9:24 am - Sun 5/26/02
Weird Things

Just finished reading Why People Believe Weird Things (I referred to it as "Why People Believe Strange Things" in a previous entry)...

I enjoyed it very much. It's the first non-fiction book I've read in quite awhile where I didn't "bog down" in the middle.

So why do people believe "weird" things?

(On my way out from the bookstore last night, when I was having my bag checked, one of the managers saw the book and asked me that very question.)

Basically, people believe "weird" things because they want to. Because it's comforting, because it's easy, because it supports the beliefs they already have, because it provides a measure of certainty in an otherwise confusing, sometimes frightening, world.

(And as someone who wrestles often with feelings of boredom and pointlessness, I'd say belief in certain "weird things"--I'm thinking of various conspiracy theories here--makes the world more exciting, more like a movie, with scary "villians" for the believing "hero" to vanquish. Or barring that, at least an explanation for why the believer's life isn't working out quite the way he'd planned--"The space aliens and the Jews have gotten together, along with the blacks and the evolutionists, to ruin my marriage and stop my business from succeeding...those bastards!")

The idea that people believe because they want to believe struck a chord with me.

For years, I assumed that there had to be a God, because I wanted there to be a God.

I assumed my desire for that to be the case proved it was indeed the case (I think there's even a verse in the Bible to that effect. "Even the disbeliever knows in his heart that there is a God", or something along those lines).

Then my desire for there to be a God became confusing; I didn't want the "Fundamentalist" God I grew up with to be the "Real" God, because he was kind of a bully--"Give me your lunch money, or else I'll toss your ass into Hell and you'll burn for all eternity"--but that left me, in effect, looking for a God that "fit my lifestyle". And if I get to choose the "God" I want to believe in, how can that be the "Real" God? In fact, if I'm "inventing" the God I want, doesn't that, in effect, make me "God"?

(You can begin worshipping me now...)

Now I realize that I want a lot of things that aren't neccessarily true, and aren't going to happen simply because I want them to happen or think they should happen. And the toughest road to take here is saying "I don't know"; There is no way to prove or disprove the idea of a God, let alone one particular God. Maybe we're on our own here, maybe not, but at this point, it hardly seems to make a difference. As I think I've said before, if there is a God, I think he/she/it would want me to be the person I'm trying to be anyway. And I would probably be expected, by and large, to haul my own load.

My beliefs these days, as much as I have beliefs, are tending towards the Buddhist/Taoist.

Again, I don't really have any way of knowing the "ultimate truth" of these beliefs, but at their worst, they seem pretty harmless. They don't require my hating anyone who isn't like me or doesn't believe as I do, they aren't going to cause me to con people out of their life savings or what-have-you, and they don't seem to require I throw my brain out the window in order to follow some particular "path".

ANYWAY...

Another thing the author deals with in the book is the "ritual abuse/recovered memory" craziness of the 80's and 90's.

This was an interesting topic to me on two fronts.

I was not a victim of "ritual abuse"--The abuse I experienced, mostly while with the Pupo family, was pretty much your garden-variety sexual/physical/verbal abuse--so when I first started reading about "ritual abuse" (And then discovered someone in the Zick family had been a "victim"), I was stunned.

I remember, when I heard Margie's story, and heard what she had gone through (Chronic ritual abuse at the hands of the school principal, along with assorted school officials), finding it hard to believe, then being truly creeped out. In my mind, I likened it to the movie Blue Velvet, where a seemingly normal, bucolic town hides a world of perversity underneath its placid surface.

Then it seemed like there was an epidemic of Satanic/ritual abuse allegations, each new allegation more fantastic than the one before. Children told of being sexually abused in the middle of Satanic rituals, of witnessing animal sacrifices, seeing other children be murdered (One account had a teacher going off in a spaceship afterwards). And people were going to jail, sometimes for years, on the strength of some of these allegations, while trials dragged on and lives were ruined.

It turned out to be hysteria, much like the Salam witch hunts or the "red scare" of the 50's (That was a very interesting part of the book to me, how these bouts of societal hysteria follow a very particular pattern through history, a rise-and-fall; From being a fringe belief, gathering momentum, being taken seriously, eventually being discounted, then falling back into a fringe belief).

In addition to the sadness I felt over the innocent lives affected--children and adults alike--I found myself very angry at the charlatans in the "Recovered Memory" field who fanned the flames of this insanity for a quick buck (In time, a number of these "experts" were sued for the pain and suffering they inflicted on their "patients"). And I'll be honest here, as someone who suffered actual abuse, I was offended by the fact that now everyone was a "victim". It was almost...trendy.

One of the most interesting things to me over the past number of years has been the study of the real nature of "memory".

Memories are not snapshots of what happened in the past. It's not like running an "instant replay" to see exactly what happened; Instead, memories get lost, get elaborated upon, and basically become "memories of memories of memories". In effect, we don't have a "tape" of the past; Instead, we basically create a "personal mythology" (Particularly true in my own case, without a lot of artifacts or outside collaboration to verify the truth of what I think happened).

And that being the case, it's fairly easy for someone who knows how, given enough time, to implant "false memories" in people, particularly in children (Who are very open to suggestion, and very imaginative to boot).

This is something I've thought about a lot over the years; What do I really know of my past? Certain things could theoretically be verified as to dates and times, but in large part, my "past", at least in terms of what I remember, is more the work of an accomplished storyteller than anything else.

But for now, this "accomplished storyteller" has to wrap this up. Work beckons...

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