All of us are living on the surface of a planet, spinning around a ball of fire 90-million miles away, and the only thing that’s holding us down is gravity. No wonder some people don’t want to accept reality.
I was once at a party where I met a woman who told me that her son was a successful actor. I said, “Has he been in plays or movies?” She replied, “Not yet, but he is on television.” I said, “That’s great! Can I see him in his role?” And, she proudly replied, “Oh, Yes! He’s a cluster of grapes in the FRUIT OF THE LOOM commercial.”
Tau Chuan Ling said, “The measure of success is a matter of perception. Are you perceiving things as they are or as you wish them to be?” That may be part of the answer to why some people stick to false information in the light of hard evidence.
New findings from researchers at the University of California Berkeley suggest that feedback rather than hard evidence promotes a sense of certainty when learning new things or trying to tell the difference between right and wrong. Logic, reasoning and scientific data take a back seat for Flat Earthers, Birthers, and Climate Change and Holocaust Deniers when belief trumps truth. (“ I believe it—therefore it’s true!”)
Joseph Goebbels, the German Nazi politician and chief propagandist for the Nazi Party said, “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it.” Then he added, “And you will even come to believe it yourself.”
Some people think that if they are told something—even the most bizarre something—it must be true when it is reinforced by people they admire in government, social media, cable news and other echo chambers, and often the information makes them really hot-tempered, as they are duped by charlatans they trust, who knowingly tell lies to egg them on. These false prophets use trusting people for their own nefarious purposes. Unfortunately, those who believe in conspiracies, and are fed hate, won’t be curious enough to explore the topic at hand, and won’t find out how little they really know. All of this has led to a new word, “Angertainment,” coined by Adam Frisch, a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Colorado.”
So here are some results:
One in Six Americans aren’t certain that the Earth isn’t flat, and the Flat Earth Society has 200,000 followers on Facebook. “The ‘Ruling Elite’ wants us to believe the Earth isn’t flat.”
After 530-million TV viewers watched Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin take their first steps on the Moon on July 20, 1969 some people claimed that, ”The ‘giant leap for mankind’ had been faked—A hoax the the U.S. Government had perpetrated on the American people.”
Of course, I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Unscrupulous politicians and media personalities are still feeding deniers a banquet of lies and reinforcing conspiracy theories to serve their own malevolent ends. That is the truth! However, if you don’t believe me, invite a Holocaust denier to dinner. Tums won’t help!
On January 6, 2021 the whole world saw a vicious attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. No! it was not a group of fun loving tourists. Henry David Thoreau said it well those many years ago, “It’s not what you look at that matters; it’s what you see!”
Esther Blumenfeld