Mass Populaces Under Hypnotic Trances with Religion?

I have a serious question here that I have noticed, and that is the tendency for me to slip into a hypnotic trance when forced to be around conservative people, in particular, and religious people. At any rate, we can just call this a cultural shift - I'm sure it isn't limited to *just* religion.

While in this trance, I have serious delusions about the reality of reality - in other words, I start to think certain things are true that are patently not true.

When I first came back to my hometown, I was open-minded and that meant that I could see cause-and-effect. From my perspective then, the "religious" people back home were keen on yelling and attacking people for reasons that made no legitimate sense.

My theory is that resource shorting, for example, shorting someone on food, water, shelter or social activity, is a way to trick the mind into thinking that certain things are "bad" - for an easy example without much political connotations, let's take smoking a cig. A realistic person would research smoking and learn about its health affects, and then make an informed decision about whether or not they wanted to smoke.

However, if the person was involved in some kind of religious cult or area with a culture that prohibited smoking for no realistic reason, when they smoked, they might be socially ostracized, or maybe even have their house taken away, or maybe their car vandalized. This would force them to stop smoking -

What I wonder is, if enough things like this happen, do we begin to lose touch with reality and slip into a trance because what we believe is true starts to slip away from what is true? After being in the trance-like state for a while do we begin to resonate with it and come "out" of it?

Religion tends to do this trance magic heavily, I think. Many Africans who get visits from missionaries see Christianity as a kind of sorcery, and it really is - I am wondering if anyone else besides me experiences being in a complete or partial trance for days at a time when under the influence of conservatives or religious folk, or even new cultural situations. Or if you are not in a trance, do you ever experience being around other people in a trance (who seem asleep at the wheel), or possibly fear retribution for illogical things by people in trances?

If you are in a trance and are religious / cultured, do you ever experience being around people who are not in a trance who point out things that are annoying because of how true they are and they frustrate you?

Or is anyone religious or under a negative (as in punishment-based) cultural influence and not notice they are in a trance - in other words, you would be in sync with your trance state enough to actually see clearly and know what is going on around you and have a meaningful conversation with someone, or in the best case scenario, do something together and know what is going on around you?

If you are religious, do you ever experience spacing out for long periods of time, or not being aware of your surroundings, etc? Or having blurry vision? What about any Atheists?

The reason I think that conservatives are more likely to be in trances is because the recent liberal movement is heavily based on Jaques Derrida, who is a deconstructionist philosopher - I think that the trances have to do with constructions.

Some people are worried about the return of the Egyptian Gods or some such thing - which could be a metaphor for the return of the mass-trance state on a world-wide scale.

I don't think there is much of a "trance" epidemic.

Instead what you are seeing is pure social dynamics at play.
Everyone chooses their belief and what they say, whether they realize it or not.

What it really boils down to is information and the quality of it.
If they have valid information and apply critical thinking their view will be fairly reasonable often times.
However if their information is flawed, their view will appear very screwed up often times.

So the solution is to provide better information through novel approaches.

op, could you outline some symptoms of this ''trance'' you speak of?

reply to post by darkbake


Are you being serious? Because I can't tell if troll or...

reply to post by darkbake


while there is great wisdom to be found in the sacred texts of many faiths, many "religeous" people are cultural members of a certain faith.

they were born into a group, or belong to please someone socially and not be cut off from resources.

this shallow form of religion is based on accepting whatever comes down the pike, as served by your leaders.

what you see as a trance is laziness, accepting dogma with no understanding.

or for many it's social advancement, a country club, blind faith leads to acceptance by your group.
if you don't involve your kids and go to services, you'll lose aunt clara's inheritance and good graces.
your boss belongs to your group and you want to get ahead in life, etc.

and for many ignorance and repeating stupidity is how you best fit in your social group.

imo, this trance you see is just shallow thinking, unfortunately very common in all human societies.

reply to post by muzzleflash


Thanks, Muzzleflash. And I'm not trolling, actually. I live in a town where there are a lot of people who seem to be in a trance, and I can go into one as well when I am feeling suppressed. Muzzleflash gives a great run-down of gathering information, making informed decisions and critical thinking.

Okay symptoms would be walking around strangely quiet, and then yelling or getting angry or trying to sabotage someone when they try to do something novel, but not knowing why what they are doing is "wrong" (it might even be more intelligent than what you are doing) - using power to push outdated or less effective ideals on people who try to provide more effective methods, but shutting them down.

For me personally (no yelling or anything, although there are still definitely personal symptoms), symptoms are like a bit of time delay, slightly blurry vision, not being aware of my surroundings but more of thoughts regarding my day, an inhibited ability to see facts separated from values placed on them. An increased tendency to feel a fantasy shield. If someone is talking to me about factual things, I go blurry-eyed and miss the input of the facts and tend to generalize.

If someone provides me with a new way of doing things, I do tend to *try* to listen (as I try to be open-minded) but if in a "trance," I might have a hard time integrating what they are saying into my routines and autopilot day (being on autopilot would be another symptom).

reply to post by citizen6511


Very good call there, Citizen. You speak clearly.

reply to post by darkbake


Perhaps its the subjectivity of religious thinking that is a problem for most people because the church through schooling and the taking the kids to church syndrome inputs the information they want put in and we don't question what we learned as kids. Its takes getting out of the trance that wakes people up.

I do find that my eyes glaze over once certain people - conservative thinking ones - start to chat sometimes and its the compliance with what the government says that gets me, because if they thought about the situation 'with all the lights on' the trance would lift and they would see the con being played.

The worst ones for the trance fixing for me are the interviewers and newsreaders on the tv because they push the ideas that we should all be content with our lot, however much we are exploited.

Religion has bothered me ever since I actually read through the bible and the ideas that even completely switched on people seemed to take for granted whenever religion came up. A social worker eagerly telling the kiddies about a man ready to kill and sacrifice his only son to prove his love for a God. If you took that circumstance today what would that guy say to someone just about to kcut his kid's throat. The trance that covers people's power of discernment seems to be well able to cover what should be pure common sense when thinking.

Perhaps you loose patience and drift out of situations that you know patently are wrong and its the awful situation of facing how much effort one would have to make to try to change things and how many people, in their trance state would work against you.

reply to post by darkbake


There is something more serious going on and I think you have missed the elephant in the room.

Ever watched someone watching TV? THAT'S a hypnotic trance. Hours and hours spent staring at a flat screen, sometimes expressionless and imo, lifeless.

Chuck it out the window

Is this is how god wants us to act? If God exists then this is not what he would want us doing. If God exists, he doesn't require anything, much less worship.

Yes those who are religious ar under a trance, our world today is the effect of that trance on the people.

I have to agree. There is a placebo effect to religious thought, and I would wager that most of it is a form of hypnotism, or at least an indoctrination that conforms one's own thought to that of a specific culture, rather than their own personal culture.

reply to post by darkbake


Yep. Many "evangelical" preachers want to put you in a trance. Some of the most noteworthy Christian apologists start with a "logical fallacy" stated as an empirical truth to confuse any kind of critical thinking, then using neurolinguistics and faux intellectualism they try to manipulate your mind into following them down their yellow brick road.

It takes a strong mind to see and call out their tricks.

reply to post by darkbake


Conservatives live in the real world that cannot be maintained.
Liberals dream of a real world that cannot be.

Surely, we can find common ground without wrecking the country as seems to be the on-going situation.

citizen6511
reply to post by darkbake

 

while there is great wisdom to be found in the sacred texts of many faiths, many "religeous" people are cultural members of a certain faith.

they were born into a group, or belong to please someone socially and not be cut off from resources.

This 100%. It's not always a malignant occurrence, though.

For example, I'm an eclectic pagan witch (and my wife more or less "new age") but, culturally, we are American Christians. We celebrate Christmas (right after Yule, of course!), we attend Christian weddings and funerals, and we don't really complain about Christianity being sewn in to the fabric of pop-culture (the harmless elements, anyway). Furthermore, while I can't get my wife to enter a church, I would feel quite comfortable there so there's really no unhealthy confusion. I am totally content saying that.

I am certain that most Americans who check the box "Christian" are spiritually agnostic but culturally Christian. The problem is when you get people who like others to think for them. That's when cultural religion can have negative effects.

You and the OP, together, weaved a whole lot of truth out of this thread. Cool on both of you.

The catholic mass is apparantly one hypnotic technique from one end to the other
cults use many of the same techniques to brainwash thier adherants

nerbot
reply to post by darkbake

 

There is something more serious going on and I think you have missed the elephant in the room.

Ever watched someone watching TV? THAT'S a hypnotic trance. Hours and hours spent staring at a flat screen, sometimes expressionless and imo, lifeless.

Chuck it out the window

edit on 19/2/2014 by nerbot because: (no reason given)

meet the new opiate for the masses...
next...
say hello to Mr Chips

reply to post by darkbake