On 2008-05-17 22:14 +0100, stephen allegedly wrote:
> On May 17, 5:22 am, nada <dwalters...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> I think there is a mild issue of paranoia going on with people who
>> come up with stuff like this. But it's not a disease, it's must
>> insecurity or something similiar.
>
> I think you are focusing too much on the threatening content that
> dominates their preoccupations. If it were only a matter of pre-
> occupation with threat and over-attentiveness to low-probability
> threats, it would signify nothing more than anxiety, although probably
> of clinical severity. The more pathological symptom is in their
> assigning outlier a priori probabilities to events. These differences
> do not result from a difference in opinion but precede and form its
> basis. When these paranoid personalities form a theory on limited
> evidence, all subsequent evidence becomes channeled as confirmatory.
> Most people are annoying obtuse about seeing contradictions between
> their theories and reality, but these paranoid conspirativists are
> utterly incapable of it. This is clinical paranoia.
No, it isn't. Paranoia is thinking someone is "out there" maniacally
aiming to kill or harm your child because /you/ have repressed pulsions
to kill or harm it. Paranoia is imagining people are out there in the
shadows waiting to rape you (very common among women), because you have
***ual desires of promiscuity but refuse to admit them (the rape
situation is convenient in as much as it combines the ***ual act with
involuntariness). This does not mean that killing your child or
promiscuity are true, natural human wishes. They can be, and are as a
rule, secondary phenomena themselves. The neurotic character is a big
tower of "perverse" pulsions and defences against them, and of defences
against the defences, et caetera. At their root is the repression of
natural ***ual wishes and natural ***ual development in childhood, most
of which stems naturally from the family situation, which is why it must
be abolished.
There /is/ a neurotic aspect in the "conspiratorializing" (how do you
spell that again?), partly, and you have coined it quite well when you
spoke of "obsessive conspriatling... constipariota... conspiratoria...
that thing". I too think some people are obsessive about it, and that
you could call those cases pathological when the theory-building ceases
to be a means to explain reality, but becomes a means to itself, becomes
the purpose of the exercise.
Such an obsession is a common and simple phenomenon, unfortunately I am
at loss to give the proper name for it, as my psychoanalytical knowledge
and terminology are in German. In German you'd call it "Grübelsucht".
Something like "addiction to round-about thinking".
But the point is that -- especially given that the fact that some
people's ideas may be neurotically determined has no a priori incidence
upon the truth of those ideas -- the point is that psychological
analysis at this point is entirely misplaced. Even if it would offer
some explanations of some particular bits of theories or the attitudes
of their holders, it certainly does not do away the whole, and it
certainly does not refute the bulk of the more salient points of some
"conspiracy theories". What's more, the act of trying to bring
psychological explanations into this part is more than dubious in the
first place, because hopefully we all understand what type of people
would have a genuine interest in labelling what oppositional thoughts so
ever as pathological.
However, there happens to be room for the application of psychological
considerations in this matter. But it's on the other side. The fact that
so many people _believe_ the hype BEGS explanation. As Vngelis put it
rather well:
> if adults believe in a man in a cave who pops up whenever the NWO
> requires a new justification for its 'war on terror' then one would
> have to on the verge of clinical insanity.
The official propaganda regarding "9/11", "Al-Qaeda" and so forth is
desperately illogical, inconsistent and irrational. Why do so many
believe it? How could it be that adults who do not display insane
behaviour normally do so for this particular bit? Such an inquiry would
be much more interesting results than wondering whether people think the
twin towers were blown up because they secretly like to suck dicks (or
lick ****s, but vice versa -- you know what I mean). It would be the
more fruitful, because it would offer a glimpse of some of the
psychological mechanisms the system makes use of to maintain itself
(something no police force, however big, could achieve).
Lastly, I'll note that I strongly suspect the partly irrational attitude
some "truthers" display is entirely due to the blatant obtuseness of
their surroundings, and is a more or less natural reaction to it. Some
of these folks simply point out obvious and entirely sensible facts. Yet
they meet with pathological denial on behalf of their surroundings and
the media. It boils down to: "am I insane or is everyone else wrong".
This is a VERY tough question to bear, and all but the strongest
characters do fall prey to it.
> The left must learn that it need not debate the insane, whether they
> suffer from paranoid personality disorder or homo***uality.
WHAT THE **** does homo***uality have to do with all of this!?
And then: "The left must learn that it need not debate the insane".
What?! YOU brought the whole question of insanity and homo***uality into
it in the first place!
--
DF.
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