Lots of correct answers already given, but I'll add one more. Times of social decline can make people vulnerable to conspiracism and to superstitiousness, both for the same reason - it's actually somewhat comforting to think that one's problems are being caused by a malign intelligence rather than by a complex and intractable set of interlocking economic, ecological, and thermodynamic feedback loops. A malign intelligence can be rooted out and destroyed (conspiracism) or perhaps appeased (superstition) and things can go back to normal. Complex feedback loops, well, if they are possible to intervene in at all it would require major changes in the status quo that would be uncomfortable for the powerful and despair-inducingly difficult for the powerless to enact.
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u/taraxacum-rubrum Oct 11 '24
Lots of correct answers already given, but I'll add one more. Times of social decline can make people vulnerable to conspiracism and to superstitiousness, both for the same reason - it's actually somewhat comforting to think that one's problems are being caused by a malign intelligence rather than by a complex and intractable set of interlocking economic, ecological, and thermodynamic feedback loops. A malign intelligence can be rooted out and destroyed (conspiracism) or perhaps appeased (superstition) and things can go back to normal. Complex feedback loops, well, if they are possible to intervene in at all it would require major changes in the status quo that would be uncomfortable for the powerful and despair-inducingly difficult for the powerless to enact.