OK, I'm going to take a left turn now, and kick this off with a comparison with my own recent experience of mental illness. Namely, severe health anxiety.
I'm currently getting assessed for ADHD, and I think one of the issues it poses for me is periods of fixation on subjects. This is quite helpful at times. I can get up to speed on complex stuff pretty quickly because I want to 'figure it out' / problem solve, but it can also put you at risk of stuff like health anxiety. Actually, I think maybe on some level I'm engaging with this subject as a way of sublimating my fascination with the recent hearings, so that it goes in a more healthy direction. ;-) But I want to talk a bit about my experiences here, because I think there are some general links to be made with unusual beliefs / NHI beliefs, and you might find it illuminating. Regardless of if we are more on the extreme side when it comes to focus / fixation on problems, we can say in general that human beings are good at finding patterns in phenomena, and 'reading into' things. In fact, our very beliefs can shape our experiences in fundamental ways (physical, psychological).
So, how my health anxiety played out was a bit like this...
1. Experience of illness in the family (my partner, my mum, myself) got me feeling vulnerable.
An environmental factor.2. I was worried about the threat posed by Covid (long covid in particular, as I am asthmatic). I spent a lot of time reading about it online.
An initial trigger.3. I developed physical symptoms of illness (chest pain, palpitations, heart burn).
Manifestation of concern.
4. I got those symptoms investigated (increasing feeling vulnerable). I became fixated with the idea that there was something wrong with me (due to my very real, physical symptoms).
Investigation / fixation. 5. More symptoms emerged (vision issues, dizziness, tingling).
Manifestation of concern. 6. I got those symptoms investigated (increasing feeling vulnerable).
Investigation / fixation. 7. The
spiral continues.
And so on. Eventually, I ended up with my eyes not functioning at all (keeping them closed all the time, unable to comfortably focus them on things or risk real migraines), and severe hearing sensitivity, that kept me house bound for four months. My visual symptoms (pattern sensitivity, photo-sensitivity) were real enough that a neurologically trained optometrist diagnosed me with symptoms of head trauma induced post-traumatic vision syndrome (maybe from a virus). A diagnostic physician could think of no connection between my heart issues or my vision issues. I should note that I myself was very careful to spend no time googling my symptoms (having learnt that lesson in the past from pointlessly worrying about something). Eventually I was able to see a neurologist, who was able to give me a diagnosis that a GP should have given me many months earlier - it was all generated by anxiety. My very real, physical symptoms were generated by my nervous system stressing out different parts of my body / brain. Within a few short weeks I made substantial recovery, with my vision working more or less fine (still can't play PC games but...) and my hearing sensitivity recovered to normal levels.
OK, so let's now imagine a hypothetical person with beliefs in NHI.
1. Experience of loss of meaning (lack of community connection / neo-liberalism.)
An environmental factor.2. Become interested in mysterious stories about UFOs in the media or online. Then algorithms feed them endless videos. Or they hunt out articles or books themselves.
An initial trigger.3. They then witness seeing something strange in the sky, and can't explain it. Or perhaps have an abduction 'experience.'
Manifestation of concern. 4. They start to investigate this experience, reading more about NHI / UFOs.
Investigation / fixation. 5. They then start to notice even more strange things that don't quite 'make sense' about the government, or other people's experiences.
Manifestation of concern.
6. So they investigate even more....
Investigation / fixation.
7. The
spiral continues.
This might be a bit of a simplification and a stretch at the same time, giving both a health anxiety (HA below) experience and unusual beliefs (AB) the same number of steps / bullet points. But what I am trying to draw attention to with this framework is the significant similarities, rather than trying to claim they are different versions of
exactly the same thing.
The similarities are...
1. Both HA and UB are preconfigured by what we might loosely call underlying '
environmental factors.' Experiences people have that make them more vulnerable to each.
2. Both HA and UB are then gradually entered into by
triggering events like a global pandemic / experiences of illness, or stories about UFOs, etc.
3. Both HA and UB are capable of generating
manifestations of the concern, in the form of real physical symptoms, or perceptions of the things obsessed about.
4. Both HA and UB have a cycle, where the manifestations trigger more
investigation.
5. Then the investigations trigger more manifestation....
6. And the manifestation triggers more investigation...
7. The spiral continues.
So, although I am sure there are many differences, I think at their respective cores, each exhibits a kind of
feedback loop.
This loop is something we become vulnerable to because of other circumstances. With respects to unusual beliefs regarding aliens or conspiracies, it's surely no coincidence that it is predominantly white middle aged or older men in the U.S. / England / Australia etc. who start to develop them the most. We have seen this with Q-Anon and Facebook. These are the kinds of people who are probably more socially isolated, more in need of community / more feeling the sting of a loss of status due to economic / social changes. I would be interested in hearing of any kind of comparative studies of other countries / genders etc. My impression is that this is (for now) a far less common problem in places like China, where there is still more social cohesion, and opportunities for a sense of meaning derived from family life etc. I wouldn't want to essentialize that as some inherent element of Chinese culture (although I think there are quite deeply ingrained social elements at play there). It is probably more to do with differences in the experience of modernization and the atomization of family / breakdown of traditional communities etc.
What I'm particularly interested in though from here is the
manifestation stage. Looking at the recent hullabaloo, I think a common story (Garry Nolan, Zabel, etc.) is some early life experience of UFOs as a child. I assume that in each case the individuals had some kind of exposure to stories about UFOs, which helped to manifest their experiences subconsciously, even if at the time they didn't know what those experiences were. They only rationally reflected upon them later and identified them as UFO / Alien encounters. The fact that these were subconscious manifestations is what then made them feel
even more convincing. So for example, Garry Nolan (or was it Zabel?) experienced seeing strange people in his room as a child. He didn't know what to think of it, and forgot about it. Later, as an adult, he saw the cover of the book
Communion in a second hand book store. He recalls dropping the book in shock, as he recognized the 'Grey' alien on the front cover as looking exactly like the strange people he saw in his childhood experience. I think we can easily appreciate how this subconscious / conscious gap led him to becoming utterly convinced that aliens were real, and were on Earth. After all, from his experience, he had no conscious awareness of the grey alien concept at all when he first had that experience. The seemingly 'logical' conclusion was that the experience was real, and hence, the aliens are real. Some deeper, psychologically informed consideration could raise alternatives. 1. That he had seen images of such aliens as a child, forgot about it, and then had the experience without knowing what it was. 2. Perhaps when he saw the image, his mind made the connection with that childhood experience, and 'filled in the blanks' such that he re-remembered in a new way (a bit like dejavu).
Another interesting comparison here is with respects to credibility. Until the very end, when I finally saw my neurologist
, at no point in my health anxiety journey did any doctor suggest that my issues may have been caused by anxiety. This includes multiple GPs, a neurological optometrist, a diagnostic physician, an endocrinologist, a gastroenterologist, and a cardiologist. In fact, I myself suggested it to a GP but they thought it unlikely. People tend to think that somebody must be outwardly exhibiting symptoms of hypochondria in order to have health anxiety. There are also probably social biases at play with respects to things like gender. Women often report that their illnesses are blown off as anxiety by doctors. Yet here I was, a man with anxiety, and every doctor I saw treated me as though I was actually ill! We can consider this from the perspective of believers in NHI. They might seem very persuasive, rational, and even skeptical towards their own experiences. Some profess that they never had any interest in UFOs, and were not 'UFO guys'. They simply have had very unusual experiences that they wanted to relay to the public out of a sense of duty / honesty. Because people expect those who have had unusual experiences to exhibit obvious symptoms of fixation, and because we tend to give a lot of credence to older white men with official jobs like pilots (or
immunologists), many people with psychological issues may strike us as 'credible'. This in turn can then draw in more people who were previously on the fence, and turn them into 'believers'.
Well, these are my thoughts so far. I have not yet read much of the Jung paper. I'll do that over the coming days and share some of the juicy parts.