For What It's Worth

How Belief, Identity, and Information Shape What We See

(10 minute read)

Key Takeaways:

• We don’t see reality as it is — we see it through expectations created by our beliefs
• We rely on simplified narratives to make a chaotic world feel manageable
• Generational identity shapes perception with each interpreting opportunity, hardship, and control differently
• Information overload provides little wisdom and generally reinforces magical thinking

“It is not the thing itself that troubles you, but your own judgment about it. And this you have the power to change.”

–Marcus Aurelius, “Meditations, 8.47”

“The things you think about controls the quality of your mind. You become your thoughts.”

–Marcus Aurelius, “Meditations, 5.16”

“Oh, Rhett. I’m afraid now. I’m afraid of dying and going to hell.”

–Scarlet O’Hara, “Gone With The Wind,” MGM, 1939

“…alternate realities are nothing new in America.”

–Sarah Churchwell, “The Wrath To Come,” Bloomsbury Publishing, UK, 2022

In The Age Of Magical Thinking 5 we explored how magical thinking shapes human belief, particularly in the face of mortality, uncertainty, and loss of control. Comfort beliefs can gradually harden into distorted worldviews when they shield us from reality rather than help us face it. Intellectual humility and emotional maturity helps to relinquish illusion, accept limits, and reclaim personal responsibility in a world we do not control.

You Don’t Need Religion To Be A Believer

Illustrating how magical thinking happens, Business Insiders’ senior correspondent Emily Stewart wrote the article, “Crystal Ball Economics.” The 2025 article is an expose on the $2.3 billion a year psychic business, underscoring the enormous size of this industry and how many people are willing to spend substantial money acting on beliefs and predictions that are not grounded in evidence.

While Stewart skimps on the questionable practices used by certain psychics (my words, not hers). Her focus is why are Americans willing to spend their hard-earned money on something that may be frivolous and appears to have little basis in reality? For those who are skeptical of psychics, this seems like an obvious question that calls for an answer.

This question matters because our spending habits reveal a lot about us. What we believe and value most is reflected in how we choose to use our resources. Beyond basic needs like food, shelter, and clothing, where and how we spend our money helps shape and express who we are.

Interestingly, clients are not primarily people with less education or from lower socioeconomic groups. Yes, initial “consultations” can be as little as $5 for five minutes (debit and credit cards are gladly accepted). However, additional time with the medium, shaman, or spiritual advisor, will cost more—and can become quite expensive.

“$3, $13, or $20 a minute” starts adding up. “This is a luxury service at the end of the day.”

The mechanism for the psychic system can be explained through basic sales concept. Of course the service doesn’t exist without a sufficient amount of supply and demand. Perceived value is another when customers buy a product or service based on what they believe it’s worth. Value-based pricing is yet a third, where buyers believe the higher premium cost is justified by superior quality, status, or long-term savings. These and more help reinforce and legitimize the service.

“Emotional management”—the comfort the service provides—may be central to its appeal. Even if clients can’t always articulate it, the reassurance they feel meets important emotional needs. Practitioners who understand this dynamic are often skilled at fostering a hopeful outlook, helping clients feel more confident about how things will turn out.

When people were asked why they were regular clients, one replied, “Better safe than sorry.” Another person, who spends $80 a month on her visits, explained, “For me, it’s part of my wellness routine.”

Finally, many customers mention that fortune telling often starts out as a lighthearted activity—a “fun thing to do” with friends, similar to a night of bowling or dancing. It may feel like simple entertainment at first, but over time some people begin to wonder whether their future could actually be influenced.

It is often during this shift—from curiosity to something more serious—that a change occurs. The experience may begin to feel legitimate, reinforced by what is perceived as meaningful insight.

• “She knew my mother’s name!”
• “How did she know that Jessica was my first love?”
• “She looked right into my soul.”

General predictions or seemingly personal insights can gradually be internalized and affirmed. If individuals come to believe that hidden knowledge has been uncovered or revealed, their anxiety about the future may ease.

That can provide a strong sense of influence over one’s fate. After all, the idea that “knowledge” is power can be deeply reassuring.

Enter the Age of Magical Thinking

Though many psychics have been shown to use deceptive techniques (some examples are listed in Stewart’s article), the demand for the service remains high. Even when clients are aware that questionable practices exist, the pull of cognitive dissonance in committed believers can help sustain their engagement.

“There are scammers, sure, but not the one I see.”

Ultimately, people do not spend money just because of a psychic’s tactics, but because of the deeper psychology of spending itself: the hope that money can ease fear, buy certainty, soothe loneliness, or confirm a sense of meaning and control. Whether they are choosing a reading, a vacation, or a new car, many customers are really paying for emotional reassurance and a story about their future that feels safe, special, or worth believing in.

Despite how strong our desire to believe, so far, scientists have found no reliable evidence that people can get specific information about the past, the future, or an afterlife in any way that goes beyond normal thinking, pattern-spotting, or making educated guesses.

Behind closed doors, a few psychics quietly admit they lack a genuine gift—a hard truth the industry avoids. Their private doubts about one another rarely lead to accountability. They may suspect fakes among them, but cognitive dissonance is powerful. The problem is almost always seen as someone else’s—never their own.

Born Into a Narrative: Generational Identity and Perception

To see why we fall back on magical thinking and build alternate realities, we have to look at where psychology and society collide.

We’ve got hard‑wired cognitive biases that blunt the sharp edges of a chaotic world, fears that make us grab for comforting stories, and identity needs that demand a clean, flattering version of who we are.

Then add the social layer: the pull of group belonging, the generational scripts that tell us what’s possible, and the power structures that promote certain “realities” while quietly erasing the rest.

If that sounds abstract, it isn’t. These pressures operate quietly but constantly beneath the surface of our daily lives. As Robert Greene argues in The Laws of Human Nature, we are far less objective than we imagine ourselves to be, and far more driven by unseen emotional currents.

Greene observes that “each of us are born into a moment in time that shapes us and our worldview.” Our identities, worth, and hopes are formed in a specific time and place, and each generation develops their own shared sense-of-reality, values, and meaning that powerfully influences them.

I am a child of the 1960s, often described as a “cusper” of the Boomer generation—too young to fully identify with early Boomers, yet too early to be part of Generation X. The 1960s and 1970s were marked by civil unrest with peace marches organized to cease the war in Vietnam while minorities and women pressed for equal protection and opportunity under the U.S. Constitution.

Black Americans were not fully recognized as U.S. citizens with the right to vote until the Civil Rights Act of 1965.¹ One-hundred and two years after they were emancipated. The women’s movement, starting in the mid-1800s came to a head in the 1970s. Women mobilized over a century to fight for equal rights, reproductive freedom and workplace equality.

Both of these landmark decisions did not transform America overnight; progress took years. Now, recent court rulings indicate that key protections of the Civil Rights Act have been narrowed. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade also marked a major change in the legal landscape for women’s rights. Energized by that decision, some Republican leaders and Christian nationalists are pushing policies that limit certain rights for women — a chilling echo to Vance’s quote “there’s no law, there’s just power.”

The significance of these events seems clear to me, though I recognize that not everyone sees them the same way. In my view, they challenge ideals that many Americans have valued deeply for decades. The rise of wishful or “magical” thinking within certain political and religious movements has led me to add my voice to those who question this direction.

Boomers were born during a very lucky time in the U.S., when jobs, housing, and accumulating wealth was relatively easy. Many embraced the self‑made Republican cowboy myth, (more toxic magical thinking) believing they’d earned everything on their own, purely through god‑given talent.

For Boomers, ideals like finding a career, working, voting, learning, and organizing around equality were foundational. They came of age during the space race, Cold War, and nuclear buildup, then watched the ’80s turn many of those egalitarian ambitions into corporate compromises as some bought into the cowboy myth trading in ideals for careers. Later generations, facing fewer opportunities, were forced to focus on other priorities.

Famous Boomers include actors Denzel Washington and Tom Hanks; actor/political activists Sean Penn and Oprah Winfrey; business leaders Bill Gates and Steve Jobs; politicians Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama.

Generation X followed, coming of age at the end of the Cold War, during the spread of personal computers, the emergence of a virtual world, and the rise and fall of the first dot-com boom.

Learning to interact with thinking machines and building online identities gives Gen X a sense of reality no previous generation had. Immersed in a non‑tangible world, they tend to be individualistic yet globally minded, more pragmatic than idealistic. Over 80% of today’s American billionaires are from Gen X.

Famous Gen Xers include actors Tom Crusie, Brad Pitt, and Johnny Depp; politicos Ted Cruz, Mark Rubio, and Corey Booker; business/tech leaders Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, and Michael Dell.

Millennials, by contrast, are the first generation fully immersed in technology. Events like 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis created a deep sense of insecurity about their place in the world. Ubiquitous communication devices helped fuel the rise of helicopter parents, hovering over their every move in an effort to shield them from a chaotic, dangerous world.

Famous Millennials include, actors Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson, singer/songwriters Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus; politicians JD Vance, Pete Buttigieg, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; business/tech entrepreneurs Mark Zuckerberg, Mike Krieger, and Kevin Systrom.

Gen Z is relatively small, shaped by America’s declining birthrate and often labeled the “anxious generation.” They’ve grown up under the shadow of climate change, overpopulation, AI, and rising authoritarianism, in a world defined by Trump-era politics, tech oligarchs, and podcast bros. Their news sources are largely nontraditional, and they are predicted to rebel against societal norms in greater numbers than previous generations.

Famous Gen Zs include, actors Jenna Ortega and Millie Bobby Brown, recording artists Billie Eilish and Elyanna, social media influencer Emma Chamberlain, and activist Greta Thunberg.

Throughout history, people have done their best to explain how the world works, sometimes developing ideas and interpretations that do not fully match reality. The generations described above are no exception, for a variety of reasons.

One, it’s generally hard to think about complex issues. We are creatures of habit and comfort. Sometimes thinking about complex issues makes us feel uncomfortable. Why are we here and what is our “purpose” are not easy questions to answer.

Second, we like to believe we are being objective when we search for truth and reality. In practice, though, studies show that we eagerly accept information that confirms our existing biases and tend to ignore evidence that challenges them.

This is especially true when we ground our identity on human exceptionalism. “There has to be a reason why we are here” and, of course, by extension as individuals. “Human existence must matter, otherwise I, as an individual, will not either.”

Can you see how holding that expectation might gently nudge us toward a kind of magical thinking?

These generational differences show that where and how we begin our lives matters. They are shaped by family, social, institutional, economic, technological, and cultural forces, as well as personal experiences and the media we consume. We live our lives in the shadow of these influences and the expectations they create.

Religious and philosophical ideas try to explain life but often fall short. No single framework can capture all of human experience, so many exist. Our beliefs are simply ongoing attempts to make sense of the world, yet they still leave us wanting more.

However, many of these beliefs are closer to a kind of hopeful or “magical” thinking — stories we gather and create to help ourselves feel more at ease. They act as comfort beliefs, and we may find ourselves ready to accept almost anything if it seems promising enough.

In our world, we want to think that we have all the answers to the big questions. Or that the answers can be found at the other end of our electronic devices.

“Look at all the information out there. If I have to, I can just look it up.”

Information overload strengthens the illusion that we can control the world and our lives. When that illusion becomes the foundation of our faith, it is easy to feel confident and even optimistic—at least for a while.

¹ A Letters From an American post by historian Heather Cox Richardson, May 16, 2026. A short but worthy read of events leading up to the Civil Rights Act of 1965.