Jesus is pleated and other schizotypal thoughts.

GracieRuth

GracieRuth

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Yesterday in a religious chatroom someone actually did type "Jesus is pleated." While that's extreme even for this religious chat room, I still had to laugh because it rather summed up nicely a trend I had noticed -- schizotypal reasoning. The loose associations. The lack of social skills. And the biggest problem--hopelessly concrete thinking. Such people exist in any group, religious or not. But for some reason they are attracted beyond proportion to religious chatrooms.

It got me thinking about what Professor Sapolsky (of Stanford University) has to say about religion, and the contributions of schizotypal personalities. Sapolsky is an effing genius -- I want to have sex with his brain and give birth to his love child. Okay, THAT was off the wall. Anyhow, if you want to watch this six part lecture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctTsnTHk6Uw
[video=youtube;ctTsnTHk6Uw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctTsnTHk6Uw[/video]

To summarize the lecture...
Remember how if you get two copies of the sickle cell gene you get a horrific deadly anemia, but if you get just one gene you get immunity from malaria? In a more complex form, Sapolsky reasons that while schizophrenia is a terrible debilitating disease with no value, there is a "schizophrenia lite" called schizotypal personality that in the right place and right time can be highly adaptive. He reasons that schizotypal thought contributes to all the religions of the world.

Now I agree with him that it's there. I just am not sure how much I consider it a "contribution." For example, in the passover Haggadah, one rabbi reasons that if G-d caused ten plagues with his finger in Egypt, then when he used his hand at the Red Sea he must have cause 50 plagues. Grrr. It's the kind of concrete reasoning that makes me want to clobber the man. But... every religion has its nutcases, and, affectionately, this rabbi is OUR beloved nutcase.

Anyhow, if anyone else wants to listen to the lecture, I'd love to discuss whether schizotypal thinking actually benefits relgion, or whether religion simply does well in spite of it.
 
To summarize the lecture...
Remember how if you get two copies of the sickle cell gene you get a horrific deadly anemia, but if you get just one gene you get immunity from malaria? In a more complex form, Sapolsky reasons that while schizophrenia is a terrible debilitating disease with no value, there is a "schizophrenia lite" called schizotypal personality that in the right place and right time can be highly adaptive. He reasons that schizotypal thought contributes to all the religions of the world.
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Yeah, taking a break from the barrage of life to regroup. In my experience, some people are hard to love. It takes work to love them, but it can be done. Taking a short break is no big deal, but when you detach from life it may lower quality of life.
It's a multifaceted issue, because schizotypal people will show you 'evidence' on why their suspicions are correct regarding their anxiety. Jesus felt the right time to escape many times in large crowds when he felt the romans coming after him. I dont think Jesus was schizotypal in any way; I'll accept he may have been schizotypal before, but recovered. What is pleated?
 
I think schizotypical thinking and religion is only a smaller piece of the puzzle. I think that the mental health establishment is, in many ways, opposed to thinking that would be compatible with religion of any sort. Or if it is not opposed, it finds a way to explain away the thinking in its own terms.

In college I had a religious studies professor who basically had stopped caring about religious beliefs and talked every day about how religion is really just an evolutionary tool that is allowed for via our biopsychology. Basically, he was an evolutionary psychologist (although a more sophisticated one), and he explained religion in those terms. He even gave a lecture about how various mental disorders relate to religious belief. He didn't go over all of them. The point is that most of what would have been taken as religious behavior in the past, if not all of it, is now taken as neurotic behavior or, at the very least, it is seen as not compatible with current scientific thinking.

The most interesting thing to me is the dichotomy between Buddhism (specifically chan or zen Buddhism) and this kind of psychological thinking. At the core of zen is a belief in free will and corresponding responsibility; however, if a person is determined entirely by their social circumstances, environment, and biological makeup, then free will becomes an unacceptable hypothesis. As a result, the core of any religion that endorses free will (as well as existential thinking) is undermined.
 
Kmal said:
What is pleated?[/COLOR]
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Just in case you aren't joking...

This first skirt is NOT pleated.

a_line_skirt.webp

This second skirt IS pleated.

a pleated skirt.webp
 
Kmal said:
what does that have to do with jesus is what I want to know.
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Same. I'm confused.


At the same time, I see the relation, perhaps with a secular view of religion as schziotypal. However, the actual religion itself?
 
acd said:
It's word salad.
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Exactly. "Jesus is pleated" would be OVER the line, something a full fledged schizophrenic would say. The things schizotypals say usually make sense but take literally things that are figurative or read meaning into things that are coincidental. For example, another friend in the same chatroom likes to say, "Jesus is the Bread of Life. It is no coincidence that he was born in Bethlehem (Beit Lechem) which means House of Bread." I love the guy, but when he says stuff like that, I just wanna thump him.
 
Saru Inc said:
Same. I'm confused.


At the same time, I see the relation, perhaps with a secular view of religion as schziotypal. However, the actual religion itself?
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I am not anti-religious; in fact I am highly, highly religious. My religiosity is one of my best defenses against my bipolar depressions. I also see many other things of value in religion. I'm not trying to reduce religion to schizotypal thought. I'm simply acknowledging that it is definitely an element in religious communities--a piece of a larger pie, so to speak.

My question is, is it a beneficial element? Is it irrational thought at the right time and in the right place, as Sapolsky says.
 
Ummm I'm just gonna go ahead and say confidently I disagree with practically all of that.
 
Hi [MENTION=4576]GracieRuth[/MENTION]

Sapolsky was educated at the Rockefeller University, which was created by the Rockefellers and is funded by David Rockefeller who is someone who has admitted that he has a wider agenda concerning his political/financial aims

He is an heir to the Rockefeller Standard Oil company fortune and his family own the largest amount of shares in the J P Morgan Chase Bank. This bank owns a vast chunk of the shares of the federal reserve bank.

What i mean by that is his family is one of the families who controls the central bank of the USA and controls the money supply of the US

Please look up the Chase Bank on wikipedia to read about how it was helping Nazis make money and how it allowed the accounts of persecuted jews to be raided

This would be a good exercise as it would allow you to see that what i'm saying is true and that i am not just making stuff up

The Rockefellers are extremely powerful people and they paid for the land for the United Nations building to be built on in New York.

David Rockefeller was also chairman of the think tank the Council on Foreign relations that advises the US government on foreign policy. It is widely acknowledged as the most influential think tank in the US.

He also helped form the Club of Rome that has published papers warning of impending global catastrophes due to overpopulation and the Trilateral Commission

The Rockefeller Foundation funds many areas such as education and the media

So why does a wealthy industrialist/finiancial family such as the Rockefellers put so much effort into getting involved in so many areas of american life?

They do this as part of a war of ideas

I'd like to discuss this more and may do this in a number of posts to avoid losing work. Please bare with me and don't brush what i have to say off as 'conspiracy theory' nonsense because i have a perspective regarding the OP that i believe can shed a lot of light on these issues
 
The Rockefellers have invested money in the educational sector because they know that education shapes the minds of the young

Much like Platos cave people will only know the reality they are aware of......so if they are educated a certain way they will tend to see the world a certain way

This is also true of peoples training as adults. For example peoples perspectives often depend on what they do for a job. Lawyers see the world a certain way, businessmen/women, farmers, doctors etc all see the world through the filter of their training, to a certain extent

Newspapers are all owned by a 'proprietor'. The owner hires an editor to edit what goes in the newspaper. The owner may have certain biases for example he/she may be a left winger or a right winger and they want their paper to reflect their biases so they tell the editor what points of view they want expressed though their paper and they may hire people who share their views

The editors in turn hires sub editors who each edit their section of the newspaper and ensure that the points of view expressed in their sections reflect the biases of the owner....or to use political speak are 'towing the party line' or are 'on message' or are 'reading off the same page'

Through this hieararchical pyramidal structure the views of just one person (the owner) are expressed though the writings and photos of many people and then sold in newspaper format to hundreds/millions of people who then read and absorb the viewpointsof the papers owner and may come to see the world through the filter of the owners perspectives
 
So lets say you are a multi-billionaire bussines financier who wants to shape the world the way they want to see it shaped.

Lets say for example you invested money in many areas so you want to see the world shaped in such a way as to make it safe for your businesses to flourish.

Whats the best way to go about this? Well there are many options aren't there?

For example you could open your cheque book and start throwing money around. You could set up a lobby group who will basically wine and dine politicians and pay them under the table payments in brown envelopes and will offer them high ranking jobs in one of your companies when they finish their political career

You could buy newspapers, radio stations, TV programmes, internet sites, magazines and publishing houses so that you could get your viewpoints aired to as many people as possible

You could set up educational establishments and just like the newspaper you would ensure that the head of the university would ensure that only your points of view were expressed through the university. The head of the university (editor) would then hire heads of department (sub-editors) who would ensure that only content that expressed your bias were taught in their departments

So what i am saying is that the Rockefeller University where Sapolsky gained his PHD is set up to encourage and spread the viewpoints of the Rockefeller family
 
GracieRuth said:
Exactly. "Jesus is pleated" would be OVER the line, something a full fledged schizophrenic would say. The things schizotypals say usually make sense but take literally things that are figurative or read meaning into things that are coincidental. For example, another friend in the same chatroom likes to say, "Jesus is the Bread of Life. It is no coincidence that he was born in Bethlehem (Beit Lechem) which means House of Bread." I love the guy, but when he says stuff like that, I just wanna thump him.
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Let them think that way. I see nothing wrong with assigning a meaning to everything, thinking there are no coincidences. The little parts make up the whole, and while a pleated skirt looks different than a skirt that's not, it's still a skirt. I also see nothing wrong with pointing out an observation like Jesus being called the bread of life, and him being born in Bethlehem, where bread was a huge part of life and a dietary staple.

GracieRuth said:
My question is, is it a beneficial element? Is it irrational thought at the right time and in the right place, as Sapolsky says.
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It can be beneficial if utilized properly.
They frequently misinterpret situations as being strange or having unusual meaning for them. Paranormal and superstitious beliefs are not uncommon for these people. People with this disorder seek medical attention for things such as anxiety, depression, or other symptoms.
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If they believed in ghosts, and more importantly, malevolent ghosts, they are more likely to experience them, if only in their head. A ghost can be anxiety in the body, and the imagination wants to assign a meaning on the 'outside'. When understood properly, they get rid of them, and most of the time improve on their current perceptions. In the Bible it says you are given the power to cast demons in Jesus name. When they believe it, the schizotypal (and normal, healthy people) can now magically can cast out 'demons,' or anxieties.
 
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So what sort of biases would a family like the Rockefellers have?

Well i think they would want to ensure that the interests of big business were protected as this ensures the wellbeing of their own businesses.

The interests of big business often clash with the interests of workers however which is why trade unions were set up. This has happened for a very simple reason. In business wage costs are often one of the biggest outgoings of a company. If a company wants to expand its profit margins then it must squeeze the margins elsewhere. One of the places businesses often look to squeeze is workers pay, which is why workers then have to organise into unions. Companies may also try to cut corners to save money which might put workers lives at risk so once again they have to organise themselves to stand up against the company that has all the expensive lawyers and scary bullying bosses defending it.

Also because the company has lobbied the politicians so well the politicans have passed laws that favour the company not the workers. So the law might say that it is ok for the company to cut corners regarding workers safety and if the workers protest then they can be sacked or face some sort of legal action.

So we can be sure that the Rockefellers with all their business interests did not get to where they are today by always siding with the workers....in fact the opposite is likely

So their bias will be towards big business not towards the workers. Well who is big business and who are the workers? One is a very small group of people and one is a very large group of people. One is very wealthy and the other probably struggles month by month to pay the bills. So we could call one an 'elite' and the other we could reasonably call 'the people'. Or to use the language of the Occupy movement we might say it is the 1% versus the 99%
 
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So now we have clarified the dynamic in society to two distinct groups: the workers (who work for a living) and the elite (who live off their investments)

This dynamic has been around for a while now and we are all aware of Roman elites 2000 years ago and of how they kept slaves.

So what happens when the workers get angry because they are being mistreated by the elites? Well in Rome the slaves rose up under Spartacus and they fought back against the people who enslaved them

Today we are seeing the workers protesting in the tea party and occupy movements.....same dynamic at work still though

So how do the elites keep the people under control? Well violence and the threat of violence has been used for example the crushing of the paris commune, the peterloo massacre, the peasants revolt to name a few

Another method peopleoften mention is the 'bread and circus' approach, which means that you ensure that the workers are always fed enough that they don't revolt from hunger (like they did in Russia where they chanted 'bread!' as they protested) and that you distract the workers from thoughts of protest by providing them with entertainment which in Roman times consisted of making slaves fight each other or feeding prisoners to the lions.

Nowadays distractions for the workers, generated by the companies of the elite, are things like: sport, films, reality televison, pop music, news, computer games, alcohol, fast food, tobacco etc

The 'bread' is provided for in the form of cheap food. This is created in the form of processed food that is bulked up by corn syrup or in the case of animals it is bulked up through the use of steroids

The corporations such as Monsanto have so effectively lobbied the government that they have been granted a monopoly on seed production to farmers. Farmers cannot now use their onw seed and MUST by their seed from Monsanto who genetically modify foods. There's a good documentary about this called 'Food Inc' i would recommend watching

Monsanto are also well known for creating a weedkiller called 'roundup' that causes cancers when it leeches into the water from where it then gets into the biosphere. Monsanto were hired by the US government during the vietnam war to make a toxic cancer causing chemical called 'Agent Orange' that was sprayed all over vietnamese villages fullof women and children and over the peoples food crops and their water supplies so that generations of vietnamese people have been born deformed

Those same people now produce the seeds for the crops that we eat
 
In Roman times there was not the same mass media that we have today but ideas still spread as people would gather in public spaces and listen to people talk

Many of the ideas that spread were religious ideas. The elites knew that to control the way people thought in order to stop the workers getting angry and protesting they would have to influence and shape some of the ideas that were being spread around

A new religion was beginning to form called christianity and the Roman elite were threatened by this so they threw any christians they found to the lions as circus entertainment to not only distract the workers from thoughts of protest but also as a warning to workers that if they ever protested against the elite they would be thrown to the lions as well

despite the persecutions the christian religion spread. The elites had to change their tactics. They could not eradicate christianity so they decided that they would have to control it somehow.

Emperor Constantine held a council at Nicea where he gathered christian leaders around him while he sat in the middle leaving no confusion as to who was in charge of proceedings. At this council people debated over a number of things regarding their various interpretations of christianity and of the nature of christ

Eventually Constantine settled on an interpretation of christianity and of the nature of christ and he enshrined this as Roman law. Anyone who protested against this interpretation was punished as a 'heretic'

So a religion that was born out of jewish culture came to be the central religion of the roman empire and when the roman empire faded out it was carried on by the roman catholic church right upto this day


I am telling this story to illustrate that even though individuals may choose their own interpretations of religions and of religious messages the elites have always sought to create a state sanctioned version or interpretation which they have often upheld with violence or coercion for example through the inquisition or the missionaries and jesuits even though the elites themselves might not believe the state santioned version of religion. For example Constantine was actually a member of the Sol Invictus cult (the cult of the invincible sun)

Another example might be modern day politicians such as George Bush who despite speaking about God on televison for eample to say 'God bless America' was actually a member of a pagan group called the skull and bones club which was of masonic origins which itself has origins in pre-christian pagan egypt (sun worship....by this i mean male mysteries, which is why women were not officially permitted into freemasonry)
 
GracieRuth said:
Yesterday in a religious chatroom someone actually did type "Jesus is pleated."
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Did you ask this person what they meant by it? It could have had a meaning to it. There is always some new book describing Jesus in a new and bizzarre way.
 
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So to try and tie all this back to the OP....

I've discussed how there is a power struggle between the elite and the people and how this struggle has been going on for a while now

I've also discussed some of the methods the elites have used to try and control or distract the people or to satiate their desires for example for food, violence or sex (eg modern day pornography and graphic pop music videos and sexualised images in mass media) in order to keep the people obediant

So back to some modern day methods of control. I've discussed how peoples views can be shaped by education and by media and by culture

Todays culture is 'consumerism'. Consumerism is the process by which big business sells people products and employs people to make those products. This serves two functions: bread and circus. The bread is provided for by the jobs created by consumerism and the circus is provided by the things produced by consumerism which distract and entertain the people. For people to consume things however requires them to first desire something.

I'm not going to go out and buy anything unless i first desire it. Big business just wants to sell stuff so it doesn' care if you need its products it just cares that you want its products. The best way to make someone want something is to make them feel incomplete unless they have the thing you are trying to sell. This is why big business invests billions of dollars on advertising and on marketing....because they want to make you desire their product, whether you need it or not

Listen to adverst on televison....they are designed to manipulate you into wanting something. For example a make up advert might tell you that you should get their mascara because 'you're worth it'......the implication of this of course being on a subtle and emotional level that if you do not buy their product its because you are not really worthy

Or a car advert might tell you that to drive their car is to have the 'ride of your life'....the implication being that if you do not drive their car you have not really lived and that if you do drive their car you will have lots of fun; the amusing aspect of this is the car advertised is often a really crap car!

A car advert might offer to 'bring the fun' back into driving.....as if by sitting in their car every morning rush hour traffic will somehow be transformed into a pleasurable experience!
 
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