Why do people suddenly fall for extremist ideologies?

[Puer Aeternus]

I've always heard of this phenomenon occuring and wondered why. Seemingly average and fine person suddenly hits an absolute personality 180. All because they're sliding down a pipeline to some nonsense.. QAnon.. toxic red pill content.. they come out the other side completely alienating all their former friends/family members with their actions/behaviors.

Curious to know what you guys think. I'm definitely just starting my rabbit hole on this one- so any directions to explore would be much appreciated.

[Joshe]

The key thing to understand is we’re all living for something. We need something to live for. If that something gets weak or disappears, we look for something else. Importantly, we want that thing to give us positive energy or the prospect of it. That explains the drive. The other side of the coin is the various entities exploiting this drive. 

Most people are on this forum because spirituality is the thing they’ve chosen to live for. Without it, they would need something else to replace it. 

Sounds simple but if you can truly see this, it’s one of those cold-chills insights. It explains a ton about human behavior. 

Edited Sunday at 05:11 AM by Joshe

[Kid A]

The algorithms of social media make people live in echo chambers where they are pretty much fed only one side of a matter. That's a recipe for imbalance and extremism. Also, social media like TikTok, with short video formats, are really suited for for example spreading political messages with very simple solutions, which you often find on the extreme ends of the political spectrum, both right and left. Complex solutions demand much more time than a short video.

Extremism thrives on oversimplification. 

Edited Sunday at 08:30 AM by Kid A

[Ramasta9]

What is 'extreme' for one, may be something clear and 'simple' for another. All is perspective.

Sometimes you wake up from the illusion and realize the game you've been unconsciously playing.

 

[DocWatts]

In short, it's because we tend to use ideologies to meet our identity, belonging, and survival needs - with the truthfulness of the ideology being a distant, secondary concern. 

We like to flatter ourselves that we're rational actors who 'choose' our ideologies like how we choose between boxes of cereal at the grocery store - but this is putting the cart before the horse. In actuality, our sociopolitical views are of outgrowth of the lives we've lived.

Tldr: the ideologies we adopt aren't a dispassionate 'choice' based on the merits of the evidence - we instead gravitate towards ideologies that accommodate our lived reality.

'Extreme' ideologies, then, are often linked to trauma or difficult survival circumstances. No one chooses to become an incel, for example - they slip into it out of despair due to negative experiences they've had with women, and a lack of self worth.

Edited Sunday at 02:37 PM by DocWatts

[Alex_R]

Watch Leo Gura Conspiracy theories video

Edited yesterday at 04:35 AM by Alex_R

[OmniNaut]

It has to do with disappointment and betrayal on a psychological and ideological level. People feel disappointed or feel betrayed by the ideology they believe in, because they get exposed (and in a certain way accept the) information outside their ideological bubble. Their ideological view crumbles, underdeveloped ego's minds can't handle this and the ego mind searches for a new ideology to find comfort in, often fuelled by the information that made them doubt about their old ideological ideas. The mind settles on the new ideology and it becomes the new truth.

Because the ego mind remembers that exposing yourself to outside ideas can be dangerous for the current ideology it puts up even a higher barrier then before. To make sure outside information can't upset the status quo anymore.

If you look at it as underdeveloped ego minds it explains why even educated people can have radical shifts.

 

Edit:
Haha I didn't even read @DocWatts comment, quite similar.

Edited yesterday at 05:10 AM by OmniNaut

[Leo Gura]

Because most humans do not think, they just believe whatever their micro-culture believes. And these micro-cultures morph every decade. There is always some new culture group-think fad like crypto, MAGA, Nazism, AI, post-modernism, Flat Earth, anti-vax, Marxism, libertarianism, Islamophobia, or whatever.

It's all unconscious, uneducated group-think. No one is truly thinking.

[Daniel Balan]

2 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Because most humans do not think, they just believe whatever their micro-culture believes. And these micro-cultures morph every decade. There is always some new culture group-think fad like crypto, MAGA, Nazism, AI, post-modernism, Flat Earth, anti-vax, Marxism, libertarianism, Islamophobia, or whatever.

It's all unconscious, uneducated group-think. No one is truly thinking.

It is also the content the consume on their phone on a daily basis. If all the extremist right wing propaganda would disappear off the internet, after a month no one would be a MAGA or a authoritarian regime advocate any longer. Malicious actors are poisoning the informational ecosystem that is the internet deliberately. Right now, consuming stuff from the internet is the same as swimming naked in a swamp full of giant crocodiles. They will eat your mind if you are not careful. The same way people check if their food isn't poisonous, they should also do the same in regards to the information they put in their brain when they access their phone.

[Nivsch]

The brain weighs a claim not according to logic, but according to its sum credibility it gets from the social matrix, to ensure it feels belonged, loved, more moral and special. Then it confuses this with logic, because the deeper survival circuits in the brain have much more control over the prefrontal cortex than the other way around.

Edited 21 hours ago by Nivsch

[Daniel Balan]

10 minutes ago, Nivsch said:

The brain weights a claim not according to logic, but according to its sum credibility it gets from the social matrix, to ensure it feels belonged, loved, more moral and special. Of course then it confuses this with logic, because the deeper survival circuits in the brain have much more control over the prefrontal cortex than the other way around.

Outstanding analysis. 

I understood that like 2 years ago and from that moment forward, I decided I will to the opposite the herd around me was doing.

The herd believed tha covid was a hoax? I believed it was really dangerous.

The herd voted far right? I voted liberal.

The herd is pro Russian in the Ukraine war? I am pro Ukraine.

The herd is all in on Crypto? I will never invest a dollar in crypto 

Etc

This might be a way too simplistic way to interpret reality, but as far as I am concerned, doing exactly the opposite of what the herd is doing saved me from being scammed and fooled by evil actors.

[Daniel Balan]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Because most humans do not think, they just believe whatever their micro-culture believes. And these micro-cultures morph every decade. There is always some new culture group-think fad like crypto, MAGA, Nazism, AI, post-modernism, Flat Earth, anti-vax, Marxism, libertarianism, Islamophobia, or whatever.

It's all unconscious, uneducated group-think. No one is truly thinking.

Hi @Leo Gura, a while back you said that you will shoot a video on the topic : How to think? How to think independently. I am so in need of that video, is it coming anytime soon? Or you scratched that idea?

[Nivsch]

41 minutes ago, Daniel Balan said:

The herd believed tha covid was a hoax? I believed it was really dangerous.

The herd voted far right? I voted liberal.

The herd is pro Russian in the Ukraine war? I am pro Ukraine.

What were the emotions you felt when you choses the opposite?

Was it from fear and anger, or from curiosity and the desire to expand and grow?

Edited 20 hours ago by Nivsch

[Daniel Balan]

21 minutes ago, Nivsch said:

What were the emotions you felt when you choses the opposite?

Was it from fear and anger, or from curiosity and the desire to expand and grow?

Rebellion and revolt. I wanted to revolt against the herds. That's why I cut all the people from my life. They are all so conformist and obedient to religon, culture, traditions. I abhor religion, I abhor everthing the herd stands for. I choose the opposite as a middle finger that I showed to a stage blue herd that I deeply abhored.

Edited 20 hours ago by Daniel Balan

[Daniel Balan]

1 minute ago, Daniel Balan said:

Rebellion and revolt. I wanted to revolt against the herds. That's why I cut all the people from my life. They are all so conformist and obedient to religon, culture, traditions. I abhor religion, I abhor everthing the herd stands for. I choose the opposite as a middle finger that I showed to a stage blue herd that I deeply abhored.

When I realised that everyone around me has exactly the same beliefs as eachother, I wanted to vomit. I told to myself, how come everyone follows and beliefs what all the others around them believe? This amount of sheep like behaviour, blindly regurgitating all the beliefs of your group and the sheer backwardness, made me want to revolt and abhor the herd.

[zazen]

Ideas are information, ideaology is information thought to be wise when it isn’t.

The past lacked information and wisdom, today we have information but still lack a critical mass of wisdom.

You can have all the information in the world to bust your misinformed bubble - yet lack the wisdom to parse that information - separating signal from noise.

Governance ultimately aims to filter wisdom, as it’s utopian to think it can be scaled to the masses.

If wisdom can’t be scaled, why have a political system that depends on the wisdom of the masses to guide politics and policy? Across time and cultures there was a acknowledgement of the “elders” or the “wise” council for this reason. But that can also be corrupted.

Liberal democracy challenged that and bet on the idea that wisdom can be filtered through the masses if they engage in enough good faith debate, which overtime self corrects - thus free speech became virtue.

But now there is less good faith, and less debate - people are sorted into algorithmic sealed bubbles and clash when they encounter another bubble.

The liberal rationale is that the individual is primary, and thus their right to speech -and from this assumption a collective of individuals will come together in debate to seek truth and stumble upon a collective wisdom from which to guide politics - thus democracy.

The irony is that individualism can cause a sort of narcissism and lack of humility - but humility is needed in truth seeking and good faith debate to begin with. It’s self defeating - unless the culture instills humility as a counter balance.

In the past people may have been delusionally misinformed (due to lack of information) - but it was a shared delusion. Today people can be misinformed but in countlesss ways through online echo chambers - so we have polarized delusion. One delusional view of reality clashes with another.

Today we are hyper-informed with misinformation, yet suffer from a deficit of wisdom to process it, compounded by a deficit of humility needed to learn from others who might be misinformed differently, or better informed than ourselves.

The filtering process has become clogged in a noisy (technological) and narcissistic (cultural) era. China seems to have solved for that by filtering for the wisest leaders, rather than hoping to filter wisdom from the masses, who believe their view of reality is wise (ideological) and others isn’t (leading to polarization).

How can the Western political system handle all this? 

Edited 20 hours ago by zazen

[zazen]

17 minutes ago, Daniel Balan said:

Rebellion and revolt. I wanted to revolt against the herds. That's why I cut all the people from my life. They are all so conformist and obedient to religon, culture, traditions. I abhor religion, I abhor everthing the herd stands for. I choose the opposite as a middle finger that I showed to a stage blue herd that I deeply abhored.

Be careful of the identity of being contrarian vs conformist. If the herd (masses) is bad, then why have democracy that allows the herd to vote? 

Edited 20 hours ago by zazen

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Daniel Balan said:

Hi @Leo Gura, a while back you said that you will shoot a video on the topic : How to think? How to think independently. I am so in need of that video, is it coming anytime soon? Or you scratched that idea?

That's a very deep topic. Of course I will cover it. It's just a matter of figuring out how best to structure it. That could really be an entire course.

Every topic will be covered. I just need some time to get to it. Fear not.

I have a list of over 100 videos topics on my list that I am chipping away at in the background. Topics are being developed even when you don't see my releasing videos. This is a huge project and takes years to unfold.

Edited 20 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Nivsch]

@Daniel Balan Do you feel today better and calmer than the times before you revolted?

Edited 20 hours ago by Nivsch

[Daniel Balan]

26 minutes ago, zazen said:

Be careful of the identity of being contrarian vs conformist. If the herd (masses) is bad, then why have democracy that allows the herd to vote? 

No, I'm not that stupid to be a contrarian to everything. I'm only contrarian to stage blue people. I live in a rural village near Ukraine, here everyone is cousins with one another, everyone has the same beliefs as one another. Here in my village people want dictatorship and are against democracy. People here want the return of a figure similar to the former communist dictator from the cold war era. Against such beliefs of course I will be against. Whenever I visit my friends from the big cities of Romania I find myself agreeing with their stage orange beliefs. I'm not a contrarian and a skeptic just for the sake of it.