or morphic resonance
Amid these dense flocks, it's the stray positivist who appears as the lone eagle; and that's in the context of the kind of people I meet, hardly a random sample. To judge by the membership and financial clout of various literalist religious groups, the population as a whole is even more haunted?literally. Many even claim that the dead rise. Survey sampling provides some information on what people actually believe, but the method is a very blunt instrument. Granted that people only seldom think the way they are supposed to as members of a high-tech, postmodern civilization, it would be useful to understand the real worldview of the tribe.
I once read a case study of a supposedly schizophrenic girl who reported that she could read minds and was hospitalized, in part because of this delusion. The shrink who studied her case took the trouble to interview her family and discovered that they one and all believed she could indeed read their minds. Like an unlucky medieval peasant, the girl made the mistake of maintaining a folk belief too obstinately before the wrong tribunal.
inanis et vacua Mar.11.04
