Conspiracy Theories:
The other day I saw a detailed document on Coronavirus published on Next Door (the local advertising and message board). This was particularly worrying because after I had read much of this long and detailed document I felt I had started believing everything and getting sucked in. When I read that all vaccines were hoaxes and worthless I woke up, and questions fired off in my mind. So what is Small Pox then? Is that a hoax? Did we eradicate it with vaccines or not? Are all those pictures and history I read just fiction then? Is MMR a fiction? Is the general lack of Measles over the last decades a fiction? Are the increased outbreaks of Measles nothing to do with fewer people vaccinating their Kids?
So, I realized that this document shows a trend throughout the decades, which is to place sufficient truth that people recognize within the lies, and which then lures them into believing the fiction. Social media lends itself to this. At this point I felt sick. Remembering that I counselled two ICU nurses who told me what it was like in ICU in the first wave, I felt even more sick. They told me some horror stories. This virus is not a fiction and nor are vaccines.
There are countless conspiracy theories around, and it worries me that truth and lies are becoming so intertwined that realities could be lost. Beliefs bother me enormously, because there are so many people willing to believe so many things without evidence. I feel this is based on their own fears. If you quote evidence or even say the word evidence, or ask what is their evidence, it’s like they don’t hear you as if your vocal cords have suddenly been cut and no sound comes out. It is reminiscent of religion, and its whole detailed structure based on a stark lack of evidence, which many still buy into and which has been used to control and manipulate over the ages.
We are developing new insidious conspiracies, fueled by ignorance and social media. It scares the hell out of me. We even have the phrase ‘fake news’ bandied about, so anything you do not want to accept as the truth you can dismiss by labeling it as fake news.
I am only interested in the truth, absolute truth. I do not mind hearing about ideas, fears and suspicions, but we must treat them with scepticism until we have the evidence to validate them or dismiss them.
You can believe there is a chocolate teapot orbiting between Mars and Jupiter (to use Richard Dawkins analogy) and attach any belief system to it that you want. Because it so small in the vastness of space you cannot prove it is there and you cannot prove it is not there. So any criticism can be told to fuck off. You cannot prove or disprove the belief. This allows a made up belief and a made up world to be clung to indefinitely and spread to others.
So, if we do not change and are not careful we will slip further into something which resembles George Orwell’s 1984, in which lies predominate, and in which truth is manipulated out of awareness.
