Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
While Religion can certainly be a protective measure for people, and a way to easily explain the universe around them, and to certainly make them feel more powerful. It doesn't compare to a lot of the mental logic turns for conspiracy theorists.
The sad thing is that conspiracy theorists are incredibly vulnerable. You look at the sheer number of insane books and videos that people put out and conventions and meetings and websites with merchandise stores. Its crazy the amount of money that's being made off of people that possibly have real significant mental issues and phobias.
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It's exactly this, and I think why it's important to think of conspiracy theories as serving the same purpose as religious beliefs. They can also be just as innocuous: a slightly lapsed catholic who attends church on the holidays and occasionally confesses or lights a candle while, in their heart, being pretty iffy about a lot of the doctrine is much the same in my mind as someone who's pretty much convinced that the CIA and the Mafia killed Kennedy but doesn't really
do anything with that knowledge.
It's when either religious belief or conspiracy theory belief starts to seriously impact behavior that, in either case, you likely have a problem. When religious belief motivates a person to spend their weekday afternoons on a college campus shouting at kids through a bullhorn about how they're going to hell it is probably also motivating that person's political activities, how they spend and donate their money, and what types of relationships they're able to maintain and which they have damaged. These actions are clearly identical to the actions Q and Q-adjacent adherents take, and I think they're motivated by exactly the same human need, which is how they need to be approached if we wish to lessen their influence on society.
If you go take a look at the world of the 'formerly religious' such as youtube channels of former evangelical Christians like Genetically Modified Skeptic or Paulogia, or the r/exmormon subreddit, I think there is a pattern that emerges which is useful for thinking about how to approach friends and family who have fallen down the anti-vaxx/Qanon rabbit hole.
You can't
argue people out of their faith. When people leave their faiths it's almost never a 'silver bullet' of evidence or logic which compels them, it's a 'last straw' which they recognize for themselves. It's the accumulated weight of false predictions, bad behavior by leaders, observed counter examples, and lived experience.
In education, when you're trying to solve a repeated behavioral issue, the mnemonic we use is
ABC: Antecedent, Behavior, Consequence. Behaviors are preceded by
something, there is either a specific trigger or general need, it might be a single event, or it might be something that's built up over time but there is something coming before the behavior that is motivating it. Also, you look at the consequence, what is the person getting as a result of the behavior: attention? Stress release? Being removed from a room they don't want to be in? Whatever the consequence is, it's fulfilling a need the person has (connected to the antecedent) which then connects the loop and results in the behavior repeating. If the desire is to end or modify the behavior, you need to find a replacement for whatever need the consequence is fulfilling and either remove or provide coping skills for the antecedent.
When either religious or conspiracy faith boils over into antisocial behavior, the same antecedent-behavior-consequence loop exists and is what needs to be addressed in order to end or modify the behavior. Personally, I am convinced that in most cases, the antecedent is some combination of our human need to make sense of life and our need to feel connected to others, and the consequence of the behavior is a satisfaction of the need to make sense, a feeling of empowerment, and a sense of connection to our fellow congregants. This is why the internet is so, so powerful at spreading and amplifying conspiracy theories (and aberrant, religiously-motivated behaviors). That's where the connection to the congregation is made, where the consequence of the behavior satisfies the person's needs.
If you have someone in your life who is falling down, or has fallen down one of these rabbit holes, and you want to help pull them out, identifying their antecedent and consequence is essential to changing the behavior. Then you need to help find alternative behaviors which meet the need they're trying to fulfil and remove or provide alternative strategies for the trigger. I've read a lot of stories about people getting into their older relatives' devices and changing their alerts, subscriptions, settings, etc. This is a
great idea as you're dealing with a trigger to the behavior.
Ultimately as a society we need to do some thinking about how we meet the needs of our people to make sense and find connection with each other, because people will do these things, they need to do these things, and it's obviously incredibly easy for these needs to motivate terribly destructive behavior.