Getting brainwashed.

i would say the thing to be concerned with is the part you play in creating the kind of world we all have to live in. i absolutely agree that sensationalism is a downer, and yes it exists to attract an audience which in turn is to sell advertising space, which is the market stream of for profit media. and i agree absolutely also, the way history was taught when i was in school, was all about hiding the shameful ways in which dominant beliefs and cultures came about, came to be believed and taken for granted. oddly enough a lot of real history isn't that well hidden. but a lot of historical so called scholarship, is spin doctoring. and a lot of times it is neither easy nor always rewarding to try to track down a piece together a more realistic understanding of things that took place, then what children were, and as an easy guess, still are, spoon fed in school.

but i don't think refusing to look beyond yourself is a complete answer either. because we all do play a part, however small, however subtle, in creating the human social part of it we have to live in, by nothing more nor less difficult nor complicated, then the kinds of examples we set for each other. our choices, our priorities, all play a part in it.

if we say we don't care about someone because were born in a different part of the world, a different culture, a different belief system, we and they, are still connected by the kinds of example we set for each other. its a statistical thing. its not linear, but its very very real.

 

My wife was trying to get it through to her father about how dangerous this virus is, especially for him.

"I put my faith in the lord, not science", he says.

Dangerous mentality.

 

if you believe reality owes anything to what we tell each other, that is brainwashed. the viruses don't listen. the solar systems and galaxies don't listen.
the rocks and the trees are not swayed by what we tell ourselves and each other.

everything works the way it does, without regard to what people have intimidated and even killed each other, for refusing to buy into their own fantasies.
even if there is a god who listens, people tell it they want so many things that are so completely mutually and self contradictory.

science is a little bit of a window into that reality of how things actually work.
that window isn't completely clear, and even science doesn't always get it right,
but at least it looks,
which is what assuming a belief, refuses to do.

refuses because reality is endlessly bewilderingly complex, and slapping a bandage of imagined simplicity in its place is highly seductive.