Reason for the Downfall of Man #2:
Flat Earth Society
On October 9th of this year, we here in the States celebrate Columbus Day, celebrating that greatest of all men, who with one voyage both discovered America (which was discovered centuries before by the Vikings, and centuries before that by Polynesians and Africans, and was inhabited several thousand years earlier by Asians), and proved once and for all that the Earth is round (which was proven in the third century B.C. by the Greek scientist Eratosthenes and pretty much everyone outside of the church already knew).
Basically the guy stuck a flag in the ground.
And here we are now, 500 years after Columbus, over 22 centuries after Eratosthenes, we now have air flight, space flight, satellites linking the globe, the world wide web, and Hot Pockets, and there are still people who believe, seriously, that the world is flat.
And not just a few people, several dozen people, enough to make up an entire “Society”.
Why is it nighttime in Iraq on TV when it’s daytime here? Must not really be live like they said it is. They recorded that last night. Part of the media conspiracy.
And how would that signal get from there to here? Satellites, of course, but instead of orbiting in place around a round planet, they instead are stuck in the heavenly ether. Their images showing the world is round is just a fish-eye lens effect. Part of the science conspiracy.
And the moon landing? Faked, of course. Anybody who believes that is a fool!
Duh!
Bottom line: Ideology.
The human mind has unquantifiable powers of rationalization. If we want to believe something, we’ll believe it. Even if everything we see around us every day proves us wrong. We are more moved by an emotional connection to ideology than we are to the facts that are in front of us. And it blinds us to solutions that would actually make the world a better place.
So we vote for politicians based on single issues that usually have no direct impact on our lives. The politicians, in turn, vote however the hell they have to in order to keep their jobs, and take positions on issues based on polls that tell them what pointless single issues the voters will vote on.
And hence the cycle continues. It stands to question, if we are to believe that we truly live in a democracy, does it make any sense to blame the politicians for the lousy job they’re doing? Or should we just look in the mirror?
Or perhaps try that whole “brain activity” thing.
Try it. We all have our little issues. Where do you stand? Pro-choice/Pro-life, stem cells, immigration, free markets/socialism, etc. Why do you believe the way you do? Is it because of something you read in a book? Something someone told you? Or, heaven forbid, is that what your parents believed?
Or does it just make sense to you? Keep in mind, there’s a lot of people out there for whom a flat Earth makes perfect sense.
There were dozens of highly intelligent people in 1997 who thought it was perfectly reasonable to kill themselves so they could join a spaceship riding beside the Hale-Bopp comet.
And several million people saw Mission: Impossible III this weekend (what were you thinking!?)
Next question: What would it take for you to stop believing the way you do? If there was proof before you that your case is wrong, would you – could you – change your mind?
Take the healthcare issue, for example. Here in America, we are one of the only industrialized nations in the world that do not have some form of blanket healthcare for the entire country. Some are quite proud of that, and insist that socialized healthcare is one step away from being Soviet Russia. Politicians that have come out in favor of such a policy (such as human punching bag Hillary Clinton) have been politically beheaded for proposing it.
The problem is, the U.S. has never had socialized medicine. So how are these people so sure that it won’t work?
Maybe it’s because what we’ve got is working just fine and if it ain’t broke then don’t fix it, right?
Except there’s this report that came out recently from the group Save the Children that placed the U.S. 2nd to dead last among industrial nations for infant mortality rates. The only country we beat was Latvia. Can anybody even find that on a map?
I mean, no offense to any of you Latvians out there, but God damn.
So this same system that obviously works better in every other part of the world is greeted with sheer contempt by a large swath of Americans whenever it’s brought up. “That report was probably faked by some America-hating group!” Yeah, just like those damn moon landings.
I know the first argument against such a system (the Idiot hears it all the time from his own dad) is, “I don’t want to be paying for someone else’s health care with my taxes.”
Fair enough. Thing is, you’re already paying for someone else’s health care with your taxes. Because in the U.S., we don’t have health care, we have sick care. If you don’t have health insurance and are rushed to an ER, there are public hospitals that will and by law must save your life. And we pay for that. So, if a poor older gentleman has a heart condition, and can’t afford the medicine he needs, he’s out of luck. But if he has a heart attack, we all pay for his double-bypass.
Cost of his medicines: $1,000. $2,000 maybe.
Cost of his double-bypass: $20,000 or more.
And that’s not counting loss of productivity/taxes/income from his time off work to recuperate.
There are groups out there that provide help for poorer people so they can have the medicines they need and keep them from having to go through costly procedures on our dime. Of course, it’s only available to you if you’re really poor. I mean REALLY poor. So what’s a poor older man to do if he needs the medicine to live? Take a third job just so he can afford his pills? Or just stop working and make himself poorer, living off unemployment so he can get the help he needs, in the process driving down the economy, draining government funds and productivity.
Of course, some would argue that it’s his own fault he didn’t work harder when he was younger so he wouldn’t be so poor now. Or gotten a better education. Or been born into a wealthier family. And whiter, usually. (Putting the “ass” in Compassionate Conservatism)
A lot of these same people are fiercely anti-abortion, campaigning for the rights of unborn children, all the while supporting policies that have driven our infant mortality rate to the 2nd highest in the modern world.
And a lot of these people are opposed to contraception, which has driven our abortion rates to one of the highest in the modern world.
They’ve also successfully campaigned against the NC-17 film rating – a rating that prohibits anybody under 17 from seeing a movie – with the intention of keeping “indecent” material away from kids. Thanks to their efforts, without a viable adult rating for mainstream films, many films that should be rated NC-17 (and are released overseas with similar ratings) are trimmed here and there and released as R films, which a kid of any age can get into with a big brother or a bad parent.
Hence, all their ideology has produced the exact opposite of what they wanted. And the Flat Earth people are the crazies.
We’ve picked on conservatives a lot here, but the wingnuts on the left have their own BS issues (prayer in school? Come on…). Until we can step back and ask ourselves why we believe what we believe and what proof there is that what we believe is right, the whole world is going to continue to be in lock-step with insanity.
Just like the world before Columbus sailed. All the proof was there, but nobody chose to believe it until someone stood up and shook off the ideological conventions and showed them.
And in that way, maybe he really did do something. So who’s next?
Friday, May 12, 2006
