about the poor participants in the Wealth Management Forum - it is clear to them that people are impoverished because they are so weak and immoral that they cannot control their momentary desires. Almost always, people consider something a mortal sin that they are not personally threatened in any way. In other words, we try to tune our code of ethics to take the “right” side with minimal effort. You can think of this as your "moral default", and it is determined by where you were born, how you were raised, and which group of friends you joined.
The fact that different people have different moral attitudes - and most importantly, believe in them equally strongly - is almost impossible to understand. Admit it: you secretly believe that you would never become racist if you lived in the southern United States during the time of slavery. And if you were a young German, you would never have joined Hitler's supporters. If we are transported with the help of our imagination to some other time and place, for some reason we are always sure that our "moral attitude by default" will be with us, since we simply cannot imagine our life without it. And this is another thing because of which we can never truly understand each other. And when we are trying to get someone to abandon their "default moral", then, in fact, we want him to:
1. abandoned what has worked fine so far;
2. let the reptiles on the other side win;
3. betrayed his friends;
4. did something (in his view) immoral.
Many would rather die than do this.
But surely you would never do anything like that, would you? So how are all these people different from you? Why do all sorts of stupid (or terrible) movements so easily gain followers, including among the intelligent and educated people? Here's what happened when trying to figure it out.
1. Ideas don't matter - people only care about what "works"
Most people reading this probably think Scientology is pretty funny bullshit, so let's use that as an example. You've probably heard all these crazy myths that 75 million years ago the evil ruler Xenu froze billions of his own kind and buried them in earth's volcanoes. If joining Scientologists means believing in such nonsense, then why among Scientologists, along with tens of thousands of ordinary people, are there people who are successful, wealthy and have not previously suffered from mental illness?
Let me show you how Scientology works its wonders. For example, what Scientologists advise to do when work or life becomes unbearable. And this advice is not limited to "perform the thetan summoning ritual" or anything like that. Instead, you will be asked to focus on a single task and try to complete that task correctly and quickly. So you will not think about the hated work, but about the task that needs to be solved right now. And after solving this task, you will have the confidence to move on to the next task. And this is great advice: every successful person does just that. “But wait a minute,” you say, “Scientology didn't invent anything, it just borrowed it all from the 10 Tips to Work Better mailing list. It's just common sense and nothing more. "Right. Mythology is completely irrelevant if all these rituals make our life easier. Every cult, political party, group of people united by hatred of something has long understood that people can be easily trapped by taking strange things and tying them with common sense threads so that in the end everyone will agree with them. But why don't the trapped people go anywhere even after the members of their group start doing something repulsive? Well ... how do members of their group start doing something repulsive? Well ... how do members of their group start doing something repulsive? Well ... But why don't the trapped people go anywhere even after the members of their group start doing something repulsive?
2. Mostly out of fear
Let me return to a favorite example. At the beginning of the film, "The Lord of the Rings" shows a large-scale battle between elves and orcs. You don't have to listen to a voiceover to know who to root for in this battle. If you come across a group of guys beating up the orc in the alley tomorrow, you will join them without even asking about the reason for the fight and not knowing that the guys themselves stole the bike from the orc. It just doesn't matter if you would fight on their side, even if these people were neo-Nazis. People justify their terrible actions by thinking that they are fighting some enemy that is much worse than them. But always remember: people are primarily determined by what they hate.
Think about how few people online talk about their favorite bands, and how many who talk about their hatred of Nickelback, for example. The tough guys in high school didn't care about being athletes, but they did care about not being nerds. You can never figure out who you really want to be, but you know exactly who you don't want to be. All you know - no matter how stupid or destructive your beliefs are - is that they just help you not side with some villain you think you are.
Wait, does this mean that the members of a group united by hatred of someone are actually feeding each other and that the opposing sides are actually in a strange symbiosis that ultimately ensures their survival? Yes! This is why we always attribute negative traits to people we disagree with. It is not enough for us to simply say that anti-feminists are wrong. We have to say that they are all fat and sexless. Conservatives are backward goons, liberals are hippies who have no power. And we are willing to forgive a lot of our own movement, because no matter how corrupt we are, at least we are not orcs.
3. Friends matter more than politics
If you talk to someone who was in the war and ask how he got through it, you are unlikely to be told anything about love for their country or beliefs. No, he will talk about the guy next to him. They covered each other's backs, that's how they managed to survive. I recall an interview with a former neo-Nazi who joined skinheads before realizing who they were. A couple of months later he was asked: "Well, now you hate Jews, don't you?" And he, like everyone else, answered: "Of course." Over time, he really learned to hate Jews, but this came much later. In the beginning, it was about just supporting your friends.
"I would never agree to destroy an entire nation just to please my friends!" - you say. Maybe, but there are more subtle processes due to which you can get involved in something that is alien to you. Tell me honestly: how many of you really see the arguments put forward by the opposing sides? When a serious dispute arises, most people do not seek to understand its details in order to understand how to act more effectively. They just follow their group. This is because, for the most part, people accept those opinions that allow them to better fit into their social group, because fitting in is much more important than any abstract nonsense about taxes and foreign policy. We always choose what matters most to us.
4. The moral code is the same for everyone, it is just used in different ways
Do you consider yourself morally superior to the people who burned witches? I would like to hope that this is so, because those people executed innocent women based only on ridiculous superstition. But what if it suddenly turned out that witches not only really existed, but everything said about them was true? And that the only way to stop them was to kill?
And then it becomes clear that you are not necessarily more tolerant compared to witch hunters, you just do not share their belief in witches. And your moral code may actually be the same as theirs, but you just disagree with them in this particular case. And facts can be true or false, but they are not moral or immoral. Now let's look at one serious political controversy. Liberals and conservatives alike agree on the moral principle that government tyranny is bad. However, they disagree on whether the president's health care reform is an example of such government tyranny. And this does not mean that the position of one side is moral, and the other is immoral. This only means that the parties proceed from different factual premises.
It also happens that some side simply lies about what they believe in. Witch hunters didn't really believe in witches. They just enjoyed mutilating women. Conservatives don't really think that health care reform is an example of tyranny. They just need an excuse to leave all poor people sick.
But if you ask all these people about their moral values, the list in all cases will be the same: minimizing damage, ensuring justice, respecting authorities, maintaining the purity of body and mind. If there are any differences in the lists, then they will be very insignificant.
5. Most people fall into their groups by accident.
When someone wants to objectively find out which group is the best, for some reason the one to which this person belongs is always recognized as the best. Quite strange, isn't it?
Read the discussion about the poor participants in the Wealth Management Forum - it is clear to them that people are impoverished because they are so weak and immoral that they cannot control their momentary desires. Almost always, people consider something a mortal sin that they are not personally threatened in any way. In other words, we try to tune our code of ethics to take the “right” side with minimal effort. You can think of this as your "moral default", and it is determined by where you were born, how you were raised, and which group of friends you joined.
The fact that different people have different moral attitudes - and most importantly, believe in them equally strongly - is almost impossible to understand. Admit it: you secretly believe that you would never become racist if you lived in the southern United States during the time of slavery. And if you were a young German, you would never have joined Hitler's supporters. If we are transported with the help of our imagination to some other time and place, for some reason we are always sure that our "moral attitude by default" will be with us, since we simply cannot imagine our life without it. And this is another thing because of which we can never truly understand each other. And when we are trying to get someone to abandon their "default moral", then, in fact, we want him to:
1. abandoned what has worked fine so far;
2. let the reptiles on the other side win;
3. betrayed his friends;
4. did something (in his view) immoral.
Many would rather die than do this.
