Don't Take That Red Pill

I've been thinking for a while that there's many similarities between the mindset of the right-wingers who believe in conspiracy theories, the religious fundamentalists who believe in a twisted version of Christianity (or Islam, or whatever religion you want to pick), the anti-vaxxers who don't believe in modern medical science, and the flakey new age mystics.

This Medium.com article ties all the craziness together and finds a similar mind-set behind it. 

What I have found is that via these core beliefs, we end up engaging in a practice that, rather than shaping outside reality, as is often claimed in media like The Secret, instead burns a distorted operating system and perceptual lens into our neuroplastic brains.

Dressed up as becoming more enlightened, this operating system demands the daily practice of being defiantly out of touch with reality.

It’s the practice of thinking facts and evidence are relative, mutable, and can be made to mean whatever we want via the narcissism-enabling belief in absolute subjectivity — the divine “I” that alone creates reality and stands all-powerful within it.

Hint: there is some rhyming here with the “don’t tread on me” mantra from the alt-right. The language of sovereignity and being an almost monarchical ruler of one’s own domain has ironies a plenty in its overlaps between feminine empowerment coaches and 2nd amendment, “we need an armed and vigilant militia to resisit leftist tyranny” folks.

This particular matrix of belief in absolute subjectivity is indeed all around us in the New Age marketplace, with many millionaire authors and speakers endlessly repeating that quantum physics, neuroscience, and ancient teachings all prove it to be true.

They don’t.

About the only good thing I can think of about the current pandemic is that many people who hold irrational beliefs are going to be badly bitten by hard reality, and some of them may realize that magical thinking doesn't work.