From Humanoid Faults to Manipulated Consensus, 20
Another blessing for manipulators: it has been said that by their fruits you will know them, and indeed at the root of suppressives’ activity there is the three−card trick of manipulating you into being “reasonable” about results – swallowing negative results, or just lack of them, without questioning and without any fuss, just clapping your paws as a good trained seal.
A meaningful example of how bad "reasonableness" can get is a religious person passively buying brain−based views from a shrink. The pompous term “shrinks” to refer to psychiatrists, psychologists, etc. indiscriminately is not uncommon, it is somewhat less so using it to highlight one of their basic common denominators: their materialistic dogma. A religious person usually holds that certain precise metaphysical entities do exist: a supreme entity creator of everything, a spirit or soul, and a whole dimension of existence, while a shrink usually holds a strictly materialistic view that the physical universe is the only thing that exists.
Hence, amongst other things, a basically hopeful and optimistic viewpoint and ensuing approach of the religious person towards the individual, seen as potentially cause, and a basically defeatist and pessimistic viewpoint and ensuing approach of the materialistic person towards the individual, seen as hopelessly effect. Belief in the existence of metaphysical entities can provide a stable absolute foundation for good and evil, while its absence can leave one devoid of any absolute and thus opens the door to absolute relativism about good and evil, so these basics now and then lead to such chilling consequences that, while the religious person considers human beings sacred due to the presence in them of that metaphysical spark, the materialistic person may get to the point of considering one's fellows as mere worthless expendable pawns. On the other hand, indeed derailed absolutes brought someone to play with fire, quarrelling about who was to be burned at the stake, while someone else, stoic, proudly preserved integrity despite the firm belief in one’s own finiteness, so common sense is always senior.
