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Do As I Say…
A Perspective on Cult Mentality and Modern Wealth Inequality, Part 1
The line between normal thinking and cult thinking is not as straight and narrow as some would have us believe. We are self-involved creatures and most of us would never fathom that we could be ensnared in a less-than-ideal situation by charlatans and swindlers who have no interest whatsoever in our personal well-being. Yet this exactly where we find ourselves here at the mid-point of the year 2021. Sadly, despite our delusions, the majority of us here in the U.S. are easily duped on a fairly regular basis by the popular narratives we’re fed daily, as a recent article at CNN intimates.1 The report references a recent study of about 8,000 participants, of whom the researchers observed
“…overconfident individuals are more likely to visit untrustworthy websites in behavioral data; to fail to successfully distinguish between true and false claims about current events in survey questions; and to report greater willingness to like or share false content on social media, especially when it is politically congenial…”
Furthermore, the writing states
“In all, these results paint a worrying picture: The individuals who are least equipped to identify false news content are also the least aware of their own limitations and, therefore, more susceptible to believing it and spreading it…
