Are we being hijacked?

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LarsMac
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Post by LarsMac »

Several popular themes in modern entertainment fiction cover the idea people being controlled by outside forces.

The Zombies notion has been very popular.

The Invaders from Mars, or a recent mini series, "Brain Dead" covered the notion that alien elements had taken over the minds of people.

This article takes a slightly different view.

It is a long read, and gets a bit deep, but Stick with it, and it may offer something to think about.

The Monster Hijacking Human Minds
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Post by Wandrin »

Wow! It was a long read but worth it. I have a firm mental picture of the process on humans. I can't help but think about it (oops!??) and I'm sure that it will be in my technicolor dreams tonight.

on edit: I can accept the analogy and can unfortunately see it around me in politics and everyday life. In the local news the elementary school teachers were mentioning the uptick in ethnic attacks, in a region that is home to very many ethnicities.

It is easy to see the progress of the parasite and understand the implications as it spreads, in so many areas.

I won't be able to get that image out of my head.
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Post by gmc »

Interesting way of looking at things.

Ever had any contact with someone who is mentally ill? Or on mind altering drugs like say alcohol? or come to that taken any yourself. People bahaving in ways that make it seem like they are no longer there or not there in control. Makes you think when you look in the mirror who is really looking back at you? It's something I decided a long time ago not to waste too much time worrying about and am happy with deciding I just don't know the answer.
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Post by Ahso! »

In popular culture[edit]

Main article: God gene

Geneticist Dean Hamer has suggested that a particular allele of the VMAT2 gene correlates with spirituality using data from a smoking survey, which included questions intended to measure "self-transcendence". Hamer performed the spirituality study on the side, independently of the National Cancer Institute smoking study. His findings were published in the mass-market book The God Gene: How Faith Is Hard-Wired Into Our Genes.[11][12] Hamer himself notes that VMAT2 plays at most a minor role in influencing spirituality.[13] Furthermore, Hamer's claim that the VMAT2 gene contributes to spirituality is controversial.[13] Hamer's study has not been published in a peer reviewed journal and a reanalysis of the correlation demonstrates that it is not statistically significant.[13][14]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesicular ... nsporter_2
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Post by LarsMac »

I found the "Slender Man" discussion within the article particularly unsettling.

And a recent event here in Colorado seems to fall into this realm.

colorado-police-working-officer-down-situation-outside-denver.html
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Post by Wandrin »

I must confess that I pretty much blew off the whole Slender Man thing when I first heard about it. After the killing, I figured that the DA could easily destroy their Slender Man defense and get them to admit why they really did it. I was obviously wrong.

I could see how such a thing could grow and how it could impact those who were vulnerable.

With the current state of mental healthcare in the US, this is downright scary.
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Post by Ahso! »

I have a difficult time with Bohgal's premise.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities,”

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Post by magentaflame »

This slender man thing? First ive ever heard of it....so it cant be that viral. And so ehats tbe excuse of all the otber children who commit matricide, murder and arson?

I believe his analogy is way too vague.

What do you call the situation of computer porn on young teens essentially rewiring boys attitudes to sex?

What do you call it when the military convince you evrntually that its okay to kill?

What is it when a government convinces the public what its doing for them is true and right/?

To understand the premise here of indoctrination as a worm......you are essentially opening a can of them in regards to everything else as well......or is it only bad when a percieved enemy does it
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Post by Wandrin »

Now there is going to be a Slender Man movie?
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Post by magentaflame »

Why?
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Post by Wandrin »

magentaflame;1516795 wrote: Why?


I think it is a low budget horror flick. There always seems to be market for those.
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Post by LarsMac »

The Author if this article is particularly faced with the Muslim situation in England, but this applies to any number of collective groups.

This part of the article is perhaps the most important. Separating the subjects from any specific ideology and discussing extremist (right, left, religious, Socialist, Shi'ite, Suni, Christian, whatever ) without the ideology.



Therefore, if we are going to defeat extremism, conventional strategies won’t work. We have to see it for what it is—an epidemic of parasitic infections that feeds on our revulsion and hate.

Some will argue that regarding extremists as biological vectors rather than malicious individuals confiscates their agency and deflects their responsibility, allowing them to weaponize victimhood.

In reality, regarding terrorists as victims of a parasitic ideology doesn’t absolve them of responsibility—it merely seeks to explain why they failed to uphold it. Personal responsibility is something that must be imposed on individuals irrespective of the truth, because holding people responsible deterministically makes them act more responsibly. But if they fail in their duty to safeguard their sanity for whatever reason, they should be treated as victims because that is what they are. If a jihadi terrorist were perfectly rational, he wouldn’t choose to subject himself to a jihadi ideology. He is therefore a victim of the vulnerabilities of his own mind, and undeserving of hate.

On the other hand, if we continue to see extremists as monsters, then we really will be absolving them of responsibility, because using good or evil as an explanation is the very epitome of essentialism. If someone is evil, they are doomed to commit evil acts; if they later became good, they wouldn’t be truly evil.

The mistake of seeing evil as something inherent to certain individuals is shared by all extremists, left, right, and Islamist. In fact, it could be argued that much of the world’s violence comes from seeing others as inherently evil and therefore irredeemable and unworthy of life. By allowing ourselves to become vessels of hate, we allow the parasite to work through us, furthering the divisions between Muslims and non-Muslims, and thereby making the Good-versus-Evil narrative more convincing so that it can better spread to other minds.

So how do we stop it? The usual way to kill off a parasite is to break its life cycle. Myrmeconema neotropicum would soon go extinct if birds learned to tell the difference between berries and bloated ants. Likewise, extremist ideologies would eventually die out if people learned to tell the difference between monsters and madmen. Firebombings, shootings and vehicular rampages wouldn’t yield enough rage to sustain hateful ideologies if everyone knew they were acts of spontaneous insanity rather than organized evil.




I do think he overlooks the simply bat**** crazy people who will find something to get wound up over and will use whatever he can find to feed his drive to destroy others.

Look at the recent behavior of the guy in Lone Tree, Colorado, or going back a few years, the theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado. and a number of other incidents in other parts of the world.

People simply lose touch with reality and with society, and allow this "parasitic behavior", as Mr Bohgal calls it, to take on a life of its own.
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Post by magentaflame »

Forgetting the fact that the second guy (as the press keeps telling us was a afghany refugee, and muslim) the two guys who have now committed many murders and attempted murders by running people over in the melbourne CBD reminicient of the European terrorist crimr werent extremist or terrorists.....they both had drug and mental conditions...both known to the police before hand... and basically went off the deep end.

So what the author of that article is suggesting kind of makes sense.... the crimes are similar but the reasonings seems inconsequential
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Post by Wandrin »

LarsMac;1516797 wrote: The Author if this article is particularly faced with the Muslim situation in England, but this applies to any number of collective groups.

This part of the article is perhaps the most important. Separating the subjects from any specific ideology and discussing extremist (right, left, religious, Socialist, Shi'ite, Suni, Christian, whatever ) without the ideology.



I do think he overlooks the simply bat**** crazy people who will find something to get wound up over and will use whatever he can find to feed his drive to destroy others.

Look at the recent behavior of the guy in Lone Tree, Colorado, or going back a few years, the theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado. and a number of other incidents in other parts of the world.

People simply lose touch with reality and with society, and allow this "parasitic behavior", as Mr Bohgal calls it, to take on a life of its own.


Good point. We need a mental healthcare system that can actually help. Too often, these days, someone will call for help on behalf on a family member or friend and the usual response is to send the police. This ends badly too much of the time. There doesn't seem to be a good way, under the current system, for someone to seek help for themselves or for others without the risk of it escalating to something no one wants.
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Post by magentaflame »

Hmmm...thats very true. I believe we need a rethink on the subject of psych institutions, i think it might be time to bring these institutions back.
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Post by gmc »

Interesting theory but you just know the islamists are going to claim the parasite is western ideas of equality and freedom corrupting their young and most eapecially letting women think they cann decide who they marry and do things like vote and drive cars and god forbid not wear a tent while out on in public, the christians are going to say it is the immorality of tolerating notions ideas like marraige equality for gay people and tolerating the breakdoiwn in family values with things like dovorce and single parent families becoming normalised and we should all turn to biblical values and start stoning witches the right will blame socialsim and fake news, the left everybody else. We cdid have a cure called the enlightenment but the parasite is very good at fighting back

I suppose the question is how to destroy the parasite without destroying the body and doesn;t actualluy care if it destroys the body. There will always be some parasite coming along claiming we need it.
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Post by magentaflame »

GMC.... as a female....technically they are only 100 years behind us..... think about it.
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Post by YZGI »

I read the article twice, I have no idea what this "Slender Man' thing is. I must live in a vacuum. Where in the article is this "Slender Man" thing and just what is the "Slender Man" thing. Sorry for being so uninformed. I even googled it and still don't understand.
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Post by LarsMac »

YZGI;1516828 wrote: I read the article twice, I have no idea what this "Slender Man' thing is. I must live in a vacuum. Where in the article is this "Slender Man" thing and just what is the "Slender Man" thing. Sorry for being so uninformed. I even googled it and still don't understand.


it comes up about halfway through the article.

A quick google of Slender Man will give you more than you really want to know about it.

but to start :

The Slender Man stabbing occurred on Saturday, May 31, 2014, in the American city of Waukesha in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, when 12-year-olds Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser lured Payton Leutner, of the same age, into the woods and stabbed her 19 times in an attempt to impress the fictional character Slender ...
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Post by magentaflame »

LarsMac;1516836 wrote: it comes up about halfway through the article.

A quick google of Slender Man will give you more than you really want to know about it.

but to start :
Like i mentioned previously whats the excuse of every other child murderers? Sounds more like a "defense" rather than some viral outbreak.....twelve year olds take oudgie boards to the extreme to spook themselves out....but murder to impress a made up satanic character? Did they live in an ultra religious area?..... the devil made me do it.

Just wondering if any of you guys have ever come into contact with a true young psychopath? I have. Most beautiful polite engaging (known her since tbe age of three to eight) child youll ever meet...just a wholesome lovely child.... knives are locked away from her. And a very good eye is kept on her when at home around younger children and babies.

I can garrantee that putting slender man in her head would produce some horrific results......but to the average child? Nah....weve had the boogie man before now. Havent heard of children sacrificing their little friends to him.
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Post by YZGI »

I got a couple of posts confused I got it now thanks Lars.
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Post by Wandrin »

magentaflame;1516805 wrote: Hmmm...thats very true. I believe we need a rethink on the subject of psych institutions, i think it might be time to bring these institutions back.


I wasn't talking so much about the institutions as the community outreach and the first contact. Surely there are better ways that sending armed police to talk with someone. In some states, even calling the suicide hot line will immediately result in police being dispatched to bring the person in for a 72 hour psychiatric hold in a hospital for evaluation. There seems to be no middle ground and little availability of services that will talk with people, rather than summarily locking them up.
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Post by magentaflame »

Yep, we used to have CAT teams....havent known them to be around in a long time. Ambulances want police backup if going to someone eith a mental illness. If you have a psychosis due to drugs the psych units in hospitals dont want to know you because of the demand for beds.....theyll only consider "real" diagnosed cases.

I think institutions need to be re-enstated. They closed all ours down (except the high security ones that are essentially prisons) on the notion that people should function in the community. Problem....not everyone can exist within the community .....and guess who most of our homeless are? But i suppose you dont have to spend money or look after them.
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Post by Wandrin »

Here, Reagan closed the state-run psychiatric hospitals and dumped them onto the streets. There is little or no funding for walk-in clinics or accessible non-hospital locations where someone can seek help. Every school board has their own standards and methods for dealing with children with problems. There aren't many options available to people.
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Wow, i just looked up deinstitutionalization world wide.

What a con job!..... hand ball the situation to prisons...which is shocking considering there is more ctime against the mentally ill tjan there is from them or community services....then cut funding...

BARSTARDS!
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Post by gmc »

magentaflame;1516816 wrote: GMC.... as a female....technically they are only 100 years behind us..... think about it.


I don't need to. We still talk about loose women (I.E. one not under the control of a man) Ever read Eve's curse? I think think it's something, an attitude so deep in our psyche we don't even realise it's there. It's where the blame the victim attitude comes from - you tempted me whether you intended to or not therefore it is your fault. Funny thing is when you ask a bible thumper if it applied to just eve or to all women they usually haven't a clue what you are on about. LBGT? it's OK for me to treat you as of lesser worth than me because I am religious,

In the good old days when society was so much more moral than it is now we had two world wars where milliions died and millions were stuffed in to gas chanmbers by people who went to church on sunday to thank god they followed the right religion and were OK with god.
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Post by Bryn Mawr »

Wandrin;1516853 wrote: Here, Reagan closed the state-run psychiatric hospitals and dumped them onto the streets. There is little or no funding for walk-in clinics or accessible non-hospital locations where someone can seek help. Every school board has their own standards and methods for dealing with children with problems. There aren't many options available to people.


That's funny, over here it was Maggie Thatcher - ISTR they were good mates at the time :-(
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Post by Clodhopper »

I thought it a good article. The analogy is pushed past its limits but the point is good - that atrocities encourage more atrocities and both the far right and the religious fundamentalists WANT atrocities against their side to be able to point and say, "See! We told you so but you wouldn't believe us." Martyrs are very powerful recruiters. Both sides want to radicalise their entire populations.

It works, too. I found myself clocking obvious Muslims after one atrocity in a way I hadn't before. Had to have a good look at myself and that's what caused me to write a letter of support to my local mosque.
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Post by Ahso! »

I mostly agree. I think the condition(?) has more to do with mimicking the behavior of others along with perceived permission to act out. I suppose for some that could be tribal, though one can't know any of what's being discussed with any kind of certainty without actually speaking with the actors at length.

The problem I have with the premise is that what we label "viruses" are merely other species competing to survive and using our species as hosts (the human species would be the most dangerous virus-like creature on the planet to any number of species). We are therefore fellow competitors. The article's premise associates us as being nature itself rather than a player within the scheme, and the memes (other organisms) as players or actors within. That's far-fetched and contrary to natural selection as a theory, IMO. Memes are not living organisms, they're thoughts and what have you. They don't compete with one another - they can't - they can only be chosen as a behavior.

I've done it also, but I've since understood that The Theory of Evolution is biological and applying it to other aspects of life can be very tricky.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities,”

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Post by Clodhopper »

I thought the point of a meme was that it DID behave in the internet the way a gene did in biology, according to a very reputable biologist.
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Post by Ahso! »

Yes, that's what Dawkins said. But we're not talking about genes here, we're talking about viruses or other organisms with genes. That's my point. Also, I wonder if Dawkins still agrees with himself on this.

In his book The Selfish Gene, Dawkins coined the word meme (the behavioural equivalent of a gene) as a way to encourage readers to think about how Darwinian principles might be extended beyond the realm of genes.[82] It was intended as an extension of his "replicators" argument, but it took on a life of its own in the hands of other authors such as Daniel Dennett and Susan Blackmore. These popularisations then led to the emergence of memetics, a field from which Dawkins has distanced himself.[83] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_D ... g_the_meme
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Post by LarsMac »

People get easily drawn into a "feedback loop" of sorts.



A feedback loop has become a tool of business and can be a good thing, when enough people are part of a well-defined system, but, when you limit the number of checkpoints and people involved, feedback become a danger to the organization and the organism. People need to have interaction with as many other people and as many other ideas as possible (My opinion here) but many of us get shut in with our own ideas and with little external input. When that happens, all sorts of problems can present themselves. They get a notion in their head, and they start thinking more about it, but often they never discuss it with their peers, except perhaps with other people that might have the same notion. soon the conversation just becomes a self feeding action, like feedback in a sound system.

These radicals found themselves in situations where they limited the input from outside, or were isolated by external forces, and became dangerous.

Eventually they saw danger in the outside world and found no way of breaking out of their feedback loop until some rather violent action seemed to be the only release.

Maybe, the author is right. Treat it like an infection, but that means isolation to prevent spreading the infection. But, in this case, isolation may be part of the causal chain. Breaking that isolation, like opening a wound to get the infection out in the open may be a better step in the cure.
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Post by Wandrin »

I agree with you Lars. We can see the feedback loops in action every day. Unfortunately, I don't see a way to break the loops, of whatever type they may be. In parts of Texas and Oklahoma, the local news more closely resembles Fox News than unbiased news. It has been rather disturbing for me to see how that feedback loop amplifies out of control of reason. The whole realm of US politics has become so much divided into differing loops that shun contact with any other views.

I can easily imagine, in the Slender Man case, the teens discussing how their parents said it isn't true and one of them saying, "Of course they would say that. Have you seen how little time they spend on the net? They don't know the things we've seen." And so they don't discuss it with parents or others outside their group anymore. They only discuss it within the group or online, out of sight of parents or dissenters.

It applies to so many different areas. In this era, how do you break the loop? How do you get people to actually talk to someone that they identify only by some label?
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