The idea of beliefs or ideas running as if having a life of their own

in reply to

https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2019/08/22/what-causes-heart-disease-part-64-not-changing-your-mind/#comment-144645

Who indeed was 'Shakes spear' (Pallas Athena). I lean to Francis Bacon as the likely artist - though not to say there may not have been understudies working under or with him. 'Pulling the wool over our eyes' has been attributed to the passing off of 'William Shakespeare' for the forming of a British Identity, in language and so in cultural expression. The ideas are a resurgence of largely Greek perspective of drama as the 'divine archetypes' of its playing out in human tragi-comedy. Art reflecting Life?
Regardless any bias of its times or who penned it, I see the work as standing in its own right as a mirror held up to the human condition. Not so much the intent to run a business model on knowingly false assertions - that are passed off as true to those who have been induced or chosen to give authority away. This will shift to hide in new forms as the nature of a mind in denial and evasion of its true Authoring or Nature. I suspect the demonised will be recognised as health supporting when we stop casting out fears, so as to then attack them in 'role' and thus 'prove them true' by the generation of further disease or conditions of scarcity and lack.

The idea of beliefs or ideas running as if having a life of their own, is part of the nature of 'narrative reality' or social engineering - because narrative identities are not based upon truth so much as the 'world we grew up in' and inherit and acquire by adaptation.

Once an idea of set of ideas can be propagated to 'take' root in the minds of many, those minds automatically protect them, by seeking and finding justifications, reinforcements as defence for their own existence.

This is in any case part of the nature of a narrative identity of personality structure as story of self, family, and world.

To what degree do we each and collectively 'make our reality' as our interpretive construct - through which we then experience the only Reality that is?

We may say we 'make sense of it' - but to whom? To the heart and mind of a conscious self acceptance? Or to a conforming and complying adaptation to the demands of a learned survival?

The definitions and beliefs we accept for ourself extend to our relations and world, and the experiencing of that relationship then reflects as a world to which we adapt or are conditioned by.

What do we actually believe, why do we believe it and what do we get out of it? These are fundamental curiosities that will only arise from the willingness to question our reality experience or narrative identity because it is dissonant to who and what we are and we are no longer willing to deny or sacrifice our sense of our own existence or being to a dissonant model or set of ideas.

In terms of 'causes' of disease, we are in the realm of magic and superstition as long as we are identifying first cause OUT THERE. A chain of logical effects does proceed from giving cause away, and this chain can be meticulously studied as if to prove itself - but only within the initial presumption or assignation - ie Heart function fails and cholesterol is the bad guy. And therefore in the avoidance, denial or manipulative distortion of unsupporting or conflicting evidences.

Why believe it? what do we get out of believing it? To the layman, the belief may be in the higher knowledge of the trained specialist, and the application of that knowledge as technological interventions. But specialisation becomes myopic without a unifying context such as to become tooled by our own tools and controlled or trapped in our own thinking.

Definition comes first and in medical terms; diagnosis as the basis for treatment is the discernment or interpretation of the presentation by which to respond. Likewise in medical terms, the diagnosis is an 'expert' categorisation of symptoms assigned to specified disease definitions in which the believed mechanism is seen as the cause and mechanical interventions applied to block or suppress its expression.

Magic and superstition are a freedom of the mind to make its own connections and associations and learn from them -  or it would not be a mind but a mechanism. Insofar as we can make ourself in our own image, we can substitute for awareness of fulfilment of function, and generate a breakdown of capacity to support or maintain the model, the body, the social structure. And call it progress, profit or sustainability.