Limits of an Infinite Self

Some guy (presumably a guy – most Internet fruitcakes of this type seem to be male, for some reason) posted a provocative little comment over at Smoking Mirrors, basically a drive-by display of cracked intellect and inflated ego. To be honest, it's not what he says so much as the way he says it. But, since I am possessed of a rampant ego myself, I will take this opportunity to, well, not to strike back, since that's hardly necessary, but to say a few words on what might be taken as an object lesson from this example.

I didn't even know there were people today who believe in a flat Earth. The idea just seems ridiculous. But I got curious as to how such a belief might be propagated and what kind of evidence would be used in support of it. This BBC article on Flat Earth theorists (FETers) is a good introduction. To investigate a little deeper, I also visited the Flat Earth Society website and read a couple of forum threads debating FET. That was a bizarre little trip, but it got me thinking... what motivates people to adopt these kinds of theories into their belief system? How can they continue to hold their belief in the face of all the evidence and logic to the contrary?

I tend to think their motives are often emotional. There may be a deep desire to be right, and to belong to a small, exclusive club of people who are right, while everyone else is just wrong. Superiority complex, the need to be special. Or perhaps they start with a deep distrust of government and the establishment in general, and latch onto whatever theory to justify that. Paranoia. Some may partly lack the ability to draw the line between objective reality and the products of their own imaginations. Delusion. And then, I suppose, there could be people whose minds are just magnetically attracted to some particular oddball theory because they're simply wired that way. These are just a few obvious possibilities, I'm sure there are plenty more.

The trouble with this sort of thing is that once a mind, for whatever reason, has decided to believe something, no amount of rational argument can sway it from that belief until it's ready to let go. Moreover, as I've mentioned before, our beliefs about reality shape our experience of it to a very large degree. So even though we all reside in one collective reality, an individual person can literally be living in their own world quite far removed from the general consensus. Their inner orientation, their outer focus, and their interpretive processing between the two form a self-reinforcing feedback loop. This is why, when one studies external phenomena to try to form a model of the system, it's so important to be conscious of one's own emotional investments and to consciously avoid letting them get in the way of discovering truth.

I'll say this right now: I'm not a left-brain thinker. I can operate in that mode, and I can appreciate a good train of logic, but I usually prefer a more organic way of thinking, relying on intuition first, then the intellect. This way has served me well in my search for truth. The ability to discern grows with practice.

I've already expended more words on this than I'd otherwise like to. The reason I did is not because I assume people are stupid, but because of something I'm working on that warrants a little bit of thought in this vein, just as a prelude. There's a difference between a reality-challenged conspiracy “theorist” and someone who honestly looks into things to try to find what's really there without jumping to unfounded conclusions. That's all. And I'm not claiming that these guys are the real deal, that you should believe anything they say just because they've done a bunch of research and they're “the experts.” God forbid. No, my intent with this video transcript, which I hope to finish soon, is to hopefully just bring someone who hasn't considered such things before to say, “Hmm. That's interesting. Maybe there's something there. I think I'll look into that and see if there's any truth to it.” Little seeds.

One last thing. I may just be fatigued from blogging so much this month, but I feel like the focus here may shift more towards poetry, at least once I pull up stakes in a few weeks and head out into the wide world. My prose is starting to feel dry to me, too many words, not enough of the good home flavour. So we'll see where this goes. Inspiration, stay close! Guide my hands and guide my feet.

Au revoir.