The whole term "targeted individuals" is cope. Claiming that there is some sort of meaning to such a distorted perception of reality is just a coping strategy, very similar to conspiracy theories. It's much easier to believe that reptilians, Jews, Americans, Chinese, G20, some sort of god, Common Lisp mafia, or whoever else is controlling everything - it gives a paradoxical, false sense of control and safety (because someone, no matter who, is in control!) and also allows for free finger-pointing at "the ones at fault" whenever something bad happens as an emotional regulatory mechanism.
The world in which no one does in fact control anything, starting from the way how one's mind and body works all the way to global and cosmic scale, fails to give any sort of safety or control whatsoever, and instead puts a greater burden of responsibility on the person thinking those thoughts.
It's also much easier to think that you're targeted by someone, because then you automatically become a protagonist of some story, and therefore special by definition. It's much, much simpler and easier than the idea of being a yet-another person with a partial disability due to malfunctioning organs responsible for your internal model of reality.
Humans have a really strong drive for finding meaning where there is none, even if it means dreaming it up.
"I began to see TIs like Luca as a group of individuals who are caught between two competing narratives.... The second narrative – the TI narrative – is that if you’re having these sorts of experiences, nothing is wrong with your mind. Your perceptual and reasoning abilities are functioning exactly the way they’re designed to. Unfortunately, you are the victim of gang-stalking or electronic harassment. Despite your suffering, however, there is hope: you can band together with other TIs in a global movement to expose your attackers and dismantle their techniques."
This isn't a value-neutral belief. It has consequences and some of those aren't pretty.
Yep. I empathize deeply with these people, but I also can't feed their delusion of grandeur if it very clearly causes them discomfort. I feel a human need to "rescue" someone from false senses of persecution, even if it ultimately feeds someone's belief that they're a subject of interest.
It's also tough, because I realize that all of us are somewhat responsible for this. The proliferation of technology, advertisement and security marketing has kinda destroyed the concept of being alone. People who suffer unjustly, or who are insecure/anxious about their environment can easily fall down a rabbit hole that never ends. It's the product of indiscriminate profiling and constant dubious marketing of "security" that people become disillusioned and paranoid with tech. The part that really fucks me up is, what if they're just expressing the most rational, conscious human reaction to the information superhellscape we all share? What if we only think the water's fine because we felt it boil slowly?
Tho I agree what you've said I do want to say that it's quite hilarious to place the concept of God alongside reptilians - if you've decided for yourself that there is no god than you've decided that everything everywhere just spontaneously came into existence all on its own with these very specific rules we know as physics and laws and whatnots...
To me that is every bit as insane as reptilians.
I don't believe in a god in the clouds and I kno evolution exists and the universe is billions of years old and still it must come from or exist somewhere and have something or someone as an origin.
Nothing comes from nothing and nothing happens for no reason - to believe otherwise is a giant leap of faith.
> if you've decided for yourself that there is no god than you've decided that everything everywhere just spontaneously came into existence all on its own with these very specific rules we know as physics and laws and whatnots
No, I haven't - you're implying a binary choice where there's no such thing. There's an option to say that I don't know and perhaps I simply don't need to know that in order to have a satisfying life.
The answer "everything just spontaneously appeared" is something I perceive as meaning-seeking, just like "a god created it all". To claim a god of some sort exists is the same as to claim a god doesn't, or reptilians do, or don't - empty claims based on beliefs. To use such beliefs - no matter their shape - in order to create meaning, is just attempting to deal with the idea that meaning is a man-made construct and it doesn't come from higher above.
You can call a low entropy point in the past whatever you want. If it’s talking to you or cares about you personally somehow then yeah, I would consider it equally delusional to reptile people.
It’s not really a big leap from “everything came from something extremely highly ordered that preexisted everything” to “maybe that thing is or has a Mind”.
And it's an even smaller jump to go from "maybe that thing is or has a Mind" to "maybe this entity's nick on Hacker News is HexDecOctBin".
Thus, you should start worshipping me.
But you won't, because you don't actually believe in these small jumps. You want to believe, you try to believe, but you don't. The doubt is there, and it is a healthy doubt (else you would be worshipping me), but it brings you shame.
The world in which no one does in fact control anything, starting from the way how one's mind and body works all the way to global and cosmic scale, fails to give any sort of safety or control whatsoever, and instead puts a greater burden of responsibility on the person thinking those thoughts.
It's also much easier to think that you're targeted by someone, because then you automatically become a protagonist of some story, and therefore special by definition. It's much, much simpler and easier than the idea of being a yet-another person with a partial disability due to malfunctioning organs responsible for your internal model of reality.
Humans have a really strong drive for finding meaning where there is none, even if it means dreaming it up.