Mind Control Delusions and the Web 631
biohack writes "An article in the New York Times provides interesting insight into online communities of people who believe that they are subjected to mind control. 'Type "mind control" or "gang stalking" into Google, and Web sites appear that describe cases of persecution, both psychological and physical, related with the same minute details — red and white cars following victims, vandalism of their homes, snickering by those around them.' According to Dr. Vaughan Bell, a British psychologist who has researched the effect of the Internet on mental illness, '[the] extent of the community [...] poses a paradox to the traditional way delusion is defined under the diagnostic guidelines of the American Psychiatric Association, which says that if a belief is held by a person's "culture or subculture," it is not a delusion. The exception accounts for rituals of religious faith, for example.'"
Filed Under the NYT's "Fashion & Style?" (Score:5, Insightful)
The exception accounts for rituals of religious faith, for example.
Remember, it's fashionable to be a nutcase, to claim people are out to get you, to believe you're being persecuted & suppressed--just look at Tom Cruise [gawker.com].
It's been pointed out before but the internet is a very real, very powerful, very double-edged communications tool.
Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a delusion if other people also believe it?
That's not a definition of delusion. It's a political step to avoid annoying religious people. They are no less deluded for it.
Oh, now a politically-motivated definition doesn't stand up to analysis? Big surprise.
Re:Paranoia (Score:4, Insightful)
Los Angeles last month for their inaugural conference, he said, where they attended a meeting to share stories, including the humiliating experiences of being told they are insane."
Oh, that explains it all! Just kidding.
"Subsequent research generally showed that those who believed they had been abducted were not psychotic, but suffering from severe memory and sleep problems, or personal traumas, Dr. Bell said."
In other words, stay sober as much as possible, get some sleep, and deal with your trauma in a healty manner. It's no accident that certain antipsychotics are also prescribed as sleeping aids. Self-medication with alcohol and other drugs causes blackouts(memory loss) and poor quality of sleep.
Besides, foil-heads, if you believe that people are ganging up on you to get a rise out of you, just realize that you're still the star of the show! Stop caring, and they will stop buggin'. The only winning move is not to play.
Re:Filed Under the NYT's "Fashion & Style?" (Score:5, Insightful)
... to believe you're being persecuted & suppressed--just look at Tom Cruise [gawker.com].
Actually, if you look at how Scientology treats its members (especially the really valuable or potentially embarrassing ones), in all likelihood Tom Cruise is being persecuted & suppressed.
Re:Filed Under the NYT's "Fashion & Style?" (Score:5, Insightful)
If you look at how people outside Scientology treat the cult's victims (Tom Cruise) like lepers instead of offering an outside world of love and compassion, maybe it does make sense for him to think that the world is out to get him.
What people in cults need is to feel welcomed into the world outside the cult; otherwise, they'll just get pushed farther into their fantasy world.
That's just a poor definition (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:i'm insane? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Politics (Score:4, Insightful)
The definition exists because people who are religious are not generally mentally ill. Just deluded. So what we really need to change is the definition of particular mental illnesses that depend on delusions. For example, instead of saying "transubstantiation is not a delusion", we should say "Schizophrenia is characterized by delusions, other than the delusions of religious faith."
Okay doctor, how about this... (Score:4, Insightful)
How about this; I'm pagan. Several of my friends are wiccan or american indian (one is both). We bless our houses, some of us see spirits, or hear things, or get feelings about a place, or sense a presence. By your definition, these things are delusions because they're part of our culture. But to most other people, their subjective realities don't include them and so (quite naturally) they think we're nuts. Which brings me to my ultimate point -- the mental health community in general has defined these kinds of things as a disorder if they cause significant impairment in a person's daily life.
So, this is part of my culture, but by the same token it's quite readily apparent that it causes a negative impact on my ability to deal with the rest of the world, who don't share my beliefs. It doesn't pass a clinical threshold in these cases, but assume they did. Would it change anything? Since just about anything can be defined as "cultural"-- afterall, schizophrenics have a cultural identity too (I'd like to know about the whole pennies thing myself)-- how can you (or anyone in the medical community) abandon the more objective metric of significant impairment for "cultural values"? Does this mean we're throwing out gender identity disorder too, because that's cultural? How about depression -- all those goths, they're not depressed anymore, they're just down with their culture. And people who drink the koolaid -- there was nothing wrong with them, they were just trying to fit in.
If you ask me, it seems like a cop-out by an establishment that's not sure enough of its foundations to take the initiative and say that some behaviors, even when culturally acceptable, lead to bad results. Because that would be a moral judgement, is that the argument? Just like pharmacists that refuse to dispense birth control and insurance companies that refuse to pay for gender reassignment surgery, etc. Here's a suggestion -- how about the medical community stop trying to pass moral judgements through the back door like this. Your job is to help people, not figure out their culture. Their culture is totally irrelevant -- what IS relevant is if they're in pain, if their life is significantly impacted, and there is a medical treatment or cure available that could help them. THAT is where the focus needs to be, and culture only plays a role insofar as how to reach out to the patient and contextualize what's happening. disclaimer: not a doctor.
Re:i'm insane? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a mental shortcut. Not too long ago (in evolutionary terms of time) we lived in a hostile environment, where assuming everything that happened was potentially a danger and then later (after a few seconds) realizing it isn't and you can calm down again, is a much better survival strategy then thinking first and deciding that it really is a danger after careful thought, which would cost precious seconds.
"Paradox"? (Score:2, Insightful)
...poses a paradox to the traditional way delusion is defined under the diagnostic guidelines of the American Psychiatric Association, which says that if a belief is held by a person's "culture or subculture," it is not a delusion.
I don't see the problem. Why is it sane for people to believe in angels, but not sane for people to believe they're being followed by secret agents in red cars? People believe in a lot of silly things. That's not delusion, that just buying into a set of beliefs that don't make sense to outsiders.
The social norm definition of delusion is perfectly fine. The real problem is that the mental health community insists on treating this as a "diagnosis". This is a concept that makes no sense in describing mental conditions. The human brain is the most complicated thing in the known universe, and poorly understood. There are a few physical or chemical abnormalities that can screw up your thinking, but except for those, the idea that you can take a list of behaviors and "diagnose" an underlying condition the way an oncologist diagnoses a tumor is absurd.
Unfortunately, we seem to be stuck with this charade. People won't trust mental health professionals (who actually are useful now and then) if they don't maintain the pseudo-medical mumbo-jumbo. And of course insurance companies won't pay any bills without a "diagnosis".
Re:Filed Under the NYT's "Fashion & Style?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Filed Under the NYT's "Fashion & Style?" (Score:4, Insightful)
Well put. Persecuted, exploited, abused, but embraced within the cult and ridiculed, untrusted, and almost unwelcome outside the cult. That's gotta be a helluva way to live.
With only a pair of sentences, you made me pity Tom Cruise. Thank you.
Re:Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Paranoia (Score:4, Insightful)
I have known a lot of paranoid people, and lots of times it seems to be confirmation bias and misunderstanding what is and is not commonplace feeding an innate mental imbalance. If you think there is a conspiracy of white cars driven by Asians monitoring your movements and you live in Koreatown, prepare to have your mind blown. If you are afraid of possibly-Arab men with mirrored sunglasses you will notice every single one, reinforcing your fears even while being within normal demographics.
It really doesn't help that a lot of these people think the medical establishment is part of the conspiracy and meds are part of the problem.
Re:Filed Under the NYT's "Fashion & Style?" (Score:3, Insightful)
and apparently the articles posted in the Fashion & Style section don't go through any kind of editing or proof-reading process:
"Some have hundreds of postings, along with links to dozers of similar sties.[sic.]"
"Mr. Robinson said in an interview that that [sic.] he has been tortured and abused by gang stalkers..."
in any case, i find the notion of shared delusion very fascinating. as Ronald De Sousa puts it, "When enough people share a delusion, it loses its status as a psychosis and gets religious tax exemption instead." the article also mentions this paradox in the medical definition of delusional beliefs.
folie à deux [wikipedia.org] (madness shared by two) is the name for a psychiatric condition in which two people share a common delusional belief. similarly, folie à trois, folie à quatre, and folie à famille refer to shared delusions between 3 people, 4 people, and all members of a family, respectively. then there is the general case of folie à plusieurs, or madness of the many. but at which point does mass delusion become an accepted subculture rather than a psychiatric disorder? there doesn't seem to be a discrete boundary between what constitutes mental illness and what is considered socially acceptable behavior.
i mean, why should it make any difference how many people share a common delusion. a fallacy is a fallacy regardless of how many people believe in the fallacy. should medical diagnostic criteria pay tribute to political correctness? whether you were socialized with irrational, factually unsupported beliefs by 5 people or 500 people, it's still a delusion. factual reality isn't dictated by majority opinion.
Re:All about politics (Score:4, Insightful)
The physicists have progressed beyond that. By your own admission, psychologists haven't.
What? I never said that.
Seriously, what's the difference between scientific opinion and best-guessing? This is literally how the scientific process works:
Let's not overlook the fact that "wrong" answers are still, nevertheless, extremely useful [wikipedia.org]. But, no, let's throw it all out, man, because Newton was "just guessing".
Re:Filed Under the NYT's "Fashion & Style?" (Score:2, Insightful)
What I don't get is how Xenu and his nukes is treated as bunk, but the invisible man in the sky who can hear a billion people whisper to him at the same time is treated like a celebrity who dare not be questioned by anyone who wants to run for elected office in America.
"Fashion & Style" *are* mind control! (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't wonder at it all. The two most powerful mind control tools ever invented are PR/Advertising and TV, and fashion and style were two of the first things that both of these tools were applied to.
Just think how long it took the average American to stop drinking the Bush/Cheney kool-aid. If that wasn't mind control I don't know what is.
Now where is that tin-foil? Up to a couple of weeks ago when I went all digital mine was wrapped around my TV antenna. Made a world of difference.
I mean, I'm not a huge fan of psychology myself but for the New York Times to file this under Fashion & Style gives me the impression that all the cool kids are joining gang stalking support groups ... makes one wonder what will the next fad be?
anyone see pattern here .. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Politics (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Are you really THAT important? (Score:4, Insightful)
I tripped over that landmine several years ago. My wife at the time had just started climbing the business ladder and had her first dinner meeting with vendors trying to sell some VERY expensive equipment. She came back from the meeting with a very swelled head from all the compliments and praise they'd heaped on her. I figuratively shot myself in the foot by pointing out that, of course they're going to say stuff like that, they want you to buy their gear. Trying to point out the benefits of cynicism is not a good road to a healthy marriage. :)
Re:Gang Stalking Vlog (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Filed Under the NYT's "Fashion & Style?" (Score:3, Insightful)
Doesn't mean he's not a victim. Victims are not angels, you can be both a victim and do bad things.
Re:Okay doctor, how about this... (Score:4, Insightful)
What I got from reading your post was that you'd really like to be treated for your delusions. That's great! I'm sure if you go to a psychiatrist, tell him you see dead people and it's ruining your life, he'll treat you. No problem.
The official criteria discussing delusion suggest that the psychiatrist take into account the patient's culture when deciding whether the delusion needs treatment. It's not passing moral judgement, or a cop out, it's an instruction not to blow harmless individual eccentricities out of proportion.
Flaimbait! (Score:2, Insightful)
and here's your flame:
Relativism and materialism are also indefensible philosophies as Nietzsche pointed out. What evidence do you really have that anything you percieve, or indeed your very self actually exists at all?
Also, many atheists / materialists believe that society would be better off if everyone subscribed to their beliefs. However many of these same people do not credit the rest of humanity with the enlightened self interest necessary to bootstrap and sustain what we commonly hold to be an ethical society. (My argument here is essentially that if most members of society were to drop their religious beliefs and yet not have the capacity for enlightened self interest that society would be unsustainable, essentially making broad case atheism / materialism parasitic.) And the best thing is that many atheists / materialists is that they cannot stand scrutiny of these autocontradictory beliefs they hold. "It would just all be better if no one believed in God(s)."
Well, that wasn't even much of a flame... more of a reasoned argument. I'll have to try harder next time.
Re:Filed Under the NYT's "Fashion & Style?" (Score:5, Insightful)
> Science says...that the universe serves no particular purpose or has any meaning for its existence,
Tell me, which exact branch of science deals with meaning and makes such statements?
Science has nothing to say about meanings and values. These fall completely outside of its domain. The world is full of people who somehow read the message "the universe serves no purpose" into cosmology and "people have no purpose" into evolutionary biology but that message is being put there by those people, it's not part of cosmology or evolutionary biology.
Re:Filed Under the NYT's "Fashion & Style?" (Score:5, Insightful)
What I don't get is how Xenu and his nukes is treated as bunk, but the invisible man in the sky who can hear a billion people whisper to him at the same time is treated like a celebrity who dare not be questioned by anyone who wants to run for elected office in America.
Maybe because that statement is misrepresenting theistic belief to make it sound silly? Theism is not "an invisible man in the sky." I am taking the statement literally here, that there is a human that lives in the upper atmosphere that cannot be detected by any known means, but does have the ability to open a one way communication channel with any of the earth's occupants.
When you say "invisible man in the sky" it makes theism sound absurd because if that's what theism was, it IS absurd.
But Xenu's nukes are not a misrepresentation of Scientology. They sound silly all on their own.
That's not a really good answer to your question, but that's where I see the difference.
Re:Filed Under the NYT's "Fashion & Style?" (Score:2, Insightful)
I believe that some people who have participated in many great films like John Travolta and Tom Cruise
Tom Cruise and John Travolta have participated in many great films?
Re:Filed Under the NYT's "Fashion & Style?" (Score:3, Insightful)
You are making a huge assumption that people are inherently reasonable. People can operate reasonably, but very often we operate irrationally from our "reptilian" brain. When someone's consciousness is being dictated to from the "lower" brain functions, they become rationalizing instead of rational. So no matter how rationally you engage them it won't work. The only way to get folks to change is to engage them emotionally to the point that they feel safe enough to slough off the rationalization engines of the reptilian brain which is primarily focused on survival.
This is the reverse of how cults operate in that they put people in a position in which they are totally reliant on the "reptilian" brain. For more info, see http://www.kheper.net/topics/intelligence/MacLean.htm [kheper.net]
Re:People love delusions... (Score:1, Insightful)
Posting anonymously because I have a mental disorder.
This is the kind of thinking which gets people in trouble. The point of mental illness is not that people are breaking social rules, e.g., thinking people are out to get them - rather the point is that the people with mental illness are suffering. Mental illness is very real, and it hurts! This is the justification for the medical treatment of the mentally ill, not that those stricken with mental illness are "breaking the rules" or looking for comfort in their delusions.
Re:Filed Under the NYT's "Fashion & Style?" (Score:2, Insightful)
The distinction is that delusional beliefs are fixed, false beliefs that are causing mental ill-health; in other words they are having a deleterious effect on the person's life. Simply discovering that someone believes something that is false does not imply delusion.
I still believe religon fits the definition of delusion. And there are LOTS of people out there who's delusions on religon are having a "deleterious effect on the [their lives]."
Re:All about politics (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you know anything about psychology or do you just like to run your mouth off? The scientific part is saying "there is a likely genetic link between X and Y." The science (experimental psychology) generally stops there and you get the more practical parts (psychiatry, etc.).
You don't have a genetic trait for alcoholism, you have a genetic trait for a higher chance of becoming an alcoholic if you drink too much. A gay person has the genetic trait for being gay or possibly they are just born gay (not genetic but rather an effect of his mother's womb). In your analogy it's as if they were born addicted to alcohol instead of just with a predisposition to getting addicted. Getting over alcoholism itself is a difficult process and, as I understand it, you never actually stop being an alcoholic (you just stop drinking).
The social and personal difference comes from the effects. Being gay doesn't really prevent you from being part of society if society doesn't actively hunt you down. Being an alcoholic does prevent you from being in society even if society actually actively tries to help you (a much much stronger action than just ignoring your quirks).
Re:All about politics (Score:2, Insightful)
For instance there is as much or more evidence that alcoholism is an inherited trait the sexual orientation, but there is no one running around telling people who have the genetic tendency towards alcoholism that they should just embrace the way they were born.
That's probably because alcoholism is inherently destructive, while someone's sexual orientation is not - it's MORALLY prohibited by certain groups. See the difference?
As someone who has strong antidotal evidence that I have inherited the traits for alcoholism. I find the suggestion that someone cannot or should not rise above the inherited traits through self awareness, self control , and proper actions especially offensive.
The effects of a predisposition for addiction is probably a couple of orders magnitude less than predisposition for sexual partners. Especially since sex is heavily linked to our survival as a species on a biological level (and no, it doesn't seem to matter what orientation!, curious no?), while alcohol addiction is not.
Yes, people "can" repress their innate sexual desires. So you are right. Through self awareness, self control and proper actions you can modify your behaviours.
But the fact remains that alcohol addiction is not like sexual orientation in one major way - there is no innate reason not to embrace your sexual orientation, unlike alcoholism. Secondly, there appears to be quite a great harm in fighting with your innate sexual desires. Sure, you "can" but the more appropriate route seems to be what you're so against (though I don't quite know why); let people be who they are.
I hope you can see the difference between alcoholism and homosexuality now, and how your argument is specious at best.
Re:Filed Under the NYT's "Fashion & Style?" (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Filed Under the NYT's "Fashion & Style?" (Score:5, Insightful)
A hammer is a collection of electrons, neutrons and protons. But that's a completely useless point of view except in very special contexts. A hammer is a tool for knocking nails into wood. But it doesn't become a hammer because you add something to those particles. There is no essence of malleosity you have to sprinkle on its molecules to make it into a hammer. So you've completely lost me with equations like "Cosmology + n = Purpose".
I also have no idea what you mean by "Cosmology and evolutionary biology don't need any such entity". Presumably you intend 'need' as a metaphor of some sort, but it needs unpacking. Hammers serve a purpose, but a physicist can quite happily describe the physics going on inside a hammer without ever touching on its purpose. So what does cosmology have to do with the purpose of the universe?
Now I admit that there was a time when meaning and science were bound up. For example Aristotle talked of final purposes and derived physics from such things. But those days have long gone.
Re:Filed Under the NYT's "Fashion & Style?" (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, I feel so sorry for Tom Cruise. Incredibly wealthy and good looking. For all the ridicule he gets, there are 10 times as many people to kiss his ass.
Re:Filed Under the NYT's "Fashion & Style?" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Filed Under the NYT's "Fashion & Style?" (Score:2, Insightful)
>>And there are LOTS of people out there who's delusions on religon are having a "deleterious effect on the [their lives]."
Sigh... when I read that line in the summary I knew it'd bait atheists out.
I mean, yeah, geez, I'd sure be happier if I didn't have to subscribe to that whacky belief in Universal Charity, and could just be a dick to everyone I felt like. Being nice to everyone is having an incredibly deleterious effect on my life. :p
The sad thing that atheists miss is that Christianity really does have a transformative power for good on people's lives. Setting aside the metaphysics, and just looking at it pragmatically -- if Christianity makes the world a better place, and makes peoples' lives better, why the fuck are you all so against it? Christianity (and I don't mean fundamentalism, which is a nutty luddite response to the 21st Century) and a scientific outlook are compatible and complementary viewpoints, just like how "how?" and "why?" are complementary questions.