Evolutionary biologist Robert Sapolsky did a great lecture on the biological underpinnings of religiosity... It's a kind of mind that believes in magical things, just like atheists believe in pharma and have placebo effects from useless drugs.
I'd hesitate to conflate religiosity, magic and magical thinking though. That's closely related to the modern secular paradigm's blanket rejection of anything that can't really fit into the instrumental rationality of industrial capitalism.
Religion in principle has as much or as little to do with magic (as described above) as does astronomy or engineering - it's rather that magic as a sort of universal human tendency introduces itself almost everywhere.
Love this piece and very different take on what all falls under propaganda umbrella in my book.
"Which in turn charges the brand, this magical fetish, with power, and induces you to purchase whatever bears its awesome image."
Old enough to remember when Alka-Seltzer was the only drug ad on TV and have wondered about the social effects over the years as we have become an Rx culture and children constantly exposed to lists of ailments and possible side effects in soma voices with folks dancing in fields of flowers.
Good example. I was just enraged by a news headline crying foul over the fact that "post covid" sufferers apparently had been advised to eat non-inflammatory food, de-stress and NOT EAT PLASTICS?!!! They must really hate science.
Health is a product that only capital can provide. This is the essence of contemporary biopolitics.
Evolutionary biologist Robert Sapolsky did a great lecture on the biological underpinnings of religiosity... It's a kind of mind that believes in magical things, just like atheists believe in pharma and have placebo effects from useless drugs.
https://youtu.be/4WwAQqWUkpI
I'd hesitate to conflate religiosity, magic and magical thinking though. That's closely related to the modern secular paradigm's blanket rejection of anything that can't really fit into the instrumental rationality of industrial capitalism.
Religion in principle has as much or as little to do with magic (as described above) as does astronomy or engineering - it's rather that magic as a sort of universal human tendency introduces itself almost everywhere.
Love this piece and very different take on what all falls under propaganda umbrella in my book.
"Which in turn charges the brand, this magical fetish, with power, and induces you to purchase whatever bears its awesome image."
Old enough to remember when Alka-Seltzer was the only drug ad on TV and have wondered about the social effects over the years as we have become an Rx culture and children constantly exposed to lists of ailments and possible side effects in soma voices with folks dancing in fields of flowers.
Good example. I was just enraged by a news headline crying foul over the fact that "post covid" sufferers apparently had been advised to eat non-inflammatory food, de-stress and NOT EAT PLASTICS?!!! They must really hate science.
Health is a product that only capital can provide. This is the essence of contemporary biopolitics.