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Mind Control Delusions and the Web
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.'"
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.
It's been pointed out before but the internet is a very real, very powerful, very double-edged communications tool.
My work here is dung.
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.
"His group of self-described "targeted individuals" met offline in
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.
Except that - as a nerd - you grew up in a culture (presumably public school) where 80% of the time, the snickering _was_ about you. You're just exhibiting an old learned response, kind of like a veteran might duck when he hears a car backfire.
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.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
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.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Jeez, get a load of that guy with the sideburns!
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.
Man, you really need that seminar!
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. But, no, let's throw it all out, man, because Newton was "just guessing".
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. :)