Posted by:
Itzpapalotl
(
)
Date: January 08, 2017 02:06PM
So if what I write seems disjointed or unclear, I apologize.
HoaW is right, people refer to this as "The Mandela Effect" from the idea that people who remember Nelson Mandela dying in prison and Sinbad starring in a movie, Shazaam are from a parallel dimension and in 2009/2012, the dimensions collided and that's why people have different memories.
*Sigh* Because there's no other explanation for it, not that people's memories are easily manipulated and how we fill things in when pieces of memories are missing. Clearly, it is the dimension theory. The site I stumbled on while reading up on this, the comments are heavily monitored, dissenting views that memory and perception can be way off are deleted. My theory is that the people who mis-remember the Kazam movie are so devastated by finding out the reality, they're willing to buy into an outrageous theory that they're from another dimension. It seems to be an issue with Millenials who were kids in 1996 (when the movie came out) as not too many Gen Xers and other generations know about this or are even terribly concerned.
Have you ever had someone insist something about you and it never happened? The friend who posted about the Kazam movie is such one. She absolutely insisted for years we were best friends since kindergarten, but she didn't start at my elementary until 2nd or 3rd grade. I remember my best friend in 1st grade quite clearly and we're FB friends to this day. Another former friend was adamant that the first time she met me, I was wearing sexy red pants. The only time I had red pants was a pair of red cords in 4th grade and I didn't buy a pair of reds pants until 2001, which I still have. But despite this, she insisted I had a pair of red pants. O_o Maybe it was a red dress I owned and she turned it into pants in her memory?
Memory is a funny thing and easily subjected to (mis)perceptions, bias, the fundamental attribution error, the passage of time, and illness. This doesn't even count when others manipulate our memories i.e. The Satanic Panic and False Memory debacle, of which I was a victim of the latter. Yet people still insist there's a widespread cult of Satan worshipers and they know people involved in it and it pervaded their town (the town in which I grew up was called The Satanic Capital of the World or the Witchcraft Capital of the World depending on who you talk to.)
What does this have to do with the Mormon cult?
The leaders and members are engaging in a widespread form of confabulation with changing doctrines, history, and rituals and it's working on a lot of people, too. They've been doing this since Ol' Joe first started conning people. It does cause cognitive dissonance in the members, but they have learned to reduce it by justifying or adding in the new cognitions, sometimes changing them if necessary.
"In psychiatry, confabulation (verb: confabulate) is a disturbance of memory, defined as the production of fabricated, distorted or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world, without the conscious intention to deceive."
I would say that even their apologetics are a form of confabulation, every time one of those apologists tries to explain away all of the stuff that just doesn't add up to reality or facts.
So just a few thoughts on what the cult does on a wide scale to its members and one of the reasons I think mental illness is such a pervasive problem in the cult. I would enjoy hearing other people's perspective and thoughts
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/08/2017 02:08PM by Itzpapalotl.