One paragraph of a NY Times article caught my eye today. I've put that paragraph in bold, but also included some additional background for context:
Type “mind control” or “gang stalking” into Google, and Web sites appear that describe cases of persecution, both psychological and physical.... [A] growing number of such Web sites are filled with stories from people who say they are victims of mind control and stalking by gangs of government agents. ...
[S]ome experts say Web sites that amplify reports of mind control and group stalking represent a dark side of social networking. They may reinforce the troubled thinking of the mentally ill and impede treatment.
Dr. Ralph Hoffman, a psychiatry professor at Yale who studies delusions, said a growing number of his research subjects have told him of visiting mind-control sites, and finding in them confirmation of their own experiences.
“The views of these belief systems are like a shark that has to be constantly fed,” Dr. Hoffman said. “If you don’t feed the delusion, sooner or later it will die out or diminish on its own accord. The key thing is that it needs to be repetitively reinforced.”
That is what the Web sites do, he said.
Sarah Kershaw, "Sharing Their Demons on the Web" (NYT 11/12/08).
Religious faith is also something that needs to be repetitively reinforced. Christians are encouraged to read the Bible and pray daily, to attend worship services weekly, and to enter into Christian fellowship regularly -- all in order to maintain faith in the triune God against the steady atrophying and skepticism of everyday life. Does that
necessarily mean our faith is a delusion?
This is not a new theological debate (even for me*), but it got me looking at things from a different angle today.
As I'm thinking about this, I consider what kinds of things do we believe in
without repetitive reinforcement. Gravity comes to mind. We constantly trust gravity - our lives depend on it - and we trust with a simple, automatic faith. I know I never doubt it, even though my recollection of how or why it works is pretty shaky. Of course, gravity continually proves itself in an unmistakable, practical way.
Another example is atoms. Probably most American adults believe in atoms, as we were taught as children, even without reinforcement. Again speaking for myself, I don't see proof of their existence on a daily basis - or indeed ever. Then again, I don't see any contradictory evidence, either. Although I don't in any way doubt that matter is made up of atoms, it's probably just because I really don't care (surely the exact makeup of matter simply doesn't matter to the vast majority of us laymen).
So maybe it will be more helpful to think about secular beliefs that
require repetitive reinforcement. What comes to mind here is gratitude/contentment, or the belief that we have things in abundance. Objectively speaking, middle-class Americans tend to have lots of stuff - both tangible and intangible. This is most self-evidently true when you compare us with others around the world starving and oppressed under cruel totalitarian regimes. And yet those of us who know that we have our basic needs met many times over still find ourselves regularly losing sight of all that we have. The
true belief that I have enough (or even more than enough) fades quickly. I rapidly get used to whatever I have, and find myself pining for whatever I don't have. It requires constant reinforcement to maintain a
realistic sense of the richness of my life. It is the feeling of scarcity that is the delusion, and in my experience that delusion can be kept at bay only with constant vigilance.
FN* This is a topic I've explored before by way of C.S. Lewis and Phil Keoghan (see the discussion under "Keep your belief going, no matter what it takes").
