The majority of westerners have lost their fucking minds.

While I do agree on that, I think it would happen to any group of people. Regardless if they’re westerners or easterners (correct term?), no matter the skin color and all that. People are prone to these things, to manipulation.

It seems to be the case that if you have working mirror neurons, but are not used to use ratio and common sense to check on what you’re copying from others, you are simply doing that: You copy whatever others are doing. You support the current thing. You say the words others are saying. You say the phrases others are saying. You do the things others are doing.

Mirror neurons make it possible to have compassion and empathy, they are important for a functioning society where people help each other. Mirror neurons activate parts of the same regions that somebody has active you are obvserving. If you do have too few mirron neurons, you won’t help others, you lack compassion - literally. If you have too much, they would render you unable to help others with their suffering, because you suffer just as much. You want to be able to help a person with a broken leg, and not be clouded by induced pain (brain regions). So a good amount of mirror neurons is a good thing.

People who have too few, or none at all, are called psychopaths. Newer term is anti-social disorder. These people, when it gets extreme, don’t care one bit if there is a burning human being in front of them. It’s nothing but an interesting spectacle. People in prison are typically higher on that scale. Just as much as people in upper corporation management, or - you may have guessed it - politics. These people have no issue manipulating others for their personal benefit. And that includes, of course, manipulating people who have more mirror neurons.

Now, this wouldn’t work with people who have enough education, and are used to use their brain to check on what they are doing. Does it make sense? Is it actually benefiting me? If people are not able to do this, if they are helpless, they will blindly and naively - literally - copy what others are doing. The more often they see it, the higher the chance they’ll also do it. That’s why you see repetition so much on TV. Be it advertising or politics.

Hm… I’m not sure why I wrote this down right now. But… here we are. I hope someone was able to take something away from this that is useful.

Edit: Some links that might be interesting:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_mania