I Think I've Figured It Out ;)

I grew up in an environment where science was questioned. A lot.

See, my family was part of a reasonably fundamentalist Christian church. I was a third generation Seventh-Day Adventist. Some would call it a cult. It's not. But the cast of Adventist beliefs range from, 'Yes, the Earth really is 6000 years old', to 'The dinosaurs weren't a problem because Adam and Eve were actually 6 times bigger than you or I', to 'Creation is definitely a thing, and definitely happened in a literal 6 days', to 'Evolution is obviously not true because where are the half-men-half-monkeys now?' to 'There's archaeological evidence of the great flood and Noah's Ark story being true!'

All of this is on top of the usual fundamentalist Christian stuff of no sex before marriage, gays are an abomination, prayer really works, God is real and he's watching your every move, thought and action, and obviously there is a heaven or hell after this life, as well as grave predictions about the end of days which will be brought on by natural disasters, war, famine and disease.

Adventism is to Christianity what pop tarts are to toast: extra af. Just cos they both go in the toaster, doesn't make them the same thing. This particular flavour of Christianity denounces drinking, denies dancing, values vegetarians, cautions against caffeine and sermonises on Saturday. They believe in prophecies, particularly from Ellen White, God's anointed. The SDA grew out of the Millerite movement, which followed William Miller. He interpreted that Jesus' second coming would be in 1844. It was not. The church grew exponentially around the world regardless, so it was clearly based on something beyond prophecy and beyond facts. Edit: There are some more details here and here and here, if you want to know more.

There's no evidence for the majority of this stuff. Of course there's no evidence, Lauren. That's where faith comes in, you just have to believe.

Edit: [There is some reasonably compelling evidence for the end of days prophecy that predicted the birth of Jesus, and also predicts the end of days, and the second coming of Jesus in the Book of Daniel.]

Always keen for a good tale, I did devoutly believe Christian stories as truth for a long time. As a Christian, I was ridiculed throughout my time at school by a host of different people for my beliefs and practices. I was an out-and-out loud and proud Jesus Freak for a really long time. Sure, there were always doubts and nagging questions that I just couldn't quite reason away, but these people were my people, their God, my God, and if it was good enough for them, it was good enough for me, I reasoned. Besides, what does it matter if evolution is true or not? It doesn't affect my daily life.

There are many, many things I'm grateful for from my upbringing like learning kindness, caring, meeting many awesome people, going on expeditions, camping and travelling all over the country, and the world. At age 23, I concluded that even if none of the stuff in the bible was objectively true, then living like a Christian - using gratitude, meditation, focusing on the good in others, loving, having mercy, helping the poor, and seeking peace - was still be a better way to live than the alternative.

10 years on, I secretly still really hope a lot of the Bible/prophecy stuff is true. It would be delightful if there was some celestial being who actually gave a shit, but the longer I live, the more evidence I see to the contrary. Even the idea that God's laws are written in men's hearts seems a bit of a stretch given the current climate of selfish, egotistical leaders who are elected by woefully ignorant people. The gap between reality and what I was being asked to believe grew too big and the swirling mess of angst around it couldn't sustain my faith any longer.

This upbringing has left me with a social circle full of lovely, beautiful, joyful souls, but people that are used to believing and buying into some pretty outlandish things.

When you live a life on the fringes of society, there's an element of social rejection that you get used to. You become largely immune to people's ill-opinion of you, because in order to live the way you believe is right, you have to ignore what the vast majority of people think. The fringes contain geniuses and idiots, or just divergent thinkers.

On the fringe, you have your group, and they create stories, rationalities, not only to justify their beliefs, but to justify their lack of belief in what the majority believe. Things like 'Other people are just unthinking sheep' and 'They just haven't discovered the truth yet'.

I remember, as a teenager, actually being amazed when I heard moralistic statements come out of my schoolmates' mouths, having been encouraged to think that we Christians were literally 'holier than thou'. This was one example of the condescension and arrogance that tends to come with the groups on the fringes. The basis of it comes down to 'But we have the truth' and the underlying belief of  'We actually just know better than everyone else'. There is a cognitive bias that reinforces this called illusory superiority.

People default to assuming that they know just that little bit better than everyone else, but more than that, that whatever the government, scientists or what other [pagan] people think, say or believe is, in fact, either super-biased, has a hidden agenda, is part of a conspiracy theory, or is out-and-out wrong.

In extreme circumstances, these people start to broadcast their knowing-better-than-everyone-else, and create a cult-type following, bred on their particular version of 'the Truth'.

My issue is not so much with church-going God-fearing types, but in my anecdotal experience, when people have grown up in this, no longer believe church dogma and then need to find 'replacement' beliefs is where this all gets really fun.

People who believe in quirky things like vampires, Bigfoot, or UFOs are usually a little counter-cultural, and they're OK with being on the fringes rather than in the mainstream. People who believe in only one of these phenomena are usually above average intelligence, findings from Chris Bader and Carson Mencken show in Paranormal America.

Rutger Bregman in his book 'Utopia for Realists', eloquently sums up where I am going with all of this: "A man with convictions is hard to change," but more than that.

"When reality clashes with our deepest convictions, 

we'd rather recalibrate reality than amend our worldview"

He goes on to emphasise that one factor definitely not involved in this is stupidity. "Researchers have shown that intelligent people are more unshakeable in their convictions that anybody. After all, an education gives you tools to defend your opinions. Intelligent people are highly practised in finding arguments, experts, and the Internet has made it easier than ever to be consumers of our own opinions, with another piece of evidence always just a mouse-click away."

Bregman cites another great thinker, Ezra Klein, and adds,

"Smart people don't use their intellect to obtain the correct answer, 

they use it to obtain what they want the answer to be."

My intention here is not to besmirch anyone's intelligence; quite the opposite. I'm fascinated by how people's minds work. Sometimes it can be our own intelligence that is our worst enemy, from thinking there's more to the story when there's not. Equally, sometimes we don't question things enough. It's a case of judgements, and self awareness - learning your own cognitive biases where your thinking is tripping you over.

It's difficult to know in the slough of information we are bombarded with from the mainstream media (MSM), the internet, and others' opinions if anything is actually true or not, particularly during the current chaos.

My wonderings stem from how people get into situations where they are claiming (and actually believing) that 5G is spreading coronavirus and other such bunkum?

A lot of religious folks who have grown up in the faith have had to suspend belief in science, because it has become a narrative of science vs religion, rather than science for explaining what we can and religion for explaining what we can't. As science has advanced, it's become less possible for people to hold both science and religion simultaneously.

When you have a worldview that has been shaped by believing that you have a corner on the truth, and your group are just that little bit smarter than other people, and that what other people believe is ridiculous - despite the evidence - you get a set of people who are susceptible to things like believing - despite the evidence - in a whole lot of weird things. It's not a far leap for those people to become people who believe in conspiracy theories, or counter-cultural thinking.

I would posit that it is at the crossroads of a distrusting worldview, and finding a group that socially accepts them. But let's explore that further...


Why People Reject Objective Truth

Some would argue that there is no such thing as 'objective truth', only relative truth and perception. However, I think we can agree that a natural world exists, we inhabit our bodies, we live on planet Earth, and other such basics. The physical world is difficult to argue about, but our interpretation of the physical world can be vastly different. Take India's worship of cows vs the West's hunger for turning them into burgers for example.

Other objective truths get a little more dicey. This, combined with a mistrust of experts, has created a climate where all opinions are valid, and everyone questions everything.

Some people seem to have a cognitive predisposition to reject authority. (Sometimes I'm one of them.) Additionally, there's been growing mistrust in mass media, government, science, and generally 'the establishment' for some time. A healthy amount of scepticism is important, and not blindly trusting everything anyone says to you is also necessary, but surely there needs to be a balance.

Having corruption after scandal after fuck up exposed time and again, I can see how some could get the idea that governments are working to further themselves and their cronies, rather than the 'of the people, by the people, for the people' ideal we're supposed to be living under. Life experiences where individuals have let you down, or betrayed you, tie into our beliefs in humanity in general. There are a lot of factors on top of your natural personality inclinations.


When Optimism is A Curse

I've noticed that some people seem to reject objective facts because the fact is simply too difficult to carry, to bear for an extended period of time. People who have a strong default to optimism, to need to feel positive and good about life, constantly dismiss some facts as 'negative', preferring to believe that 'everything is going to be fine', or 'it can't/won't be as bad as you're making it out to be.' These are generally the same people at the moment that are complaining about lockdowns being an overreaction.

Usually optimism is an asset, but like everything, taken to an extreme, it can also be a curse. When boundless, unreasonable, unshakeable optimism is unhinged from facts and left to continue rising like a helium balloon, it actually becomes a liability.

Where it gets really dangerous is when you have people that have default emotions that will not allow them to participate in what is 'objectively true' because it would cause them emotional discomfort.

Having to spend days and weeks inside is uncomfortable and inconvenient for everyone, but how you explain it to yourself is quite important. If you know that you're taking one for the team, and you believe the official line of 'this is the most helpful thing you can do right now', then you are basically a hero in pyjamas.

If you are dubious about government at the best of times, a draconian-seeming measure like lockdowns where you're promised 'It's for your own good' is unlikely to fly. To compound that, if you have been financially impacted, you are more likely to want to get out of the current discomfort.  Losing one's income because there's no longer opportunity to make money would certainly be reason for complaint. For some, it is easier to reject the facts, and assume that others have an adverse agenda, than accept that shutting down the economy is the only solution we currently have.

Governments are currently being accused of overreacting, and are becoming a victim of their own success

If these people (super conscious that I'm doing a lot of othering, but obviously none of this applies to me as I'm perfect. ;) ) accept the facts presented by governments and media as unquestionable truth, then they have a choice to make. Deal with these new facts and adjust one's self, or reject new facts and assume the problem is with the facts, and not with self.

The acceptance proves too dark to withstand for some: Live with sadness, panic, fear of getting sick or fear of losing income, uncertainty for the future, and general dread. This constant low mood is too much for some to bear, and they need to find something to be joyful about, at any cost. Anything that impinges upon our (construct of) freedom is going to suck, and so some take this as a personal assault and get all up in arms about their rights. They get angry that their freedom has been taken away, and like a toddlers who's had a broken toy confiscated because they might hurt themselves, they throw a tantrum trying desperately to reclaim their freedom to play with their toy, even though it's broken and they'll take someone's eye out by flinging it around.

I get it. I naturally have a default towards freedom, action, happiness and joy, and it's really hard to sit with the constant anxiety, fear and uncertainty. When I went to uni, the entire place seemed intent on destroying me because there was just depressing statistic after morbid fact, and I became seriously jaded with all this new knowledge. I didn't like it the constant downbuzz. The naive optimism and faith I had in humanity, and the world, was destroyed like a malicious sibling popping a balloon at a birthday party.

That didn't make the knowledge less true. It meant I no longer had the bliss of ignorance.

Unfortunately for optimists, there are loads of depressing things that are true. It is possible to still be joyful and happy in your own world despite those. There are also a lot of really great things that you don't hear about in the MSM all that often such as this article that speaks about 99 amazing things that happened in 2019 and this article that demonstrates in pictures the best and the worst of humanity, and this article that sets forth how the twenty-teens were the best decade in human history because extreme poverty is down to less than 10% of the population, and humans are starting to use less stuff than initially predicted because of technological advances, and concludes with a bunch of super-optimistic predictions about the future.

But you need to be able to hold both of those things simultaneously - the world is both a horrible and a beautiful place all at once. Which is hard and requires a reasonably good understanding of a bunch of different components, and discernment about who is it beautiful for and who it is horrible for, what makes it so, when, and why.

When the world seems to be going into free-fall, and people's livelihoods and normalcy are called into question, holding all of that can be too much for some, and with such incredulous news, it can be difficult to know who to trust. Our new reality seems unreal.



Uncomfortable Facts

This is my working theory:

When you have a worldview based on a mistrust of accepted facts, and then you add 'uncomfortable' facts, there's a particular group of people that reject the facts, not because they are not true, but because their world view cannot accommodate them being true.

The more uncomfortable the facts; the bigger the rejection.

What do I mean by uncomfortable facts? I mean the kind of things that if I accept this as true, it makes my life really uncomfortable. This presents differently in different people.

• If I accept that the government's safety net for homeless people is insufficient, I'm therefore obliged to do something about it. A very uncomfortable reality for empathetic people. So some then explain this as homeless people are there out of their own poor choices - it's a moral failing, and I'm not obliged to do anything about it. Others give all of their spare change or buy homeless people snacks at the local Londis.

• If I accept that there's a possibility that Climate Change is a human-made problem, it radically calls into question my way of life, and demands that I will do something concrete about it. This is a very uncomfortable fact for most, so it is easier to reject it than absorb it and be permanently uncomfortable, questioning yourself and your life choices constantly. The alternative is assume that it is either false, or serving someone's political agenda, therefore you're off the hook for any meaningful action.

• If I accept that I'm not actually in my best physical condition, I can either resign myself to being forever a bit spongy around the middle or I can reject that, assume the choices I've made have led me to this point, and start making better choices with the short amount of life I've been given. Living with the knowledge that the things I want are terrible for me is reasonably uncomfortable information, thus more often than not it is overridden.

• If I accept that capitalism creates winners and losers, and that I am a winner, but in order to be a winner there need to be more losers, then I have to sit with the uncomfortable fact that there's a system that may in fact require some serious tweaking, rather than me just senselessly participating in it, trying to scramble up the ladder. Alternatively, I can believe that capitalism is the answer to all of life's problems and we should definitely be continuing with this same model going forward despite the obvious problems such as dependence on flaky investors for a stable economy and govt bailouts for massive corporations that should really be managing their companies in different/better ways. 

Knowing that you are part of a problem and living with that information can be quite tricky for some. I've noticed there's four basic types of people in regard to these ideas.

Knowledgeable Dreamers
Some people are unfazed by uncomfortable facts, and happily walk around knowing everything and doing nothing to change the current reality.

Knowledgeable Doers
Some people need to utterly transform their lives when confronted with uncomfortable facts.

Dismissive Dreamers
Others prefer to question or dismiss any uncomfortable facts as a fallacy, opting instead to walk around in blissful ignorance or with woke 'alternative facts'.

Dismissive Doers
Still others seek to actively spread misinformation to counter the uncomfortable facts with comfortable compromises - climate change is caused by solar flares, Australian fires were started by arsonists, vaccines = autism, Earth is flat, Covid-19 is only as bad as the flu etc etc etc. We'll call these people dismissive doers because not only do they believe some amazingly false stuff, they actively promote others believing it too.

So how does this feed into your worldview?


Why Does Your Worldview Matter?

Your world view is made up of your base personality, and some core beliefs. Some of these beliefs were created in the interaction between your personality and your upbringing - you've all heard about the alcoholic who had two sons? One never drank a day in his life, and the other was a full blown alcoholic, and both of them said, 'Well of course, look at my father.'

Your worldview is a prism that you see the world through, scattering the light across a bunch a subjects like 'are humans fundamentally good or evil?', 'do you believe in a spiritual realm?', 'is science or art more important?', or 'do you prize tradition or innovation?'. If you would like to know a little more about your worldview, there's a test you can do here.

Do you see man as the master of the world or as part of the world?

Why does world view matter? It's like seeing the world through glasses, a certain strength of lens particular to you.

Your worldview defines how you see the world

First, it's helpful to know your own worldview. As depicted below, there are a bunch of things that play into your worldview. Experiences, the way you've explained those to yourself, and your emotional due-North form a huge part of that.

Emotional due-North, Lauren?

Yes, your internal emotional compass will always point to something. What is your something?

Default Emotions

See there's these things called default emotions. We all have them, they're largely programmed by the environments we grew up in, and the people we were surrounded by, and the culture we're in. Another huge influencer is the stories we feed ourselves, about ourselves, and the world. Sure, you can experience a bunch of other emotions, but there will be an emotional state that is most comfortable for you to be in.

Everyone has on their own emotional barometer, somewhere where their personality and upbringing leads them to naturally sit. For some, it's naturally angry, for some, naturally joyful, for some naturally melancholy, and for others, naturally blasé. Obviously other things come into that such as personal choice, but people will often create feedback loops in their lives that will become a self-fulfilling prophecy to feel these default emotions.

Example of not-so-happy emotions

Positive feedback loop - my inner teacher really liked this one

If you have a default emotion of joy, then like Pollyanna, you will seek opportunities to feel glad.

If you have a default emotion of righteous indignation, then you will constantly be looking to be outraged and be getting into heated debates with people.

If you default towards anger, then similarly, you are likely to find things in your day that piss you off a little bit. The stories you tell about your day will be ones where things annoyed you.

If you default towards dissatisfaction, then you will always be fault-finding and thinking about how things could be better if x thing changed.

If you default towards feeling powerless, then you will paint yourself as a victim in your stories that you tell yourself and others. You will - consciously or unconsciously - create situations where you can become the victim, so that you get that feeling that is comfortable and normal to your brain.

I bet we all know at least one person who's default is peace at all costs - they will say or do anything to maintain peace. No confrontation is worth the emotional cost of a fight, so they just won't engage.

These pathways in our brain are well worn, and they are comfortable, even if they create mayhem in our relationships and in our lives. They are our default, and not only are they where our brains go most often, we are likely to hang out with others who also have a similar default emotion.

The flipside of default emotions are unbearable feelings - the ones we avoid at all costs.


Unbearable Feelings

There is likely to be a feeling that is simply unbearable for you, and you will do whatever it takes to not feel it.

An unbearable feeling is not just an uncomfortable feeling, it is one that will result in a completely and utterly irrational behaviour in order to not feel that feeling.

An unbearable feeling could be criticism. If we despise being criticised, so we will lash out with words, and blame it on someone else, and storm out.

Some people have uncertainty as an unbearable feeling - they have to be in charge, they have to have a plan, they have to know what's going on. We would colloquially call these people control freaks, but there's usually more to it. If there is oscillation or uncertainty in this person's future, it can result in crippling anxiety, or a violent lash out.

I hate being wrong. It is deeply uncomfortable, but it's not an unbearable feeling for me. I've learned to almost lean into the deep discomfort of it. I now seek out criticism to the point where I do not trust entirely positive feedback.

An unbearable feeling for me is that I am 'too much' for someone - too wacky, too loud, too bold, too edgy, too fat, too opinionated, too slow - and so I will shrink myself down or curtail myself to such a state that I think they can handle me, where I will be just a little bit challenging, instead of entirely too much to bear.

A bigger problem still is being taken for granted, and not appreciated for the effort I've put in. This would probably be most notable in around the house chores, for reasons previously discussed here. I lose my shit, and it takes all the skills in my toolbox to stop my thoughts going from
a) I'm doing more than my fair share
b) I'm being taken advantage of
c) Person is going to take me for granted
d) I will end up being used, abused and discarded

It is often not successful, and that is where I end up.

If you have a person and their unbearable feeling is feeling out-of-control, sad or depressed or isolated, then of course in the current situation, they're likely to baulk.

Our decisions, actions and reactions can be based on not necessarily what we're working towards, but what we're trying to get away from. If we are not aware of them, and willing to do the work to downgrade them to uncomfortable feelings, our unbearable feelings can rule our lives.


So What?

So why do I care? I have been musing a lot about if I even have the right to have opinions about this. Do I even have the right to challenge someone's opinion, worldview or belief system? Shouldn't we just let them believe what they want?

Normally, I'm all about letting people believe whatever and enjoying the idiosyncratic theatre of people rationalising the world to themselves, but when people die as a direct result of this folly, that is where I draw the line.

(I'm lying: my line was way back at alternative facts, gas-lighting, propaganda, spreading hate and wilfully misrepresenting the truth.)

How does our culture create this mistrust of experts, an avoidance of sadness, and foster freedom at any cost? One of the ways is the stories we glorify: the renegade hero.


The Renegade Hero

Our culture is saturated with stories about people who knew better than everyone else - we glorify them and make heroes out of them.

1984 is a story of tyrannical authoritarian government but it's also about being an individual when you're not allowed to be an individual, and the danger of critical thinking to big governments. While the story is a cautionary tale about how terrible government can be, it is also a celebration of the rebel to dares to go against a government and remember how things actually happened, despite newspeak saying the opposite.

Iron Man is an exceptional engineer/physicist/billionaire playboy and nobody can tell him what to do. Literally nobody - he won't listen - and he's an arrogant wanker by most standards. But he's a sexy billionaire, so is somehow entrusted with diplomatic relations, peace keeping, and other military and government operations.

Sherlock Holmes is smarter than everyone else, and always finds the real answer, despite the dunces that are the police trying their darnedest.

Dexter who goes around systematically killing cretins because he knows better than the authorities, and he's there to serve 'real' justice.

Batman doesn't work through the channels of the company that he owns, but rather as a vigilante who works in the shadows to save the people because the police are incompetent and unworthy of the tax dollars that pay them.

These stories are successful because they resonate with something in us that would like to believe that we are just that little bit better than everyone else, a little bit smarter, that we've found a life hack, and we are going to find a way to save the day, because we've got the edge on everyone else. (Kind of like how I think I've figured out what makes these people tick...) They also tap into the general frustration that bureaucracy is designed to do things cheaply, not efficiently, therefore government should be avoided and we should have individual freedom at all costs.

Our favourite story is the guy who came out of nowhere with no study, no training, no experience and defeated all the experts. That's who Trump is, that's why he's loved - because of what he's not, not what he is. He is the underdog politician that's there to take on the Establishment, and that is the narrative that he milks! (It's not really true, he's just part of a different type of oligarchic establishment, but that's another adventure for another time...)

Some people genuinely are a little bit smarter, but it is generally only in one or two areas, and those are usually quite niche. Remember the Dunning Kruger effect we spoke of here? This definitely applies when thinking you're really good at a thing, just check yourself on this - are you an expert? Really? Or that thing that that other person is doing - it couldn't be that hard could it? Actually, it could.

The vast majority of us grossly overestimate our intelligence due to how little we do know about a subject, falsely assuming that that thing must be really simple, or that job really easy. Thus, the trust in experts erodes from our own lack of understanding about the subject.

These people that buy into the 'I am better than everyone else myth', the 'I am the exception to the rule' myth, do so because our cultural stories are replete with glorifying those people. They then look for these patterns in their lives, and go, yea, 100% that could be me! (I'm working on not being this person, wish me luck.)

This confidence - warranted or not - exudes from them, and everyone else around them either rolls their eyes, or heartily believes it.

We've created a society where it is necessary to believe a bit of your own bullshit about how great you are - that seems to be the only way to succeed. Your CV has to be glowing to get an interview. Your interview has to be cutting edge, and emanate confidence, in order to get a job. There is no room for self-doubt, and therefore no need for self-reflection. We have created a system where in order to pay their bills, people HAVE to believe they're the bee's knees.

The unintended consequences of these stories, and people subconsciously lapping them up, taking them to be truisms, is that people then drag those stories into real life. They don't trust the government, because of conspiracy theory x y and z. They don't trust science because they're serving political agenda p q r. They don't trust the police because they're just the enforcers of the untrustworthy government, but they have self-aggrandised to the point where they, and their sources, and opinions are infallible, beyond reproach.

"When reality clashes with our deepest convictions, 

we'd rather recalibrate reality than amend our worldview"

Obviously the reverse can also be true, and you can trust too much in the government, and police can certainly be dickheads, and there are a lot of people who do self-reflect, and are well aware of their limitations. These seem to be the exception rather than the rule, though.

Like, with most things, either extreme is dangerous. One results in a nation that blindly trusts people like Hitler, and the other end results in people believing that the CDC and the government have an agenda, and the WHO is just trying to sell everyone vaccines to a made-up disease. Both are dangerous, and can result in a lot of needless deaths.

Imagine if Climate-Change deniers accepted that climate change was a reality? They would then be shouldered with the responsibility of doing something about it.

If the current lockdown protesters accepted that maybe governments actually had the interests of their citizens at heart when shutting down the economy, then they would have to find something to quietly amuse themselves with rather than ruminate on propaganda and 'alternative facts'.

Perhaps I'm wrong, it's a constant possibility, but from my limited anecdotal evidence, this seems to be the common thread. The facts do not mesh with their world view, and if accepted, some people would short circuit and self-combust. The leap to get from their entrenched worldview to one where they can entertain, debate or accept these ideas is simply too large.

Our values form our beliefs, which form our emotions, which form our thoughts, which form our behaviour. Unless something leaps in and challenges us at a belief level, in a palatable way, in a moment when we're already doubting our belief system, that is likely to just be rejected.

This worldview has been slowly incrementally formed over a long period of time, layered like bedrock by parents upon friend, decision upon debate, youtube clip upon random blog, upon acceptance of this, upon rejection of that, to form the person you are now.

Much like an archaeologist digging up things buried in bedrock, I am fascinated by the rubbish that has surfaced with the recent crises, and I think it requires a lot of study, but prior to that, a lot of brushing the dirt off and close inspection under a microscope.

These people that are willing to believe literally anything other than what is touted by MSM, because they don't want to fall victim to their hidden agenda, seem to me to just fall victim to a different hidden agenda, rather than coming up with any original thoughts or solutions.

I just don't think it's likely that EVERYTHING in the MSM is made up...
The truth is in there somewhere between the spin, the special interests, and the facts.

We have had our fun with relativism and giggled at everyone from Anti-Vaxxers to Pastafarians, but the fun is now over, and this ridiculousness is costing lives.

Are you a pastafarian?

I think we all know someone who has participated in a conspiracy theory or three. Sometimes there are sneaky cover ups and we need the Erin Brocoviches of this world to uncover them. I'm all for truth, but test your truth - does it hold up to reason, common sense, fact checking, peer review?

I'm still a little bit convinced 9/11 was an inside job - but that became a whole lot harder to believe after going to Ground Zero in New York.

If you have these people in your immediate, or extended family, or in your friend group, how do you engage positively or help? How - when lives are literally at stake, and what people believe could be the difference between life and death - do you try and talk the conspiracy theorists down?

If refuting doesn't work, and reasoning doesn't work, what options are left? Leaving them to the consequences of their actions, and letting history prove them right/wrong?

I assume the 'correct' answer is unconditional acceptance, separating the problem and the person, and slow incremental disproving in a spray-and-walk-away type fashion. This seems tedious, ineffectual, and presently insufficient.

Maybe I haven't got it as figure out as I thought I did.

Today, I'm left with more questions than answers. Please share your answers with me, if you have some.

Updated to include some more facts about Adventists - 19/5/2020

Extra Reading

http://www.theohnine.com/home/2017/12/13/unbearable-feelings

https://www.people-press.org/2019/07/22/trust-and-distrust-in-america/

https://jamigold.com/2014/04/story-themes-whats-your-worldview/

Test to see what your world view is - Mine is integrated and anti-traditional lol.
https://www.culturalevolution.org/worldview-questionnaire/

Super-interesting article about people no longer trusting experts
https://fs.blog/2019/02/distrust-intellectual-authority/

When a relative falls down a conspiracy theory rabbit hole https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/424112/when-a-relative-falls-down-a-conspiracy-theory-rabbit-hole

Movie to watch: Idiocracy

Books: Educated by Tara Westover

Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman