A few ideas based on what you wrote…

I don’t feel there is a convenient answer to what you are suggesting in this article. If we focus on psychology instead of sociology/anthropology then we find a different picture, which is one of a primal, biological need for security. Out of this widespread, ubiquitous fear of insecurity stems our other issues such as greed, violence, the need for domination, the invention of gods and religion, and so on. The experimentation to which you refer in regard to the tens of thousand of years of wavering between systems of government (albeit not the same form as exists today) is still going on; it has never ceased. The only problem is that we have outgrown our world and such experimentation now sends shock waves far and wide, disrupting our neighbors on a global scale.

You wrote this, which I just don’t agree with: “When driving a car, for example, “you don’t feel the danger of hurtling down the highway with hundreds of other speeding cars, because you assume the drivers have all trained their bodies to operate the vehicles safely and unconsciously, freeing up their conscious mind to focus on other matters. We hypnotize ourselves to act as though driving a car were perfectly safe. Even knowing that car accidents are among the leading causes of death, we train our mind to ignore the risks.”

I certainly feel the danger every single time i get in my car, and I know others who do as well. This really isn’t a good example of hypnosis, but rather a failure to attend to the matter at hand, which is quite common among humans who are distracted by their thoughts. Hypnosis as a therapy has to do with the raising up of the unconscious/subconscious while at the same time keeping the conscious mind at the same level. Driving, on the other hand, should be a conscious effort, but drivers are so often distracted with either thoughts or other preoccupations (texting, talking to passengers, drinking, etc.), and this is how most accidents are caused.

Regarding your assessment: “Science tells us how things work but not what they’re for, what they should mean to us, or what we should do about them,” I agree. Science has provided answers to a great many pressing problems, but it is limited not only in its ability to measure “reality,” but also in its innate belief system and the beliefs of scientists who, after all, are also only human.

The analogy of unicorns is exactly what underlies religions and cults. No difference. So instead of marveling over the stupidity or absurdity of the beliefs themselves we must take a look at the psychological need to invent such beliefs.

You wrote: “…They’re only having fun by living wholly in a fantasy world that issues straight from their untamed unconscious, through their untethered imagination, to end up as the din that plagues more serious-minded adults….” I would argue that this fantasy is not from the unconscious at all; it is completely conscious in children. To children, such fantasies are real. Adults, on the other hand, have been psychologically conditioned to believe in a reality that is socially agreed upon.

I have much more to say on this analogy of hypnosis. My wife happens to be a hypnotherapist and I have a close friend who has done stage hypnosis — two distinctly different practices. What is going on in your examples is not hypnosis but rather psychological conditioning, conformity, and group think.