I remember reading about a study where thousands of people meditated for a week in Washington, D.C. The study said the crime rate dropped substantially in D.C. that week. They called the phenomenon ‘the Maharishi effect.’

I don’t know if that’s true, or if there’s any cause and effect relationship. Or maybe a noncausal nonlocal explanation?

I remembered that study this week when I realized that an anti-Chinese letter from Highland County, Ohio, in 1885 was published on the same day as the worst single incident of anti-Chinese violence in U.S. history. Could there be an opposite to the Maharishi effect?

I happened across this eyewitness account while researching those events. (The eyewitness account described here is troubling but not too graphic.)

This week on How We Got Here, on Substack.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-144049543?source=queue