If my capacity to care was like light waves right now, it would not be a laser beam, utterly focussed on one goal. It would not be a spotlight, panning across the salient and important issues of life. It would be like a morose rainbow, refracted across a spectrum of crippling angst about the Climate Crisis, fear for our survival as individuals and as a collective, face-palming about the stupidity of the world’s superpowers, on top of the normal worries and cares of life - will people like my posts? I’m going to be late! Am I actually good at my job, or are they just saying that, and what even is the meaning of life?
It is in this vast spectrum of dissipated cares and scattered sorrows that we find ourselves depleted, unable to plan for the future, or imagine much past a month from now. I am aware that Beirut has just imploded, and that the US is on the brink of collapse, that there is a refugee crisis from Syria to Venezuela to Sudan. As much as I might want to help, I cannot help others until I help myself. Our uncertainty about our future here rings like a siren in my ears, much like the literal siren that has been going outside our building for the ENTIRE.WEEKEND.SO.FAR, and its shrill unrelenting whining drowns out thoughts or cares for anything else.
I feel utterly disempowered by the bigness of the world’s problems, and my comparative smallness.
For me, the knee-jerk response to that is sinking into a slough of ambivalence, a dearth of caring.
How many times a day right now are you catching yourself saying ‘I simply don’t care’?
I don’t care about the homeless people that my heart used to bleed for. I don’t care about the politicking of politics, I just want functional leaders that can competently do the job. I don’t care about a virus ruining the world, I just want to live my life. I don’t care about where I’ll be in 10 years or 10 months, I’m looking at 10 days and thinking ‘How do I cope with another lockdown?’
Sound familiar?
There must be a way to build the capacity to care. It’s a tall ask at such a time, but I have to believe that we can overcome our current circumstances.
How can we flex our muscle of intention, should we so choose?
How else can we describe intention? Give a damn. Give a fuck. Give a care. Give a hoot. Give a toss. Give a shit. Give a rat's ass. Whatever it is - you are giving something. By the very vernacular that we use to describe it, it is not a passive act; it requires something from you. I think that might get to the heart of why it is so very difficult to do.
For those who are disinclined towards certain language, I will use a * in place of whatever noun it is that you choose to describe what you are giving.
I woke up at 6am this morning, a Saturday morning, and since then I’ve argued with my father about the reliability of various sources in regard to find out information about COVID-19, I’ve read through an article about systemic racism in the US - twice, because it had lots of statistical analysis and big words and hurt my brain, and I’ve listen to this drivel of a podcast about ‘Rapid onset gender dysphoria’ and how it’s ‘stealing’ a whole generation of American girls.
It’s 11am on what was supposed to be a lazy Saturday and I have used up all my limited *s that I had to give today, and none of them were on anything to do with me.
I do not have COVID, I don’t believe there’s a government conspiracy to try and inject you with something when/if they find a vaccine for it. I am not a US citizen, nor a BIPOC, nor any flavour of LGBTQI+, nor a teen, nor a parent, and frankly none of these remotely personally affect me.
I’m all for caring about other people’s causes, and each of those need allies and advocates, and for people to understand. But at what cost?
5 hours of substantial research and what have I to show for it, other than now wondering how many teens in the US are *really* transgender, and who is profiting from them being so?
Is this the very best use of my time? My intention? My *s? Is this the very best use of me?
Have any of my opinions changed? Uh, perhaps I’m slightly more open to the possibility of there being a cure for COVID through a drug cocktail concocted by a New Jersey doctor with some dubious clinical techniques, and maybe slightly less open than I was to the possibility that the fleeting notion of a teen wanting to change gender should be unequivocally given the green light without letting them know the fullness of that decision.
The mental gymnastics required to try and navigate our current world and be politically correct is just exhausting. No wonder people stop trying.
I did not set points of intention for today, except for doing some yoga to help my sore neck and finish reading the 17 page academic study so I can have an informed conversation and not sound like a luddite when next I see a particular friend, (and also to ‘win’ an ongoing argument with a Facebook friend from high school. No one ever really wins in online debates though, right?)
Because I had little in the way of agenda for today, my day was easy to hijack by other people’s cares, agendas and intentions.
The old truism of teachers everywhere rings through my mind as I review my day so far:
Those who fail to plan
Plan to fail.
Perhaps failure is a bit of a harsh assessment of my day so far. Learning surely is never a failure. However, sacrificing my agenda, my wants and my desires for others’ causes ad infinitum is certainly not being true to myself.
Should I give a * about rainbow rights, about structural racism, and about whether or not there’s a cure for a disease? Yes. Ostensibly these are things that do need to be cared about, they do need to be researched, funded and discussed.
But is this the very best use of the limited *s I have to give today?
I’m not convinced.
When we spend all our available *s on other people’s causes - however noble - there are very few left for ourselves.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. It is just a thing.
When thinking about how scarce *s are, I marvel/despair at people who can wantonly give them to things like obsessively hand wringing over sport, arranging cushions, dog grooming, reading gossip magazines, or even fighting with people on the internet to try and prove a point, when one knows it will only lead to bad blood and people doubling down. (Yes, I get frustrated with myself…)
I think that excessive cleaning is a waste of time and *s. That counting calories is a waste of time and *s. Shopping for shit you don’t need is a waste of money, time and *s.
I expend more *s than I would like to mention on analysing how many *s other people waste. Obviously not a great use of my *s.
There is an austerity of *s, generally. People have a very finite amount of *s to give and everyone, from every platform is screaming and clamouring to get hold of some of your *s.
There are so very many issues in the world at large, that I would rather spend my very limited amount of *s on such things are solving global poverty, working towards a circular economy, and saving the environment for future generations.
But right now, I don’t feel like I have spare *s for these big picture things. My *s are wasted on minutia such as ‘Do I have a mask with me today?’, ‘Did I remember hand sanitizer?’, ‘Can you catch Covid-19 through particles landing in your eyes?’, ‘Is it safe to take the kids to x place right now?’. I detest this perceived waste of *s, but also in order to not get sick and eventually have the luxury of caring about big picture things again, one needs to care about petty minutia right now.
So many of our *s are stolen from us during inane daily activities. I must expend fucks on things like checking whether the rubbish is empty, if my pits are shaved, if there’s still toilet paper in the house, how much money is in the account attached to the card I currently am carrying with me, what is my employer REALLY thinking of me at this time, did I remember to water the plants? Is there enough food in the house for dinner tonight or do I need to attempt to reserve enough *s to go out of my way to procure more food on the way home? Do I even need to eat tonight?
Our *s are stolen by that advertisement on the bus, the *s we spend on road rage from the wankers who hold us up in our commute, the slowness and tedium of the work day, and the *s we must give about the perceptions of colleagues, employers and customers.
Not to mention the *s that all consuming dread takes hold when one strays into thinking about things like what happens when we die? Why am I really here? What does my life actually mean? Do I, in fact, actually matter, or am I just a meat popsicle with complicated feelings?
When you look at all the various phenomena that the human mind has to try and juggle in a day in order to stay alive today, and to try and make tomorrow an even more enjoyable day, then it really is amazing we get anything much accomplished.
In the same way we budget our money, I think there must be a way we can budget our *s so that we save them for the things that we deem the most important, and not have them sucked into the vacuum of useless crap along the way.
I would like to offer 5 key suggestions for giving a * when it is really really hard to care.
Limit what you say yes to
There are myriad things demanding our time, *s, and attention. You can’t care about everything all at once forever. Find points of intention, and focus on those for now. Choose carefully what you will say yes to. Write them down. Set time aside to give a * about these things. Find friends who also give a * about it. Perhaps, join a group or a club.
Knowing what you stand for limits what you will fall for. Knowing what you’re about means other people’s agendas can’t railroad yours.
Plan ahead
It requires less cognitive effort to enact a plan that is already made, than it does to try and make it up on the spot. Sit down the night before and write your ‘musts’ and ‘mights’ on two separate lists. If you get to the mights tomorrow, bravo, go you.
Set reminders on your phone, or plaster your walls with post -it notes if that’s more your jam.
When you plan how to spend your *s, you are more likely to spend them where you want to spend them, rather than simply wherever the day takes you. In my mind, not planning for the day is like the difference between trying to canoe down a river with or without a paddle. It might be a wild ride without, and it might work out - but it is good luck rather than good management. Steer your day, as you would paddling a canoe down a river. Going with the flow might very well lead you over a waterfall or down some dicey rapids.
Yoga classes start and end with the idea of ‘set an intention’ for this practice or for this day. To whatever degree you are comfortable with, set an intention for a day. I have learned that I am unlikely to get done more than a post-it note’s worth of things in a day. If it can’t fit on one post it note, it’s too big for today.
Spend some of your *s on something bigger than yourself
Obviously looking after yourself is important, and you need to spend a fair amount of your *s on yourself, but balance that with bigger picture *s as well. I try to work on a strategy of ruthless self care: looking after myself so that I can look after others.
Spending all of your *s on yourself, your vanity, your wants, your desires, your interests is a surefire way to end up with a really insular, small life.
People function best when they have a crusade, a cause to fight for, a purpose so much bigger than them. What’s yours? This world is far from perfect. Pick a thing and get passionate.
Give yourself permission to run out of *s for certain things
Not giving a * about some things leaves you more *s for other things that you value. Just because someone you care about wants you to give a *, doesn’t mean it is a good use of your *s.
If you are empathetic and prone to giving a * about ALL.THE.THINGS, there will still be a Give a * hierarchy in your head. Have a think about the most important things, and maybe make a list of 3-5 things that are super important to you at the moment.
It is only Facebook that gives you infinite ‘care’ capacity. Spend your cares wisely.
Spend some *s on growing your *s budget over time
Think of it like a muscle. The more *s you put into building your capacity for *s, the more capacity you will have to build your capacity of *s. When you create the habit of caring, setting an intention, giving a *, then it becomes second nature.
If you default to ‘I just don’t care’, and that is the language you use around exercise, diet, sleep, job options, where you holiday, where you spend your money, then it is very easy to just not really give a * about anything much. Try spending just a few *s on each of those things, and you’ll find it easier and easier to continue to level up.
Ideally, giving a * will become part of your new normal, and no longer a conscious, effortful task.
(This might be lies, I’m still at the I just don’t care phase about quite a few of those.)
The More *s You Give, The Better You’ll Get at Giving a *
When we give *s in order to grow our capacity to care, our capacity to give a *, then we can afford to be more particular in the future with our *s.
I love the adage ‘think global, act local’. We are all interconnected, and each of our decisions to use plastic, or to drive a car, or have a child, or go on holiday, or wear a mask does impact on others to some degree.
Something I really admire about my friends, particularly my North American friends, is their capacity for caring about what I would consider minutia. They’ve looked at all the restaurants, and know which ones they want to go to. They have a handle on which bars are the best in town. They know exactly where they want to go on holiday. There is so much research, planning and intention that goes into their daily lives, it astonishes me.
I used to think that ‘The devil is in the detail’ meant that you should stay as far away as possible from caring about details as you can. I consider myself a bigger picture thinker, but much like a tapestry, the bigger picture is created from thousands of individual stitches, so too are the tapestries of our lives woven from individuals decisions, and whether or not we choose to give a * about a particular thing.
What patterns are you weaving in the tapestry of your life? Where are you spending your *s?
Keep flexing that muscle of intention, that muscle of giving a *, and watch it grow.
So in amongst all the current doom and gloom, I thought I would tell you about a small victory that we've had recently that, to me, has been mammoth!
We are credit card debt free!!!
Cheers
I feel a little embarrassed admitting to the state the our credit card was in by the time we got to April last year. It was maxed out at NZD$11k.
Despite stringent saving and budgeting, planning and selling as many of our belongings as we could bear to part with to get to Ireland, the 'measly' $23k we saved proved to be nowhere near enough. This was compounded by Jared and I both finishing work before Christmas 2018, and Jared not getting his first paycheck here until 28 March 2019.
We had happily indulged our way across the States with a YOLO philosophy in Jan and Feb and landed in Ireland, assuming we'd both walk in to fabulous jobs, and would be earning similar to what we were in NZ. This, it turns out, was completely untrue. At least Jared had a job lined up, and he'd be getting paid at the end of Feb, right? Also untrue.
Snowed in at the Grand Canyon for 24-48 hours
Grand Canyon
We arrived on Feb 16, and moved into our apartment on 1 March, and woke up the next morning and realised that we had nothing but a bed and a couch. Despite seeking out a fully furnished apartment, there were no things like cutlery or cups or plates, and so we had to start from scratch.
Trying to set up in NZ dollars in Europe is very expensive. IKEA is treated as the panacea of homeware, and sells moderate quality stuff for moderate prices - but you only get ~€0.60 for each NZ $1, and the prices certainly aren't like The Warehouse.
When we first got our credit card, I remember thinking this is an insane amount of money! When will we ever get anywhere near $11 000? Turns out we did. Since we're laying all these cards out on the table, it was actually more like $17 000 spent between Oct 2018 and April 2019.
How, you may ask? I certainly wondered!
Given it started with only a few hundred on it when we left, I did ponder to myself how in the world we got to such a predicament. How do you spent more than NZD$40 000 in 6 months? Well, let me tell you... with much more ease that would be believed.
I was so perplexed by this, I made a pie graph. This pertains only to the credit card, as my ANZ account is no longer available to analyse.
To explain this in terms that others might understand - 7.6% went on things for our NZ house. Nearly 16%, or $2700, went on setting up our apartment, and a further 7% was on setting up our pantry. Transports took a sizeable chunk with 15% between public transport and taxis. Miscellaneous includes a host of random things like travel insurance, marriage certificates, new passports, and a horrendous $167.50 on parking at Wellington airport.
Roughly 16% accounted for eating out and entertainment, which given that we were eating out for 3 meals a day for 5 weeks, is actually less than I expected. This also includes tickets to Broadway shows in New York - because when in Rome...
Initially I was aghast that I had let us get into such a financial predicament. Debt is bad, right? Thankfully, most of it had 6 months interest free!
There were 3 versions of the budget that I had estimated prior to leaving. A no-frills one for about 20k, a some frills one for around 30k, and a pre-pay everything on the house, go hard and enjoy everything fully in the States version for about 40k. Our experience was closer to the go hard and enjoy everything fully end, which was wonderful - but the problem was we didn't start with 40k, and none of them included 6 weeks of no pay in Ireland.
The larger problem was not the U.S. stint or indulging in Broadway shows - in fact even if we'd missed this out, it may not have entirely changed our fate. The problem was Jared not getting paid for 6 weeks after we arrived because we couldn't open a bank account.
Truly boring tidbit - Vegas is that high because I shelled out $1200 on insoles to stop shin splints, not gambling :'(
I was constantly torn between 'we only live once' and 'we also need to live next week', and just because you can eat/drink/go to the movies now, doesn't mean you should.
Eating out is obviously an easy way to save some money, but how do you avoid eating out when you are living in hotel rooms?
All well and good not spending so much on taxis or transport, but you need to get around, and living an hour out of the city comes with its own expenses. (Transport costs were actually exaggerated because we paid for Ubers and people paid us back in cash.)
Should've set up our apartment from second hand stores? Yes, maybe we should have. But when you move to a new country, you lack not only money, you also lack local knowledge of where to go and how best to do things, you don't have the benefit of time to ponder these choices, and it's also super awkward to try and transport a shelf on the bus, so hiring a car and doing it all in one hit is faster, more efficient and less mentally draining, though slightly more expensive.
I have spent an awful lot of time wringing my hands and fretting about how we would ever be able to pay off such an enormous sum when we're only making about around half as much money here as we did in NZ, and our costs of living were way higher. There was a constant knot in my stomach when it came to doing our budget for each new month, knowing that there was simply not enough coming in to cover all the needs and wants.
I have doubled my income from the meagre part time minimum wage I started on in April last year, and that has made a huge difference, but the biggest one was getting a flatmate in to share the horrendous costs of renting in Dublin. That has been a game changer, and since she moved in we have been able to slam the bills, which has been just so liberating. Sending money home, we also had an advantageous exchange rate, which helped greatly.
There was this miasma of slow burning panic that had been ever-present in me since we moved here, and with the shadow of debt gone, it has abated a lot. A welcome relief! There's now an exit option, should we need one.
At some point I just had to choose not to care because the debt served as an interim tool to get us to living in Ireland. There were other ways we could've done it, sure, but that's not how things played out. We lived to tell the tale, and last year was tight, but we still had fun.
So in amongst all of the chaos, illness and uncertainty, I'd just like to give myself a little high five and a quiet 'Yes!' It is done.
Particularly study. I love learning, but assignments and exams suck. The dopamine centres in my brain feel so utterly satisfied ticking something gigantic off the Life To-Do List, and there is now wide open mental space, full of burgeoning possibilities.
Do you know what the best thing about something finishing is? It means something else gets to start! What delicious adventures await next??
October 6, 2007, I woke up after submitting my last assignment for my last course for my degree. I felt like a weight had been lifted, and I woke up so light and breezy, back to my carefree, giggling, girlish self. I was no longer a student, and I felt so free!
I vividly remember one phrase searing through my consciousness: Today is the first day of the rest of your life!
Several hours later, I dumped my boyfriend.
You see, we'd been in this on-again-off-again toxic mess and he was all 'let's get married in a few years' and that induced panic attacks in 20-year-old me. He adored me and worked very hard to be the perfect boyfriend. It took me a long time to realise it, but I wasn't so much in love with him, as I was in love with the idea of being loved. I'd like to think we've all fallen victim to that at some point. Maybe; maybe not. Maybe I'm just a bitch. Either way, he had to go.
2 months later, I had gotten an internship and moved to Laos. The winds of change in my life are like the winds of Wellington - swift and often. I seek out adventure and change, working on the premise that life is short and you need to make the most of it. I also really love quotes that help to remind you of that.
When I first heard this expression as a teen, I used to conjure images of a perfect day where it was beautifully sunny, where we started with pancakes and ice cream for breakfast and I was surrounded by friends and family, heading to the beach, lounging in the sun, playing beach cricket, surfing on picturesque peaks and bobbing up and down in the ocean. We would dance into the night and then sail off into the sunset on a boat towards the horizon.
... Where I would then meet my doom??? This fantasy conveniently ended before then.
The more I said this quote to myself throughout my teens and early twenties, the less sense it made to me.
Who are these people to whom Steve Jobs is speaking that live their life like ornamental china on the shelf, waiting for a special occasion to use it?
I found that the more I embraced this philosophy, the less I looked to the future. My focus shifted to choosing short term happiness over long term happiness. I privileged instant gratification and shunned anything that required significant long-term planning and definitely anything that required sacrifice or pain.
Caramel slice or no? Well, if today could be my last day, then obviously I would've wanted to include caramel slice! If today was the last day of my life, why would I bother with exercise, servicing my car, calling my friends back, paying off my credit card, I reasoned to myself. All of these things started to be more and more pointless to me.
Then it occurred to me.
I had it all backwards.
I needed to be working towards something. Not death. That's weird. But building something important. Creating something. Being a part of something that is meaningful and valuable.
Most likely, you're not going to know when you're last day is, and I'm sure when it occurs, it is probably not going to go to plan. That's not how these things generally play out.
Despite our best efforts to plan ahead, some events cannot be planned for. Even if you did know it was coming up, I bet how you would actually spend your last day, and how you think you'd spend your last day, would probably be vastly different depending on the circumstances.
In what circumstances are you going to have an option of what you do on your last day, unless you're some magic genie fortune teller type - and if you were, surely a good one would be able to ward off their own demise?
Enough morbidity.
This reminded me of something I wrote when I lived in Laos in 2008.
When I was little, my 3 brothers and I spent countless hours building things. Duplo bricks were a favourite, as were lego, K’nex, mobilo, train sets, and anything involving sand, mud, rocks or sticks. We made kingdoms and castles, cities and farmyards, gardens and dungeons, tunnel networks and towers, ships and seas, dams and huts. We would use every brick to make these wonderful creations, spanning the entire length of the house or reaching for the roof, commandeering entire strips of beach with an intricate tunnel network or almost toppling trees in our eagerness to make a tree hut. Our only limits were the amount of bricks, the height of the ceiling and our imaginations. The unbounded glee and satisfaction of creating something so ingeniously brilliant was unrivalled and often mum would be commissioned to take photos or at least spend a mandatory minute extolling its virtues. Seldom were these creations allowed to stand for more than a day though, and we packed our bricks away and they lay in wait until the next day, ready as always to help us realise, brick by brick, the next epic imagined invention. As we grew, the time between these magnificent creations grew as well, and it has now been at least a decade since the Duplo has been touched. Nevertheless, the innate love of creating things has never really quelled, only perhaps been overridden by other pursuits. Or maybe it is the bricks that have changed. Maybe now we build with days, effort, time and intention. What if we perceived every day of our lives as a building block? We are constantly reminded that human lives are brief, uncertain and fragile. Life is compared to a wisp of smoke, a breath of wind, a shadow. No day is guaranteed, and you never know when you may breathe your last. Despite the fleeting nature of our existence, we do still exist. Compared to mountains, rocks and trees, our days are few, we do still have some days. No matter how fleeting and insignificant a life may seem, it can still make a difference. Each day that you have air in your lungs is contributing towards your life-building, the creation that you’re creating day by day with the bricks of your life. What are you building with your life today? Some seem to be happy throwing each day onto the ‘I’ll make something of my life later’ pile, tossing day after day into a heap, shapeless and degenerate. Others are building empires, using their bricks – and others' too – to forge ahead and collect more, amassing wealth and prestige from the magnitude of their creation, insatiable in their appetite for more. There are those who are using their blocks to create a library of knowledge, consuming books and seeking intellectual conversation, or those who seek to build a stadium so they and all their friends can enjoy the latest concert or sports game. Others are constructing roads to places never seen or staircases to take others to greater heights. Whether people realise it or not, they’re constructing something with their lives. So often I hear platitudes like ‘seize the day’ or ‘live like there’s no tomorrow’ or ‘make each day count’. The formula impressed on me is to recite a few of these and you’re sure to have a successful and focused day. These are all well and good, but for me they incite a frenzied panic because what if today really was my last day? And I’ve spent it doing things like paying bills and getting hair cuts rather than bungee-jumping and surfing??? And what about all those things I want to do that take more than a day? Like building a career or creating relationships? I always got the impression that when you're seizing the day, each day is solitary, singular, as if we live like mayflies. If I really do live like there’s no tomorrow, I would never have any money, any sleep or any plans because there’s no tomorrow to warrant them. I think a better perspective would be each day is a block in the creation of your life, whatever your making that to be. So maybe a better question is ‘What am I building with my life?’ or ‘What part of the building am I making today?’. This gives purpose to today as well as direction and focus for tomorrow. It encourages us to seek long-term goals rather than short-term nihilistic indulgence. If our days really are that fleeting and our time so short, the obvious next question to me would be ‘Is what your building worthy of your time and energy?’. What blueprints are on your heart? What is it that you yearn to create? Is there a problem you could solve with your building? A bridge you could construct between two places, two parties, two ideas? If your heart yearns to build a mansion, why would you bother with a doll’s house? You only get one shot at today, so why would you spend it on trivialities, wasting your time, talents and blocks? The only thing that will outlive you on this earth is your legacy, what you’ve made of your life, and the impression that you've made on people along the way. So, indeed, carpe diem! Seize the day! But let today be the first of a string of purposeful days. Let today place another block on your life-building that reflects the blueprint of your heart.
Live each day as if it's your last didn't resonate with me at all, so I searched for a better life paradigm and found this:
Not a new idea, but I thought this was brilliant! This is like an artist with a blank canvas, the beginning of a new adventure!
And it comes with better questions. I think a much more apt questions are
Who do you want to be?
What do you want to build?
How will today count towards that goal?
It turns out that I'm not at all the first person to have a problem with this live like today was your last theory.
This season that we are going through can be quite daunting and for the more philosophical of us, awaken a lot of questions like 'What are we doing with our lives?', 'Is our current normal OK/sustainable?' 'What will the external world look like in a 6 months, a year?', or 'What do I want my want my internal world to look like in 6 months or a year?'.
A piece of advice I heard about dealing with the great milieu of uncertainty we're going through at the moment is to grab hold of something you can control, and control the heck out of it. (Preferably not another person. I've found they're quite difficult to try and control.) Your wardrobe, your house, your internal dialogue, your routine, your diet, your shed, your friend list, or the copious amount of ideas for blogs posts and stories floating around in your head. Pick something, and grab it with both hands and wrestle that sucker until it is malleable and manageable, and you are victorious.
If you wanna apply this philosophy to a bottle of wine also, then cheers!
Maybe it is not the time to be musing about such things, as we swing between extremes of boredom and panic, but maybe it is? If it's not, shelf it, and veg for a little while. But you'll find about week 3, after all the jobs you've invented to do for yourself are done, and you're left only with yourself and your life to ponder upon, that it might be time to do some existential pondering. After all, when better to start than right now?
Does this resonate with you?
If it does, great. If it doesn't...
...It's a great philosophy for me.
I used to ardently believe that when someone else had a winning life formula, if I just adopted that, I'd be as awesome and amazing as they are. I kept getting caught out, because I wasn't them though.
It's not that simple. It not as simple as x+y = Z, the awesome, changed and amazing. Someone else's x might work for them in the equation of their life. If you simply transplant it, it's more likely to show an error message.
You are all unique and nuanced and shit. If you want to adopt someone else's life philosophy, you need to make it bespoke. You need to own it, put your signature blend of you into it. Hold on tightly to what works and sift out what doesn't. If a 12 step programme works for you, brilliant. If it doesn't? Create your own. Find an alternative. Synthesise others habits and philosophies, blend them up until you've found the milkshake that brings all the boys to the yard. Or ladies, if you're that way inclined ;)
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.
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.
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
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
