I never realized to what extent people were gullible until I became much older. I would see supposedly well educated people go into cults or believe in wild conspiracy theories forcing me to think about how this could happen.
It was the process of adopting a belief and then working backwards to develop reasoning to substantiate it; sometimes not even that. My father taught to apply critical thinking to everything and that there could be no faith without reason.
I think the problem with many people is that the urge to fit in overrides their critical thinking. It is why joining a religion invented by a science fiction writer L Ron Hubbard can happen. They need something to cling to even if it means mental gymnastics to explain it to themselves. Believing in Xenu is the inevitable conclusion of a process which starts off with a trickle and ends up in a waterfall.
Everytime I pass a Jehovah's witness kiosk the instinct to want to wake them kicks in but I stop myself.
Without this basic need of humanity for connection, Jim Jones wouldn't have been able to take advantage of people and get them to drink Kool-aid laced with poison.
Trumpism works in much the same way where the need for a savior overrides what your own eyes are telling you.
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