I would say though that when you take those otherwise harmless beliefs that bring you comfort /so seriously that you actually make important functions necessary to daily life as either less important than said silly beliefs, or you believe those silly beliefs actually impact reality more than obvious and/or actually scientifically valid concepts/, thats when you cross over into functional delusional, magical thinking.
So, for example: Horoscopes. As they pertain to either yourself personally or your judgements of others, can be seen as just silly things to indulge in from time to time, or you can actually take them seriously and use them to guide important decisions in your life, and you might actually take them so seriously that you either do this very, very often, or consult them when faced with extremely important and impactful situations.
Theres your gradient from harmless, to possibly harmful, to quite likely to be harmful.
All based on absolute bullshit.
By the time you arrive at my previous example of … what im just going to call ‘serious wiccans’ even though i know an actual serious wiccan would say ‘thats not wicca’ and the people im actually talking about all refer to themselves by some kind of personal special title according to their personal favorite esoteric occultists theyve blended into some unique name for some kind of spirituality generally resembling what i struggle to find a better word for than wicca or witchcraft…
By the time you arrive at that you /are/ dealing with people who believe in harmful delusional nonsense.
This kind of stuff, falling into a worldview of delusional magical thinking, is usually associated with the right wing, and for very good reason, but it can happen on the left, or be basically politically neutral as well.
For examples of delusional harmful magical thinking associated generally with people whod consider themselves leftists or at least not conservative…
Breatharianism has a lot of leftists, though im not sure if theyre a majority.
Same deal with certain … basically Eastern Spiritual Gurus that get people to believe in magical nonsense of some kind or another that often leads them to reject established science cures and treatments for serious illnesses, or people who /seriously/ believe that they can ‘manifest’ positive things in their life basically by thinking positively.
Again, both of those kinds if things do not exclusively draw in right wingers, there are significant numbers of left if center people that get drawn into that.
Falling for MLM/Pyramid Scheme cosmetics or health products (used to be more oriented toward domestic consumer goods aimed at housewives) cults is a thing you see a lot of self avowed left of center people do, and that shit will ruin your life and the lives of those you pull into it bad as a bullshit crypto currency scheme will ruin a right wing male incel’s life and everyone he convinces to invest in along with him.
And both of those I’d argue constitute delusional magical thinking.
For a basically non political related thing… Have you ever heard of the final fantasy house?
Long story short, in the late 90s to early 2000s, a number of people basically believed or were brainwashed by mutual group reinforcement and literal physical starvation, sexual assault, physical assault, financial exploitation and dependency, confinement and isolation… into believing they literally were or were soulbonded to various video game characters.
Very serious harm was done to certain people, some moreso than others and some more often perpetrators than victims, by what i can only describe as essentially a cult, again, based around delusional magical thinking.
But, to round this all out:
Dear /fucking god/, covid deniers, vax skeptics, actually just shove horse dewormer up your butt or inject bleach into your veins people, holy fuck.
Theres basically no possible way I can disagree that when right wing aligned people fall into delusional magical thinking, its far, far worse for society overall than when non political, liberal or leftists do. Its very clear that when this kind of stuff happens to a right wingers brain, it happens to a looot of them, and theyre more likely to do very, very harmful things.
I wrote all this to attempt to show that it isnt a wholly right wing phenomenon, but yes, in its totality, its rational to be generally more concerned about delusional magical thinking when its heavily associated with right wing culture/ideology.
And the reason why its more impactful when right wingers fall for it is that all of their delusional nonsense generally dovetails with all their other delusional nonsense, and falling for one of their insano beleif systems easily leads to falling for more of them.
Whereas non political or leftist occurrences like this usually are silo’d off from each other and do not lead to this kind of snowballing of falling for a gamut of other nonsense.
I also generally agree with what youve said.
I would say though that when you take those otherwise harmless beliefs that bring you comfort /so seriously that you actually make important functions necessary to daily life as either less important than said silly beliefs, or you believe those silly beliefs actually impact reality more than obvious and/or actually scientifically valid concepts/, thats when you cross over into functional delusional, magical thinking.
So, for example: Horoscopes. As they pertain to either yourself personally or your judgements of others, can be seen as just silly things to indulge in from time to time, or you can actually take them seriously and use them to guide important decisions in your life, and you might actually take them so seriously that you either do this very, very often, or consult them when faced with extremely important and impactful situations.
Theres your gradient from harmless, to possibly harmful, to quite likely to be harmful.
All based on absolute bullshit.
By the time you arrive at my previous example of … what im just going to call ‘serious wiccans’ even though i know an actual serious wiccan would say ‘thats not wicca’ and the people im actually talking about all refer to themselves by some kind of personal special title according to their personal favorite esoteric occultists theyve blended into some unique name for some kind of spirituality generally resembling what i struggle to find a better word for than wicca or witchcraft…
By the time you arrive at that you /are/ dealing with people who believe in harmful delusional nonsense.
This kind of stuff, falling into a worldview of delusional magical thinking, is usually associated with the right wing, and for very good reason, but it can happen on the left, or be basically politically neutral as well.
For examples of delusional harmful magical thinking associated generally with people whod consider themselves leftists or at least not conservative…
Breatharianism has a lot of leftists, though im not sure if theyre a majority.
Same deal with certain … basically Eastern Spiritual Gurus that get people to believe in magical nonsense of some kind or another that often leads them to reject established science cures and treatments for serious illnesses, or people who /seriously/ believe that they can ‘manifest’ positive things in their life basically by thinking positively.
Again, both of those kinds if things do not exclusively draw in right wingers, there are significant numbers of left if center people that get drawn into that.
Falling for MLM/Pyramid Scheme cosmetics or health products (used to be more oriented toward domestic consumer goods aimed at housewives) cults is a thing you see a lot of self avowed left of center people do, and that shit will ruin your life and the lives of those you pull into it bad as a bullshit crypto currency scheme will ruin a right wing male incel’s life and everyone he convinces to invest in along with him.
And both of those I’d argue constitute delusional magical thinking.
For a basically non political related thing… Have you ever heard of the final fantasy house?
Long story short, in the late 90s to early 2000s, a number of people basically believed or were brainwashed by mutual group reinforcement and literal physical starvation, sexual assault, physical assault, financial exploitation and dependency, confinement and isolation… into believing they literally were or were soulbonded to various video game characters.
Very serious harm was done to certain people, some moreso than others and some more often perpetrators than victims, by what i can only describe as essentially a cult, again, based around delusional magical thinking.
But, to round this all out:
Dear /fucking god/, covid deniers, vax skeptics, actually just shove horse dewormer up your butt or inject bleach into your veins people, holy fuck.
Theres basically no possible way I can disagree that when right wing aligned people fall into delusional magical thinking, its far, far worse for society overall than when non political, liberal or leftists do. Its very clear that when this kind of stuff happens to a right wingers brain, it happens to a looot of them, and theyre more likely to do very, very harmful things.
I wrote all this to attempt to show that it isnt a wholly right wing phenomenon, but yes, in its totality, its rational to be generally more concerned about delusional magical thinking when its heavily associated with right wing culture/ideology.
And the reason why its more impactful when right wingers fall for it is that all of their delusional nonsense generally dovetails with all their other delusional nonsense, and falling for one of their insano beleif systems easily leads to falling for more of them.
Whereas non political or leftist occurrences like this usually are silo’d off from each other and do not lead to this kind of snowballing of falling for a gamut of other nonsense.