[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: For our third addendum, let’s delve into the nature of anti-Semitism and similar ideologies. These often stem from a disconnection from reality, coupled with a kind of rambling incoherency. However, if the person holding these beliefs is intelligent, they might try to organize this incoherence and disconnect, especially when it’s tied to persecutory delusions directed at themselves or groups they identify with.
Rick Rosner: Right, but it’s important to note that when someone with these beliefs goes on an anti-Semitic rant, it’s not complete gibberish. They’re expressing views about the world, albeit in a distorted manner. They use language, like English, to convey their thoughts about Jews and other aspects of the world. It’s not entirely nonsensical. In some ways, it’s akin to dreaming. Dreaming is similar to schizophrenia in the sense that your awareness is fragmented and patchy. You start constructing scenarios based on what your brain, with its limited access to memories, can retrieve.
I’ve found that in my dreams, I’m capable of doing math accurately, despite the absurd contexts. Similarly, a person drifting into irrational beliefs about the world might do so because their brain is metaphorically like Swiss cheese. They construct imaginary narratives based on the fragmented information available to their deteriorating consciousness. If they still have the capacity, they might even seek out information on the internet that reinforces their delusions. People usually start with a grasp of reality, but as their brain deteriorates, their understanding becomes increasingly distorted, leading to elaborate delusions.
Most people with schizophrenia likely started out with a sound ability to model the world. If someone can’t do this from the outset, it might be more akin to autism, where there’s a difficulty in integrating sensory information. That’s my assumption, at least.
Jacobsen: That seems like a reasonable assumption.
Rosner: Alright, with that, I conclude this addendum. Much of this can be reasonably hypothesized if we start from the perspective of how information is processed and interpreted. We would need to further define what we mean by the processing of information, but this concept has become more tangible in the era of the internet and our devices. We’re inundated with significantly more messages from the world than in previous decades, like ten times as many as my dad received in 1969.
[Recording End]
Authors
Rick Rosner
American Television Writer
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Founder, In-Sight Publishing
In-Sight Publishing
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at http://www.rickrosner.org.
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Rick Rosner 