Known colloquially as "mass hysteria" (which is now considered a non-PC term), it's one of the most controversial formally named diseases/diagnosis. MPI is basically where multiple people in the same place simultaneously or in rapid succession experience sudden delusions, psychosis, or other mental issues of a similar nature to each other. Notable examples include the dancing sickness in Medieval Germany where people in a town suddenly got a severe urge to jump up and down in the streets, some doing it until they literally died from exhaustion, as well as the laughing sickness of Tanganyika, where a number of children suddenly started laughing uncontrollably.
It's said to be triggered spontaneously by things like severe collective stress (for example, the stress of living in a medieval town or a country actively pushing for independence from Britan). For some cases, it may also be due in part to exposure to neurotoxic pollutants, like the infamous ergotism that also caused the Salem Witch Trials. It can start with a single person going into psychosis and triggering similar symptoms in people around them who see the strange behaviour.
It also tends to resolve spontaneously after some time, or some cases are resolved by things like exorcism rituals through the placebo effect and the sufferers believing that the "treatment" would help.
I've even heard some theories that MPI is responsible for things like miracles supposedly seen performed by religious figures throughout history, or in more modern times, mass sightings of UFOs and paranormal activity.
Do you think this disease is a real thing? Or do all the documented cases have a different underlying cause that we simply haven't discovered?
I still vehemently believe that HS was made up. It's wayyyyy too convenient that only Western people, almost all of which in embassy/intelligence/military, experienced symptoms exclusively in countries they hate. You think if there's a sonic weapon there would be at least one case of "collateral damage" as the West likes to call people affected by their own war crimes.
I have no doubt that it's bunk made to justify expanding budgets, promotions, and further activity in those places, but a part of me wonders if some experience either psychological stress caused by a guilty conscience formed from living as a saboteur amongst people who've done you no wrong for nothing more than a paycheck or a Road to Damascus Moment that need to be explained away and covered up by Saturday morning cartoon villainy
Plausible considering the Cubans, unlike the Russians and Asians, have a social history directly traceable to Europe, making them far more recognizable as human to Americans than people in Russia and Asia.
Russians don't have a social history directly traceable to Europe?
Most of Russia in an Asia. Russia itself has never been considered a European country. There's interactions with Europe for sure, more than many other non-European nations, but Russia is not a European country nor a historical European colony. It is specifically non-European.
Being Norse descendant with an 800 year long dynasty that started west of the Urals along with a good bit to a majority of their historic population as well doesn't count as European?
When we consider this from a social perspective and not a physical perspective, we see that we don't say European countries are African. The same is true of Russia. Socially, the concept of Europe excludes Russia.
I would disagree, I suspect more white Americans would lean towards empathizing with westside Russians much sooner than they would any Cubans
That's possible. It was a hypothesis. Part of my reasoning is the language, being based on Latin. Part of it is the culture being substantially a transplantation of Western European culture - the music, the social dynamics, the fashion, the idioms, the histories, the architecture, etc. Part of it is the significant influence Cuba has had on the US (salsa, Domino, Bacardi, etc). Part of it is the history of American and European tourism to Cuba. Part of it is the prevalence of Roman Catholicism.
When compared with Russia, even Western Russia, the quantity and quality of the cultural analogs is significantly reduced. The alphabet, language, idioms, cuisine, music, religion, history, tourism, commodities, commerce, etc are just not as connected to America as these things in Cuba are.
But it's just a hypothesis. I'm interested in understanding your position on the matter.