Sometimes people derive pleasure from just “letting go” and allowing themselves to be fooled. We all do this when we pay to go to a movie theatre to be entertained, and somewhat dazzled, by the state-of-the-art special effects. We’ve paid good money to allow ourselves to be “fooled,” even if it’s for a mere couple of hours. And that’s just fine and dandy.
However, where it can become unfortunately harmful and destructive is when the basic, primal elements of fear and shame are employed by religious groups to control people to such an extent that their natural logical, critical thinking ability, as well as conscience, are hijacked to the end of serving the leaders’ self-indulgence quest for power and glory.
“Your brain REWARDS you when your expectations are defeated by something unexpected!”
This is actually also a functioning of how we can enjoy music. (I saw a documentary on that recently.) Music presents us with certain patterns which build a sort of micro expectation and throws us a loop by changing to notes and chords which are pleasurably unexpected.
“. . . these magicians were variously called Prophets, Miracle Workers and Demi-gods.”
Don’t forget “oracles” – Fred Franz certainly comes to mind there.
“Fool me once; shame on you. Fool me twice; shame on me.”
You really stole my thunder there, Terry! That was one of the first things to come to my mind. I think pretty much all of us on this Website are in that class of having been fooled by a certain religion (the one with the spiffy new blue square logo, bearing within a certain “JW” dot “org” in white print – yes, that one) but are now much all the wiser for it. And thank goodness for that!