I have this friend, N, that has recently started believing things very out of the ordinary. He said that he's been getting into paganism and studying runes and candles. I told him that was very interesting, it sounded like a fun time and a good hobby to have. N let me know that it wasn't just a hobby, but that it had a function and purpose, a sort of witchcraft.
I come from an academic background; it doesn't seem healthy to me to actually believe and try to practice witchcraft, not because it might be real, but because of the mental health associations with it. So I told my concerns to N but he brushed them off, saying that people have the right to believe in what they want. I respect that, but I do not want N to fall into delusion. I let him know, as respectful as I could, that believing in witchcraft does not make it real and that it wasn't healthy to believe otherwise. He got really bothered when I told him he should talk to his therapist about this stuff. N has a history of mental health issues and was in a deeply abusive relationship for a few years which cause him a lot of grief. I was accused of being rude and trying to impose my beliefs. His last message to me was him asking me to stop and that anyone has a right to believe what they want.
I cherish N a lot as a friend, I do not wish them any harm. I respect that anyone has a right to believe what they want, but I really don't think this is healthy for my friend. Is there any way I can help him? Is the best way forward to just stop and let him be?
We like to think that we are perfect beings that don't believe any BS because we're skeptical about "the supernatural world" or what have you. But ultimately, we are not too different from your friend. Lacan has the idea of the "Real". It's the abyss of reality which we construct our whole psyche to escape from. Reality is so soul crushing and destructive that we need to creat symbols and images in order to protect ourselves from it and create a personal narrative that lets us navigate the world.
Your friend is going with witchcraft - but secular evidence based scientists aren't fundamentally different. Our beliefs in money, democracy, borders are more or less all collective delusions that we agree to maintain. We have a fixed idea of who we are - our sense of self - which in reality is a fragmented mess. Our scientific models of reality are simplified frameworks for which to view reality - if we look at the Newtonian model of physics it works perfectly fine for us to do a lot of useful things. But ultimately it's a flawed framework. It doesn't accurately represent reality.
It's impossible to accurately represent reality. We can only try to get closer, and many times that doesn't get us any closer at all. Just a different type of wrong.
So we go back to your friend, toying around with beliefs that are obviously false to me or you. Is it harmful? It is adaptive? It really depends. Unless he's doing things that are going to harm him or others (starts sacrificing sheep or something) then I say let him do it. He's really just building a framework in an attempt to understand / bare reality.
@tikitaki
@Valhaitham
Let’s not compare an invention (ie money/borders) to something completely made up that has no basis in reality.
Just because money isn’t in nature and we invented it doesn’t mean it’s a societal delusion that we simply accept. You could say the same for cars and bikes and planes and video games. Literally everything fabricated is “a fake delusion”.
Democracy is closer to what you’re saying but still not right.
You have to compare a belief to a belief. You can compare religions and other philosophies using your logic but shouldn’t bring in real things cause it falls apart.
the only reason a piece of paper or a pixel on a screen has any value to trade for goods and services is because we collectively agree that it has value
the belief creates the system. it's an ideology, a religion. is it a useful construct? absolutely.
the point is that our existence is full of these beliefs. it's a prerequisite for being a human that can interact with the world. we need these constructs otherwise the Real would not make sense and we would essentially be monkeys