[Lawtan]

Originally Posted by MyPerfectPigeon

Thanks so much! I'll start doing that!!
I often wondered why the abductions stories exist. Do you believe it is only the result of narcissism and delusion, or mental illness of some kind?
There is that "disease" known as Morgellons. If you haven't heard of it, it only occurs in alien abduction alleged victims. as a disease itself, well, it simply isn't one. However, it has been noted that the alleged sufferers of Morgellons all have similar psychiatric conditions.


It does seem like culture is an expression in nature. We can see behaviors that mimic culture not only in non-sentient monkeys and apes, but also in cetaceans. I think animal cultures are incredibly intriguing.
In terms of mental illness, I myself think there's a line that is constantly crossed with it.
I believe some conditions do, without a doubt, qualify as a mental illness. For me, anyway, if the alleged mental illness is something that impairs a person to the point of not allowing them to lead a "normal" life (or perform functions normally expected of a human being), I'd consider that a mental illness. However, nowadays just about anything can be a mental illness.

A plausible mechanism of the alien abductions (and other mythical based culture-based mental illnesses could be as a way to alleviate cognitive dissonance. The brain often goes to great extents of contradiction, compromise, and self-delusion to avoid the pain of holding contradicting thoughts/ideals. An example being in the Salem Witch Trials (at least by my interpretation of events) where the culture there made it more acceptable to accuse an African woman (and others) of witchcraft rather than be caught socializing with her (or having relationships with others). The girls would have tricked themselves into believing witchcraft made such "evil" things seem okay rather than question the values of their culture. (This also factors into the hostility seen in some areas today to modern ideas, and how activism/speech for those ideas can if handled poorly result in a more close-minded audience...though I may be going too far there.

To my understanding, human culture (well, and hands) is the main thing that has allowed us our "superiority" - not intelligence/morals/personality. By that same token, there is little to no evidence that other animals and their cultures, given our technology, would be better than humanity.


On the note about "human nature" - I was sort of largely looking at trends in modern culture as how they relate to depression, and the "grassroots" and "transhumanism" movements.