Why Leftists Believe Weird Things

Here's another excerpt from One Cosmos, this time on what I call magical thinking. Enjoy and read the whole thing.

What sets humans apart from the animals is not just our ability to know reality, but our even more striking ability to NOT know it--to create patently erroneous systems of thought that we then inhabit, and which actually compromise our survival prospects. No lion ever entertained the idea that it might be healthier to live on grasses rather than flesh. Penguins don’t decide to live near the equator, where it isn’t so cold. Only human beings can hold ideas that are completely illogical and self-defeating. In fact, there is no doubt whatsoever that the majority of beliefs human beings have held about the world down through history have been false, often ridiculously so. For example, just consider medicine. Until the early 20th century, the average visit to a doctor was likely to leave one in worse shape, not better. But useless or harmful treatments helped people cope with otherwise intolerable anxiety, and were obviously psychologically preferable to the truth: that no one knew why you were sick or how to cure you.

So there is something about human beings that makes them uniquely susceptible to bad ideas. Therefore, it would appear to be axiomatic that there must be something about bad ideas that is paradoxically adaptive. But adaptive to what? Clearly, they are adaptive to internal reality, to the emotional needs and anxieties of the person who holds them. These leftists don't really want Bush to be Hitler. They NEED him to be. Desperately. As uncomfortable as it is, it is far preferable to being left alone their own internal infantile anxieties, with nowhere to project them.