A Cultural Delusion

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Though it is inadequately understood, Capgra’s Delusion is a psychiatric syndrome under which people come to believe that those whom they know well have suddenly been replaced by an imposter. These individuals quite often manifest several other types of psychological disorder, so at base, the condition is likely related to general neurological degeneration. Most interestingly though, it is believed that the precise etiology of the disease must be manifestly dependent on the combination of two factors:

1) A disconnect between the emotional/internal representation systems of the brain and the visual representation of the brain; whereby a familiar person may be recognized as physically normal but hollowed out of any emotional connections that once were. 

2) An acceptance of the impossible and a predisposition to the unreasonable. This is suggestive of the fact that even if the first condition were present, a persons good reason would allow you to see the error in your perceptual judgment and lead you to acknowledge that something is actually wrong with you, not the other person – you’re loved one. 

Both of these states are believed to be necessary in order for Capgra’s Delusion to manifest. The mere fact that this syndrome is so rare speaks to the likelihood that combined chance events – the dual degeneration of neural connections for conditions 1 and 2 (although the later is considered a predisposition) - need to conspire in order to manifest this particular delusion. Implicit here are some interesting implications:

-       That each condition is more likely to be met singly than paired with another.

-       That some or all people can fulfill each condition, only chance decides who.

-       That our understanding of reality is dependent on internal neural connections existing or not. 

With that background understanding, I’d like to reframe the theoretical framework of Capgra’s Delusion and paint within it the strange nature of the current cultural zeitgeist of disreality. 

Over the last four years, Americans have been bombarded daily with counterfactual messages about the reality that exists around them. International misinformation campaigns headed by foreign governments have seemingly been outcompeted by America’s own domestic misinformation conspirators, scrambling any coherent cultural dialect and giving the media and its consumer’s whiplash. Steadily, the world has watched a rift develop in the U.S. between two diametrically opposed groups of individuals – those able to perceive reality and those ideologically blind to it. Now, in the fallout of the election, it seems that these two sides have solidified into a pair of opposed halves of the country, with a deep chiasm in between. There has been much debate about the social and informational factors that are at play within both groups, and while those are important, I want to try and approach the matter more hypothetically via the psychological and neurological nature of the rift.

The reasons for Trump’s support or QAnon belief have been probed before of course, with studies reporting that Trump supporters often demonstrate higher levels of vindictiveness and narcissistic personality traits, and low trait openness. But these seem to be proxies merely of the conservative mindset and don’t quite add enough to the picture to make us feel satisfied in explaining the current historical moment. And while comparisons to cults are apt and relevant, I think this is a phenomenon on another level that we as yet don’t have accurate language for. This is not merely a cult of personality (although it is that), the degree to which the cult has spawned support in the minds of 70 million people places media and mass interconnectedness directly in the crosshairs of “blame”. But probably it is disingenuous to blame Silicon Valley or Fox News entirely. The next level down – the more interesting level – is that of the neuropsychological. If Social Media is the lever arm prying at people’s minds, what are the failure points and why is it that some people land on one side of the developing rift and others on the opposite side? What, exactly, divides us?

The notion that individual emotional interrelatedness between Trump supports has conspired to produce a type of pseudo-homogenous groupthink through the Internet is what seems to drive this population level delusion, but what I think actually drives it is a neuropsychological underpinning along the lines of the 2^nd condition for Capgra’s Delusion.  Whereby people predisposed to question the nature of reality and believe the unreasonable have fallen for Trump’s cult’s guise, and have had their world outlook corrupted to become demonstrably unreal. This has manifested as a Cultural Delusion.

It simply isn’t the case that Trump supporters fall on the Left half of the IQ curve, that one-issue voters are driving people to vote for Trump, or that the rich are defending their ill-gotten untaxed gains at the polls. While these claims may hold some water, it really is true that tens of millions of people are under the delusional belief that Trump is fighting a corrupt political system from the inside, leading them to vote against (one would think, logically) their own interests – it’s this nest of people (including the QAnon followers) I’m discussing. What’s so incredible about them is their absolute fervor, where any seeming break in the overarching narrative is instantly stitched together seamlessly into a tapestry of ever-evolving delusional fantasy.

 This is exactly the nonsensical reactionary confabulation that people with Capgra’s Delusion and other neurologic diseases display as a means of validating their sense of internal reality. When asked, “if not your wife, then who is this woman in your house with you”, someone with Capgra’s Delusion explains that their wife must be out shopping and actually there is a perfect replica of her in his living room, an imposter! He is emotionally so sure of something, so he casts a thin layer of logic over the issue to make himself satisfied with the reasons for his feelings. On it’s own, a fascinating display of how the human mind works in tandem with both emotive and rational circuitry – Schachter and Singer would seem validated. Unfortunately, in the current moment, where this display of our cognitive weaknesses is happening on a cultural level, the outward nature of the problem becomes increasingly worrisome.

Since in the current era, being a Trump supporter is not nearly as rare as it should be (as common as Capgra’s Delusion), one has to wonder if a singular simple mechanic drives his support - since if multiple cogs had to align, one would expect that support for him would be much more rare (as rare as Capgra’s Delusion). If the Internet and social media are the levers prying on the human psyche, perhaps there is a common neuropsychological weak point that is being reliably broken. This notion gets us around the fact of there being a ‘strange’ diversity to Trump’s base. The underlying neuropsychological trigger is in place, invisibly, and skin color or cultural background as noted in the polls does not betray it.

To clarify here, I do mean to call into serious question whether that 2nd predispositional condition of Capgra’s Delusion - an acceptance of the impossible and a predisposition to the unreasonable – lies at the root of Trump’s support. We know from inference that through the neurological degeneration of certain neural bridges this condition can be met. But, what if the condition can be met by dint of the fact that it was never built in the first place, was never properly strengthened, or was weakened until ultimately being undermined by appropriately applied leverage. Whatever the cause, you eventually arrive in the same position of disreality that those with Capgra’s Delusion also display - unable to distinguish the reasonable from the unreasonable, and willing to confabulate around the discord. Where everyone else sees a madman, you see a savior and there is nothing anyone can say to shake you from your delusional convictions simply because of the requisite neuroanatomy not being present or functional.

Cast in this light, the problem becomes one with a bit more empathy imbued in it. Removing any intent to insult, assuming there is some truth to this idea, we can see these people as being neurologically disabled. And if you think that is overreaching, I would implore you to ask yourself if you had Capgra’s Delusion would you be considered disabled by your friends and family? What if you believed that lizard men walked among us, or that the 45^th president was a great human being? These each display a basic inability to contend with facts and construct reasonable interpretations of the world. It becomes a disability if linked to a neurological circuitry problem, as I’m contending that it must.

To drive this point home a little further, magicians and illusionists alike train (as part of their craft) an ability to discern whether or not an audience member or participant will be predisposed to certain modes of suggestion. It seems some people are simply wired to having the wool pulled over there eyes. The illusionist is targeting susceptible people with the right neurological weaknesses. But professional illusionists see it slightly differently. From their perspective, some people want to be fooled. We can then ask the question neuropsychologically, what is it that makes some people more predisposed to hypnosis or suggestive magic? Shouldn’t it also be a similar mechanism to that 2^nd condition of Capgra’s Delusion - An acceptance of the impossible and a predisposition to the unreasonable. More disturbingly, it suggests it is a very human capacity to want to be fooled, to want Trump to be the savior of the rural economy and the intelligent 4^th dimensional chess playing pedophile-slayer of lore. And in that wanting, their delusion is born, bolstered by the same or similar delusions of the throngs of others under the guise of this conman, or dare I say – illusionist?

While we may disagree on what our societal and economic problems are and what the solutions might be, we cannot disagree on basic reality and still maintain a functioning Democracy. That is because a stable Democracy depends on the populace making good decisions based on good information. When the Internet and Social Media allow bad information to propagate, weeds germinate, and the ecology of thought becomes corrupted. People’s thoughts become corrupted, decisions follow, and democracy after that. The only defense against our own human frailty is the proper maintenance of good information that allows for good decision-making. Unfortunately, the weeds have grown over the last 4 years and our collective decision-making capacity has become faulty for some 70 million people. Social media has a role to play in remedying this problem and that seems to threaten the democratic nature of our country, but all of us have a part to play - we all have to agree that we want the weeds removed because we understand why they are a problem. Seemingly, not everyone can agree there however and seem predisposed to believe the unreasonable. And so, at root, understanding the etiology of this cultural problem as a developed neuropsychological one, is – in my mind - the first step in mending the deep rift that has opened up inside American Culture. In order to return to the United States, we have to be united on the basic facts of the world, otherwise unreasonableness dooms us all.

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