How the Modern World Makes Us Mentally Ill

[SGOS]

In fairness, we have "modern" people who wear tinfoil hats, start moral panics about alleged satanic cults, and think stuff like D&D and Harry Potter are pathways into the occult (implying that the fictional magic therein is somehow real).  Granted, there are no resulting hangings nowadays and this stuff isn't as popular and influential as it used to be, but batshit still has a big checkmark.

I'd wish I could be around hundreds of years into the future to see how people refer back to us.  I wouldn't be surprised to hear them say, "Those people during the Millennium believed in demons and witches and Satanic cults that called upon the Devil to wreck havoc on society."  In fact, they would be right because some did.  I'm thinking there were also doubters back in the 12th century who we fail to give credit to.  I'd speculate that superstition was more the norm than it is today, but the human species still seems very primitive to me.

[Baruch]

I'd wish I could be around hundreds of years into the future to see how people refer back to us.  I wouldn't be surprised to hear them say, "Those people during the Millennium believed in demons and witches and Satanic cults that called upon the Devil to wreck havoc on society."  In fact, they would be right because some did.  I'm thinking there were also doubters back in the 12th century who we fail to give credit to.  I'd speculate that superstition was more the norm than it is today, but the human species still seems very primitive to me.

People never change ... it is biology.  Though some madmen wish to change our biology, in their brainiac wisdom.  Culture and language change, technology changes.  By definition, human nature cannot change, that is what "one's nature" means, it is what transcends your individuality.

Unfortunately that means that the passions that move men's hearts will continue to rage.  There will be no end to idle speculation, ideology and delusion.  If you modify humanity fundamentally, then we aren't the same species, humanity is extinct, succeeded by something else.  Some wish for that as well, they seek the extinction of their own species.  Don't listen to them!

[SGOS]

Unfortunately that means that the passions that move men's hearts will continue to rage.  There will be no end to idle speculation, ideology and delusion.

I remember years ago, a nice guy who liked perpetuating rumors of Satanic cults, just as Hydra described.  This guy told me of  some cult over in Northern Idaho that would abduct victims in the middle night by forming a human chain across a lonely stretch of highway, and take the passengers off to be used in sacrificial rituals.

It was quite a chilling description, and it was a time when communes were not uncommon, some with a religious overtones, so it was possible to believe that there was some strange group living back in the woods of isolated North Idaho.  There no doubt were, but that they were sacrificing humans without the knowledge of the law stretches the imagination.

This guy explained it with remarkable calm while I had chills running up my spine.  Later, I learned in psychology that a common give away of delusional behavior is the delusional person often describes the most extraordinary delusion in a detached manner, as if the delusion was just an ordinary event.

This belief in the phantom North Idaho cult persisted for about a year, and was popular with some local religious groups in Northwest Montana, but it gradually faded away without actually being debunked.

[Baruch]

I remember years ago, a nice guy who liked perpetuating rumors of Satanic cults, just as Hydra described.  This guy told me of  some cult over in Northern Idaho that would abduct victims in the middle night by forming a human chain across a lonely stretch of highway, and take the passengers off to be used in sacrificial rituals.

It was quite a chilling description, and it was a time when communes were not uncommon, some with a religious overtones, so it was possible to believe that there was some strange group living back in the woods of isolated North Idaho.  There no doubt were, but that they were sacrificing humans without the knowledge of the law stretches the imagination.

This guy explained it with remarkable calm while I had chills running up my spine.  Later, I learned in psychology that a common give away of delusional behavior is the delusional person often describes the most extraordinary delusion in a detached manner, as if the delusion was just an ordinary event.

This belief in the phantom North Idaho cult persisted for about a year, and was popular with some local religious groups in Northwest Montana, but it gradually faded away without actually being debunked.

There were a lot of "deprogramming" memes and "Satanic cult" memes in the 80s.  Where are they now?  Of course Jim Jones was real, and there were and still are Nazis living in N Idaho.  So true and not true.

[Hydra009]

I'd wish I could be around hundreds of years into the future to see how people refer back to us.  I wouldn't be surprised to hear them say, "Those people during the Millennium believed in demons and witches and Satanic cults that called upon the Devil to wreck havoc on society."  In fact, they would be right because some did.  I'm thinking there were also doubters back in the 12th century who we fail to give credit to.  I'd speculate that superstition was more the norm than it is today, but the human species still seems very primitive to me.

There undoubtedly were.  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Meslier comes readily to mind.

[Baruch]

There undoubtedly were.  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Meslier comes readily to mind.

Clergy generally are, as being more educated on religion, more likely to be atheist, agnostic or heretic.

[Cavebear]

I remember years ago, a nice guy who liked perpetuating rumors of Satanic cults, just as Hydra described.  This guy told me of  some cult over in Northern Idaho that would abduct victims in the middle night by forming a human chain across a lonely stretch of highway, and take the passengers off to be used in sacrificial rituals.

It was quite a chilling description, and it was a time when communes were not uncommon, some with a religious overtones, so it was possible to believe that there was some strange group living back in the woods of isolated North Idaho.  There no doubt were, but that they were sacrificing humans without the knowledge of the law stretches the imagination.

This guy explained it with remarkable calm while I had chills running up my spine.  Later, I learned in psychology that a common give away of delusional behavior is the delusional person often describes the most extraordinary delusion in a detached manner, as if the delusion was just an ordinary event.

This belief in the phantom North Idaho cult persisted for about a year, and was popular with some local religious groups in Northwest Montana, but it gradually faded away without actually being debunked.

Some groups like that do exist.  10 kids locked up in a basement, multiple girls "married" to older adult males, women enslaved as cleaning servants...