To become entranced, mesmerized and spellbound, to have attentions captured is a big developmental step for the mental world-building of a prepubescent mind in progress. Consider children before their cartoons, hardly responding in any physical sense so held are they by what they see. And not as some instinctual hunter’s urge to disrupt, not in a fearful or even playful way, primal though it may be. Be the object of appeal a person or place or thing, they do not want to run at it to sniff it or paw at it like the old cat inside my window beside the old dog outside my window toward the birds playing in the grass they cannot unsee, bonding over the shared seclusion of time and space. Fictions are more appealing to the childlike mind, the gateway drug for exercising and training emotional or psychological or spiritual faculties for the intake of non-fictional datasets. This will explain why political extremism and religious zealotry absolutely never presents itself as rational to the non-bewitched, as they are busy with grownup work. House parties are frankly a waste of everything and special interest groups have no room to speak, while that floor needs scrubbing. Or look at it this way, the nighttime communal warmth of our sleeping and cave-dwelling ancestors led to the first orgies which led to the first theologies. But then we learned how to put that time and energy into the Earth, in exchange for remedies to hunger and sickness which do grow as people shall play.
But as Alan Watts wrote before my time, while most of those pointing the way are ignored regardless of being right or wrong, logical or illogical, those observed can only bet on getting their finger suckled and not on anybody looking to where it leads. I wonder what that says in specific regards to the corrupting nature to power, that perhaps those beholden under a mere influence or greater authority either one, they do not necessarily want the salvation and rewards being promised by sacrifice so much as the circumstantial opportunism, they want the esteem of the message-bringer. The bragging points without the labors, like retweeting solidarity hashtags in lieu of doing as they suggest as though sharing a sentiment might ever conceivably be synonymous for originating the sentiment, or for resolving what ails it. They by way of their very own personal ego want on some level to not find love or purpose or closure, they want others to suckle their finger in thanks and praise of being the one who always knew the way for being most deserving of love and purpose and closure, self-importance incidentally standing in the way of the followers getting to love or purpose or closure of their own.
The animals, they understand appeal without our going exchange rates of possession or transference.