Over the past few weeks, I have been looking at my world. It’s a much smaller place than it used to be in any respect. In others, it’s much larger. And in still other ways it’s incredibly frustrating.
I can walk but not balance myself, therefore I need assistance, and this has shrunk my world to some extent. I spend more time online than I used to and while that has expanded my world view, it has also disturbed me.
It has primarily disturbed me because what I see when I look at the big picture is a strange witch’s brew of people striving to spread truth and others looking to spread lies.
The only way I can tell these two sides from one another is that the people on the side of truth usually have real-life examples of why their truth is real. Those who are spreading lies, simply rely on the power of their words and people’s ignorance to be believed.
The sad part here is that the liars appear to be winning. And they are winning because there are now too many people on this planet who are willing to embrace anything that makes it easy for them to believe.
For example, the people who spread lies about the approaching environmental calamity never really seem to have anything other than innuendo to contribute. On the other side, the scientific community is now tracking the almost complete melting of the polar ice caps, the increase in the severity and frequency of major weather systems, and widespread drought.
Well, if you are the average schlub out there who knows very little about climate science and maybe even lacks the intellect to get out there and find out the facts, it’s very easy for you to just shrug your shoulders and believe that it’s all fake.
I have seen this polarization repeated in almost every facet of our world. From climate change to carbon emissions, from the results of fracking right down to the war that Russia is waging with Ukraine.
I thought for the longest time that maybe if I just did a little homework and tried my best to correct misconceptions that people have about the way the world is, I could actually, at the very least, be seen as someone who is part of the solution. But all that really happened was nothing. My posts would be attacked by naysayers who had no real rationale for their point of view, other than just being opposed to mine. In the United States and even to a lesser extent in my country, right of centre politics has moved progressively further to the right until now, all they do is bang away at liberal/democratic governments with little hammers of innuendo, and nothing to back them up outside of the ravings of a few lunatic ‘authorities’ who are basically using the issues to get book deals and talk show appearances on right-wing TV.
To the sane, logical, educated people in our societies, this just looks like rampant insanity. The 21st-century version of the Hatfields and the McCoys.
The world no longer makes any sense. And if I were in England or the Middle East or Asia or even South America, it would be the same. Irrational, uninformed opinions have become as accepted, if not even more so. than rational, considered, intelligently reasoned scientifically supported opinions.
It feels like a revolution in which the ignorant have all come together to convince the world that it’s OK to be that way. And it’s OK to hold any old view of things you want to hold. Especially if you don’t have the intellect to get your head around the science or physics or now, even morality of it.
So in essence, what half of the world is doing is banging their heads against the thick wall that has been formed by the other half.
Conversations between these two factions are impossible, and not because the rational segment doesn’t want to have a conversation. It’s because the response that comes back makes no sense to them.
And it perfectly illustrates the Mark Twain adage…
Never start an argument with a stupid person. They will just bring you down to their level and then beat you with experience.
I know this sounds like I am down on about 40 to 50% of civilization, and that many of you will want to tell me that education is the answer. But the question then becomes how do you educate someone who is firm in their belief that the illogical is the right answer.
The answer is that you don’t. You bang your head against the wall for a few years, then you realize that there are just people in the world who are not willing to go so deep to get answers. And that these people are going shallower and shallower every day.
This is called, for want of a better term, brainwashing. But it will only work on certain types of brains. And what we’re all finding out is that there are many more of these susceptible brains than many of us ever thought existed.
At the end of the day, all you can really do is bang your own drum and hope that those brains that haven’t been completely washed, will glom on to some of the reality of this world.
I have had several social media friends, many from the US who have attested to this state of affairs in their own areas. Some of these people are afraid to make their true feelings known about anything to do with politics, for example, for fear of things turning violent.
That is a sadness beyond belief when people have become so indoctrinated in an ideology that they close their minds to any other way of thinking. And even sadder when they cannot reason their way out of some of the beliefs they hold that simply do not make sense on any rational level.
But we trudge on through our lives and we try our best to be tolerant. But every day it just seems like the peanut we are pushing up the hill gets heavier and heavier.
