Jed Rothwell wrote: > . . . > > That is the point I have been trying to make, which people here do not > seem to grasp. Folktales were known to everyone in society before > there was widespread literacy and later television. People everywhere > periodically have waking dreams, or dreams they confuse with reality, > and many people suffer from delusions. The content of these dreams and > delusions come entirely from their own minds, so they are > stereotypical and based on stories people hear from others (or see on > television these days). The stories are not original, because most > people are not imaginative. The stories all sound the same. There are > dozens of variations on the badger stories in Japan, all similar. > There are dozens of similar UFO abduction stories today because the > people who imagine it happened to them all heard the stories from > someone else. > . . . > > Nowadays there is no penalty for not believing in UFOs or Lazarus > rising from the dead. But people are nearly as ignorant as they were > in 1600 or 1800. Education has hardly budged the general level of > knowledge. A large fraction of the population does not know that the > earth circles the sun once a year or what causes seasons. Most > Americans do not believe in evolution of course, but they also have no > idea what a calorie is, or amperage and voltage. Japanese people are > only marginally more educated in my experience, based on attending > college there and reading their mass media. Most people are incurious > and seldom bother to learn things that are of no immediate use to them. > > So it is not a bit surprising that belief in alien abductions is > widespread, and it follows from this that many people believe that > they themselves were abducted.
That which surprised me about the story wasn't that she apparently believed herself abducted by aliens. It was that she "experienced" being taken to Venus and apparently found it completely acceptable that it was "very green". Coming from the wife of the prime minister of a nation which has spacefaring capabilities, that seems bizarre. It has been known for decades, as absolute confirmed fact, that Venus isn't even close to "green"; they even teach it in at least some elementary schools in the United States.
