Mind's Eye Delusions

Delusions have interested me over the years because I don't fit well with society.  I don't really want to as I see it is delusional to fit in to delusions.  Watching other people eat, a current internet fixation some people are making money from, seems chronically delusional to me.  Jenkins should be working harder to sequester any such cash to ArchJenko Offworld.  Sadly, the boy is not gross enough chomping through burgers and prawns whilst swilling craft ale.  The competition has vile, loud, gawky teenagers slobbering through vast plates of Klingon gark pasta.  Only the wassup conversation and machine musak has more intellectual content than the Jenko offerings.  We need to understand the delusion in which people pay good money for this rather obviously tasteless fodder.  Satisfying delusions is they key to economic success.

The content of a delusion can be mundane, and does not even need to be false: one can have the delusion that one's spouse is unfaithful or that one's neighbour is a terrorist, and these may turn out to be true beliefs. In such as the Cotard delusion, in which the delusionist thinks she is dead, the content of a delusion can be bizarre. In mirrored self misidentification the person in the mirror is not one's reflection but a stranger, and the Capgras delusion is the delusion that the spouse or a relative has been replaced by an impostor. All types of delusions are rigid to some extent, not easily given up because they tend to resist counterevidence. All delusions are reported sincerely and with conviction, although the behaviour of people with delusions is not always perfectly consistent with the content of their delusions. People who have delusions of persecution and believe that they are followed by malevolent others live in a state of great anxiety and can give up their jobs and move cities as a result. Other delusions do not significantly impact on people's behaviour: hospital patients may say that the nurses are trying to poison them, but do not stop eating their meals.

The world has many more delusions than we find in 'mad people'.  Should we exploit them as in 'ArchJenko' or try sanity?  How are delusions maintained, as in creationism, democracy, free trade, markets, the wars on drugs, terrorism and amongst cops, social workers and politicians taking money for protecting children while thousands go unprotected?

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