Thread by @Nick_Carmody

Is Qanon morphing into a religion right before our very eyes?

At a minimum, we are witnessing a perfect storm-like convergence of numerous features of modern society that have created a fertile ground for conspiratorial delusions. 1/ religiondispatches.org/in-the-name-of…

These features unsurprisingly run parallel to both Trumpism and Qanon.....and include: celebrity hero-worship, reality TV, weaponization of technology, narcissism, victimhood, a neurotransmitter called dopamine, religious conditioning,…2/

https://twitter.com/Nick_Carmody/status/1304403460754870273

…….a post-truth mantra that entitles people to “find your (their) truth”....

(excerpt from something I wrote about political confirmation bias)…..3/

….. and, if Stanford professor, Robert Sopalsky, is correct, possibly even schizotypal disorder. 4/

I’ve written a number of threads/articles that touch on these factors separately. I’ll try to weave them together here to address the “Qanon as a religion” premise. As alluded to above, 5/

…Robert Sapolsky submits an interesting theory about schizotypal personality disorder (“loose associations, meta-magical thinking”) as factor in early religion formation. 6a/

Basically, Sapolsky suggests that “prophets” who were sufficiently disordered enough to believe/claim to have a unique relationship with, or understanding of, a deity……could convince a tribe of people to follow them and their beliefs. 6b/

Well, Qanon dogma is littered with loose associations (to reality) & meta-magical thinking…..where millions of people hero-worship a clearly disordered, “chosen one” tribal leader (Trump), & an amorphous, false (fictional) prophet that dispenses conspiratorial delusion: “Q”. 7/

In previous work, I’ve analyzed the gravitational pull of conspiracy theories. The link to the thread is here, but I’ve unrolled it below: 8/

https://twitter.com/Nick_Carmody/status/1304772282284343302

When people don’t know what to believe, or feel like they can’t believe anything, they will attach their beliefs to bias-confirming narratives…even if those narratives are illogical. 9/

I’ve used a “circuit breaker” analogy to explain why some people revert to not just their previous position when confronted with potentially moderating information about both sides of an issue, but to an even more extreme position than they held before hearing both side. 10/

Here's something I wrote a few years ago when theorizing about a study that focused on the effect that new information has on pre-existing opinions: 11/

(Begin quoted thread)
"Although conventional wisdom might expect that rationally thinking people would have their opinions moderated into a middle-ground position by the convincing evidence provided for both sides of the argument,….12/

….the unpredicted effect of being exposed to scientific evidence that supported and contradicted both positions actually resulted in people holding a more polarized, more extreme position than what they held prior to hearing the two rounds of evidence. 13/

Perhaps their evolving extremist positions had less to do with having been exposed to both sides of the issue, and more to do with the volume of information overwhelming them, resulting in a “circuit breaker”-like effect where the human mind shuts down or “trips”,…14/

…..and reverts not just back to their initial position on the issue, but to a more extreme version of it as if needing to protect itself from a future, similar, potentially damaging informational (power) “surge”. 15/

The tendency of a person to gravitate towards a more extreme polarized position on an issue may be the result of a self-preservational instinct to avoid a self-concept shattering realization and acceptance of their ignorance on a particular topic.…16/

When considering this study, the bombardment of information of both sides of a particular issue may have failed to moderate the participants’ views on the issue...17/

…because being exposed to an overwhelming amount of evidence may have created an information overload, which then threatened to pierce their Dunning-Kruger veil of ignorance. 18/

Rather than accept their own intellectual limitations, the participants may have reflexively and compulsively doubled-down on their original position as a form of ignorance repression. 19/

Basically, people are choosing to remain confidently ignorant and assertive, rather than to become educated, informed, and measured in their views." (end quoted thread) 20/

One of things that may be happening with conspiracy theory fanaticism, is that when confronted with information on both sides of an issue, for some people, when that psychological circuit “breaks”,…..21/

….instead of reverting back to a previously held position…..or even a more extreme version of it (as happened in the study)….….they instead detach from any semblance of reality. 22/

Basically, when confronted w/contradicting information that causes them to not know what to believe….they’re compelled to believe anything, regardless of how absurd it may be….especially when that absurdity is “highly entertaining…and intoxicatingly addictive” (see below). 23/

Several years ago, I wrote about potential physiological factors of tribalism:
(Begin quoted thread)
“…the political polarization/partisanship problem actually goes even much deeper because research has shown there may be a physiological component:…24/

https://twitter.com/Nick_Carmody/status/1148730800956854272

…..fMRI scans were used to show that neuroanatomical regions that are associated with physically painful experiences. exhibit increased activity when people experience social exclusion or social separation. 25/

These findings indicate that it can literally become a *painful* experience when people disagree or speak out against groups of which they consider themselves to be members. This would seem to indicate that…26/

…there are physiological components at play that cause people to prefer to be comfortably wrong (incorrect/uninformed), rather than uncomfortably right (correct/informed)…, 27/

…when being right or correct would put them in contradiction with a group with whom they share an identity, or if being right or correct would threaten their group membership. 28/

If motivation or incentive for pain avoidance exists, it not only could conceivably create an aversion to objectivity or moderation, but it would incentivize groupthink, ‘collective narcissism’, etc.”

(end quoted thread) 29/

https://twitter.com/Nick_Carmody/status/1101899482948546561

Similar to speaking out against a group that people derive their identity from.....there may be a pain avoidance component involved with aversions to refuting a conspiracy theory, or speaking out against a belief the rest of the group believes/propagates. 30/

Another factor may be that by believing in conspiracy theories, people allow themselves to embrace two cognitively dissonant ideas: 31/

Conspiracy theories satiate the conspiracy theorist’s narcissism by allowing them to believe that they are special, unique, smarter than everyone else, and hold membership in an exclusive “club” of “the knowing”….32/

…..while also justifying their grievance/resentment/victimhood because the conspiracy explains why, despite all their narcissistic grandiosity (special/unique/smarter than everyone else), they may have underachieved in life. 33/

Basically, conspiracy theories are often a cognitive dissonance-reconciling narrative that allow people to believe that they are special (narcissism), even if they’ve done nothing special in their life (victimhood…someone kept me down).” 34/

Circling back to the “highly entertaining….intoxicatingly addictive” reference above, that quote was included from another article/thread that examined the Religious Right’s susceptibility to conspiracy theories, which I’ll address below, but first some context. 35/

The “entertainment” factor is not only a major component of the Qanon obsession, but it’s also a major factor with the degradation of society. I’ve analyzed the entertainment (and reality tv) factor here…..: 36/

https://twitter.com/Nick_Carmody/status/1194948317056139265

(begin quoted thread)
“Unfortunately, similar to hiding a dog's medication in a peanut butter treat, society often needs its information embedded in entertainment, or stated inflammatorily by an “entertaining” Right Wing “Shock Jock”. As a result,…37/

…40% of the country chooses to consume “information” from a network (FOX) that manufactures “entertaining” political fiction/conspiracy theories…and uses attention-grabbing visual graphics/sound effects to suck viewers into the drama of the political theatre they produce. 38/

Entertainment has become such a primary pursuit in people’s lives that celebrity culture now influences our politics to the point where “celebrity” has now become synonymous with “authority” as evidenced by the fact that we have a reality TV president…”.

(end quoted thread) 39/

….And I’ve analyzed the effect of society's increasingly shortened-attention spans, intellectual incuriosity, and the constant desire to be entertained at the expense of being educated…..here:

(begin quoted thread) 40/

https://twitter.com/Nick_Carmody/status/1140922484956381184

“As a society we've outsourced our intellectual curiosity in order to be able to watch mindless programming. We have little desire to be educated, only to be entertained. Few people understand methodology, or probabilistic reasoning, & our ability to think critically is poor. 41/

I wrote something in 2006 that touches on this point: "I've recently read articles that said 63% of 18-24 year-olds could not find Iraq on a map, and 50% could not find New York state. 42/

This is the age group whose asses will be shipped over there if we ever have a draft,.. yet they're too f*cking stupid or lazy to pay close enough attention to know where it is?! 43/

Yet I'm sure that this same demographic was a majority of the 43 million [people] who voted for American Idol ....who when surveyed, 35% said they ‘believe votes on American Idol matter as much as or more than those cast in a U.S. presidential election’….44/

Two weeks later: “Just a little follow up: 64 million American idol votes in the final round. No American President has received that many votes in any one election......ever. (as of 2006)” 45/

This begs the "?": What "American Idol"-like carryover effect did the Apprentice have on the 2016 election? If Simon Cowell ran for president in 2008, how many of those American Idol voters would have voted for him?”

(end quote)

Expanding upon the “entertainment” factor,… 46/

…one of the overlooked factors of Qanon: there’s an interactive, crowd-sourcing component where people compete, receive a “reward” (dopamine) for being the *cleverest*, connecting the furthest dispersed dots, & for (most absurdly) advancing the “story” the furthest/quickest. 47/

Essentially, Qanon has become a multi-million player Dungeons & Dragons-like, choose your own adventure game that is metaphorically being played within the confines of a Doomsday cult-like “escape room”. 48/

Now let’s take everything above, and examine the religious component that underlies Qanon, and how/why “ridiculously entertaining...and intoxicatingly addictive” conspiracy theories may influence the Religious Right’s conspiracy theory susceptibility and attraction to Trump: 49/

(Link to the thread unrolled immediately below:) 50/

https://twitter.com/Nick_Carmody/status/1289197033492844544

(begin quoted thread)

“…reality can "boring", and that people don’t like randomness/ambiguity, or [the idea] we’re at the mercy of forces...we don’t understand/can’t comprehend...and that "conspiracy theories are ridiculously entertaining...and intoxicatingly addictive". 51/

Well, an argument can be made that religion was an attempt to explain a random/ambiguous world (reality) that people didn't/couldn't understand or comprehend with "ridiculously entertaining" narratives/stories. 52/

Applying this criteria, an argument can be made that religion was the "original sin": The original conspiracy theory. 53/

This also explains why so many Christians support a guy who not only violates every value they claim to hold, but whose pathological dishonesty has resulted in 20k documented lies: Trump's entire existence is a "ridiculously entertaining" conspiracy theory (lie).” (end quote) 54/

Now let’s examine the gravitational pull between some narcissists and religion, and how that factored into Trump’s cult following: (link to thread that’s unrolled below) 55/

https://twitter.com/Nick_Carmody/status/1161043046349152256

(begin quoted thread)

“One of the things I’ve observed in my personal experiences with Narcissists…..and I see parallels to the interplay between Trump, Evangelicals, and “Collective Narcissism”…..is the gravitational pull that some narcissists feel towards religion. 56/

The gravitational pull between narcissists and religion exists for a number of reasons. For starters, the self-righteousness that religion provides for people is extremely attractive to those who view themselves with pathological levels of grandiosity/superiority. 57/

Second, the idea that an all-knowing, all-powerful God-like figure not only wants to have a “personal relationship” with them, but is literally singling them out and currying favor on them and their life…..is an extremely intoxicating form of narcissistic supply. 58/

The narcissist not only feels elevated to a deified level of “us”, but avoids the punitive wrath (fear) that the non-believing “them” will suffer. 59/

All of the above not only ties into “collective narcissism”,…60/

https://twitter.com/Nick_Carmody/status/1101899482948546561

…but it makes it easier to understand the dysfunctional gravitational pull to Trump by Religious *authoritarian followers*. 61/

https://twitter.com/Nick_Carmody/status/110325658739157811261/

The above analysis may also explain their need to not only build Trump up into something that he isn’t, but to aggressively…..and perhaps even violently…..defend the façade that he has created, and they have bought into…62/

….because the *greater* they build Trump up to appear to be……the greater the narcissistic supply they receive from him when it appears that he is looking out and “fighting” for them… 63/

….because similar to the religious “personal relationship”/deified “level of elevation” dynamic mentioned above, Trump’s false claims of fighting for the "little guy", the coal miner, the farmer, etc.,..even while exploiting them for personal gain…64/

… stimulates his base’s narcissism because the *all-powerful*, *all-knowing* Donald Trump elevates them into the in-group “us”, while satisfying their need and lust for political blood sport against the out-group “them”.

(end quoted thread)
65/

Since the objective of this thread/article is to analyze Qanon as religion, in the excerpt directly above, let’s replace God and/or Trump with “Q”, and religion with “Qanon dogma”, and the analysis remains relatively seamless: 66/

(begin modified quoted thread)
"Something I’ve observed in my personal experiences with Narcissists…..& I see parallels to the interplay between “Q”, Qanon cultists, and “Collective Narcissism”…..is the gravitational pull that some narcissists feel towards Qanon dogma. 67/

The gravitational pull between narcissists and Qanon exists for a number of reasons. For starters, the self-righteousness that Qanon dogma provides for people is extremely attractive to those who view themselves with pathological levels of grandiosity/superiority. 68/

Second, the idea that an all-knowing, God-like figure [is “blessing” them with special/secret knowledge] is an extremely intoxicating form of narcissistic supply. 69/

The narcissist not only feels elevated to a deified level of “us”, while avoiding the punitive wrath (fear) that the non-believing (non-“awakening”) “them” will suffer. 70/

All of the above not only ties into “collective narcissism”, but it makes it easier to understand the dysfunctional gravitational pull to “Q” by *authoritarian followers*. 71/

The above analysis may also explain their need to not only build Trump (“Q”) up into something that he isn’t, but to aggressively…..and perhaps even violently…..defend the façade that he has created, and they have bought into…72/

…because the *greater* they build Trump (“Q”) up to appear to be……the greater the narcissistic supply they get from him when it appears that he is looking out and fighting for them…73/

…because similar to the religious “personal relationship”/deified “level of elevation” dynamic mentioned above, Trump’s/(Q’s”) false claims of fighting for the "little guy", the coal miner, the farmer, etc.,..even while exploiting them for personal gain… 74/

….stimulates the cult’s narcissism because the *all-powerful*, *all-knowing* Donald Trump/”Q” elevates them into the in-group “us”, while satisfying their need and lust for political blood sport against the out-group “them”.

(end modified quoted thread) 75/

Bringing this back to Qanon….similar to religion, people are weaving together subjective perceptions and experiences to create meaning in their lives by making associations between unrelated events. 76/

People are fanatically attempting to create meaning from “signs”, where it does not otherwise exist…..except that instead of interpreting the grill marks on a grilled cheese sandwich as an image of Jesus, and interpreting that holy sandwich as a religious symbolism…77/

….they’ve interpreted something as innocuous as Trump wearing a yellow tie as a coded symbol/sign that the Coronavirus is fake. 78/ (theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…).

This fanatical drive to create/discover meaning on a societal/global scale, creates/provides a false sense of meaning/purpose for people where it is desperately lacking in their lives. 79/

Qanon is a hyper-magnified/amplified version of Baader-Meinhof phenomenon (frequency illusion), where the sudden awareness of something creates the illusion that it’s everywhere……and therefore *must* mean *something*. 80/

Taking all of this together, we have the perfect-storm convergence where a celebrity/reality tv obsessed society….was conned by a sociopathic narcissistic conman who lied at such a pathological level that… 81/

…it caused people, many of whom were already products of religious conditioning (suspension of logic/evidence for “belief”), and who may literally have been engaging in physiological pain-avoidant behavior (experienced when defying a group from which they derive identity)….82/

…to not only believe that the truth was unknowable, but to feel liberated by a psychological “circuit breaker”-like affect to believe whatever they wanted, regardless of how “loosely associated” to reality, or tightly embraced with “meta-magical thinking”…83/

….with those beliefs simultaneously providing a dopamine-rewarding form of interactive reality tv-like entertainment…where the tv audience are the contestants, & the cult leader “stars” of the show are viewed with hero-worshipping idolization as prophets and “chosen ones”. 84/

Circling back to the question of whether we are witnessing the birth of a new religion….b/c there are so many Christian themes/references w/in the Qanon dogma, we may not necessarily be witnessing the birth of a new religion, so much as the modernization of a current one. 85/

As a result, we may simply be witnessing a religion being updated/modernized by infusing it with hyper-stimulating pop cultural entertainment, and then weaponizing modern technology (social media) to proselytize the conspiratorial delusions onto the rest of the country. 86/

Regardless of whether Qanon is the birth of a new nation, or a modernized perversion of an old one……the overarching concern is the same: 87/

In 2019, the FBI included multiple references to Qanon when classifying fringe conspiracy theories as a domestic terror threat.

But what happens when a domestic terror threat achieves religious status? 88/ news.yahoo.com/fbi-documents-…

This is perhaps the most dangerous scenario because it would seem incredibly difficult to contain a conspiratorial delusion once it receives not just “free speech” protections of the protection of the 1st Amendment, but also its “Freedom of Religion” protections. 89/

As seen with the recent “deplatforming”, and the uninformed/false accusations of violations of 1st Amend (which only restricts government action) by private companies…..strictly from a “free speech” standpoint, containing conspiracy theories is difficult/contentious enough. 90/

….But trying to contain and diffuse “religious” disinformation and conspiratorial delusions that have received “freedom of religion” protection of 1st Amendment freedom will be even more difficult. 91/

Sidenote regarding Qanon, conspiracy theories, and Margery Taylor Green's recent, cowardly avoidance of accountability for her actions:

When Green says, "I was allowed to believe things that weren’t true".....she's basically making a case for the deplatforming of disinformation.

Essay form of this thread analyzing whether Qanon is morphing into a religion (no paywall): patreon.com/posts/47160497

Thread on the "Firehose of Lies" that groomed people to highly receptive to Qanon and its conspiratorial delusions:

https://twitter.com/Nick_Carmody/status/1225030215249719296