The flat-Earther finally convinced me. By sharing pictures
of six frying pans posing as planets, he had proved to me, beyond a shadow of a
doubt, that I was spending too much time on the Internet.
“I have no budget, yet I convinced
you these were newly discovered planets.” He explained to the set of skeptics
being interviewed on his podcast. “What makes you think NASA, with its
billions, hasn’t been tricking us for decades?”
I’m paraphrasing now, but that was
the gist of his message. I sighed and scrolled a few more moments, then I put
down my phone and walked away. I glanced at the clock. Another five minutes of
my life…gone.
Or, maybe it was the young lady who
asked the question, in all seriousness, “Can we journey through the ocean to
Mars?” Or perhaps it was one of the dozens of folks who suggested we are living
in a computer simulation, or that reptilian space aliens have been
shape-shifting the gears of global power for decades.
Regardless, they’d found me. After
more than a dozen years of posting and scrolling on Facebook, the algorithm had
finally led me to the absolute edge of reason. There I was, standing in my
kitchen on a Saturday afternoon, listening to a grown man try to convince me – without
a hint of irony - Earth is flat.
Before continuing, I want to
emphasize this is not a column designed to refute the flat earth theory,
because if you are taking the time to read an actual newspaper column, more
than likely you already know Earth is, well, you know, NOT flat, which is
an empirical reality thoughtful humans have understood for thousands of years.
I merely use such an example to illustrate the potentially dangerous place we
have arrived in world history, and that’s because the end of what we might call
“flat-earth reasoning” leads us to a set of very dangerous edges.
Primarily, flat-Earth reasoning
suggests “the only evidence I can trust is my own evidence; that which I think
I’ve seen with my own eyes and that which validates my own preconceptions,” and
secondly, “no one who disagrees with me can be trusted; all the ‘experts’ and leaders and scientists
throughout the history of humanity have been in nefarious cahoots, and now it
is time to rise up and wallow in our new age of Internet-fueled enlightenment.”
Speaking of human history, last
summer I took my son to watch what we have been told is the final Indiana Jones
adventure. We liked it in general and I am very appreciative of Mr. Ford for
giving me this chance to share the theater experience with him. (My son, not
the actor.) However, one particular line seemed out of place. During a
conversation where he’s alluding to the many supernatural surprises that show
up toward the end of his movies, Dr. Jones comments, “It’s not so much what you
believe, it's how hard you believe it.”
This sounds like a strange thing to
say in general, but it sounds particularly suspect (and a bit out of character)
coming from a scientist who has spent most of his life searching for knowledge
while often punching history’s most infamous “hard believing” zealots-- the
Nazis--in the face.
Perhaps the dialogue worked from a narrative
standpoint, but even that is debatable.
Regardless, his comment does seem
suited to our contemporary zeitgeist, unfortunately, because our world really
is full of folks who believe things very hard that often have very little basis
in objective reality. Granted, an allegiance to Nazism or any other racist
ideology is hardly on par with the silly belief our globe is flat. Those are
two very different trains of thought going to two very different places.
However, I would suggest that both trains leave from the same station.
It’s the same station where folks
buy tickets to watch aliens build the pyramids, where school shootings are a
hoax, and where now even a performer whose entire career has been punctuated
with very public romances is doing something nefarious by watching her
boyfriend play football. It’s an increasingly crowded place, but there always
seems to be room for just one more remarkable idea, and despite the very curved
shape of the planet, all of these trains of thought eventually fall right off the
edge.
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