I’m detecting a smidgen of sarcasm…whadya reck? And yet there is some truth to this statement as the death rate from Covid has plummeted by 92% in the U.K since January so staying in actually did stop tons of people dying.
As we lurch out of 4 months of lockdown we might be currently winning the war on the virus but the war of information has been truly lost. Everyone seems convinced they are right but no-one appears to agree on anything other than those who think differently to them are wrong and have somehow been duped, misled, deceived and manipulated.
Maybe we have all been brainwashed. How the fuck would you know? Truth is our minds have been moulded since the day we were born. Pulled around like putty and moulded into shape by a multitude of pushy sources. Education, parenting, the media, your peers..all have had a hand in dictating how you think. We feel that our thoughts are our own but they are anything but. It’s just they have been forced upon us so relentlessly that they feel like we instigated them. As if they were formed in a pure and virginal state from within. And yet there are almost no opinions in our heads that have evolved independently.
They say you are what you eat and for our entire lives we’ve all had to chow down on an endless stream of ideas that have been shoved down our throats , just like those poor fucking geese that are force fed to make foie gras pate. We , however, are just being fattened up on a diet of bullshit and it takes a strong will to keep our eyes away from the clickbait and an even stronger will not to be taken in by it.
It is ultimately up to us to try and evaluate all the information we consume and come to our own conclusions but we are still at the mercy of our sources. It has been revealed that since the arrival of the never-ending feed people do not spend enough time disseminating what they read. Instead everything is absorbed and accepted wholesale then regurgitated back out again with the click of a button, without barely a moment spent establishing how factually correct the information we are spreading is. We become the conduits of lies because none of us have the time or can be arsed to fact check that shit before we pass it on.
Next time you are banging on about something with absolute certainty, defending it against all counter arguments and convinced it is nothing short of the word of God, ask yourself these questions…where did I get this information from? Do I know for 100% it is true? Should I be so adamant with 2nd hand opinions? Does this nugget of info deserve to be presented with such conviction when chances are, I probably just picked it up from godknowswhere and have no definitive proof it is actually correct.
I have a mountain of information in my head but I have no real memory of where it came from. Did I read it? Did someone tell me at a party? Did I imagine it? In general I have no idea but once its on the inside and been assimilated into our minds our brains decide it is gospel and that is that. It doesn’t care what’s real. It just wants its world view reinforced for the rest of our lives. This is confirmation bias and we are all at its mercy. So sadly not only can you not trust your sources but you can’t even trust yourself.
So where does that leave us? It means we must remain open & fluid, a work in progress, not set in stone. We cannot become a fixed moment in time or else we will not continue to evolve. We must always be willing to take new shit on board.
I once saw a massive sign in a field in the middle of rural America as we were driving and it said: “Don’t have too much of an open a mind or your brain might fall out”. Eek. (scared face)
So this is all really just to prepare you because as we all emerge from our lockdown cocoons and are re-integrating with each other after a very long time with nothing but our own opinions for company it might come as a bit of a shock to find that not everyone thinks as we do.