I'm not so fatalistic. I think our current understanding of social behaviour demonstrates that what people believe is largely determined by what's normalised within their social circles.linguistcat wrote: ↑Thu May 20, 2021 2:00 pmI think if someone's going to believe in astrology, they're going to believe in it.
I used to think this was enough. I don't any more due to what I've observed since becoming widowed.linguistcat wrote:Just try to steer them away from anyone asking for money based on psychic abilities or card readings if you have enough sway that they'd listen to you.
On both the widowed support groups I belong to, there's a sizable proportion of folks who believe that life continues after death and that the deceased can communicate with the living. These folks only occasionally talk about visiting mediums and more frequently talk about seeing "signs" of these attempts to communicate in daily life. A lot of them are pretty pathetic--I don't remember turning the tap on but when I walked into the room it was running! But if folks take comfort in trivial occurrences like these, what's the harm?
Well, it's hard to maintain that this is all harmless activity after you've read anguished posts by survivors who don't find the signs they're looking for and conclude from this that their loved ones are upset with them. Or who don't make positive changes in their lives because they don't see indications that this is what their loved ones want. Or who do end up wasting money on psychics, who can compound these issues, even when operating with the best of intentions and not out of a profit motive.
Yeah, the problem with believing one kind of nonsense is that it makes you more inclined to believe other kinds of nonsense. And the line between "harmless nonsense" and "harmful nonsense" is not as easy to draw as people think it to be.