Sunday Musings: It's Stunning How Many People Drink the Kool-Aid... Without Question!

People have lots of different opinions, and that's part of what makes life on this planet interesting!

For the most part, I have no particular investment in people's opinions, unless they go on some proselytizing tear and insist on trying to "convert" me to their way of thinking. Of course, I'm always open to listen to someone else's perspective... but evidently, I'm a little different from the majority in that when I am offered some piece of new information, I go off and do a LOT of homework to try to establish its veracity and likelihood, rather than just run around in a circle screaming "The sky's gonna fall!"

A lot of people seem to think I "should" have the benefit of hearing about their latest discoveries concerning a variety of topics; be it that wine will kill you; eating bananas will prevent Covid; staring at the sun will improve your eyesight, the aliens that live inside Mt. Shasta and whatever else.

A lot of time I just end up scratching my head in wonder... both wonder at some of the utter and complete quackery one can find on this planet, and wonder at the way seemingly intelligent and rational people will accept the latest story from "Paranoia Weekly" (Yes, I just made that up!) without so much as a cursory amount of research to establish whether the government is really spraying nanobots into high level clouds so they will fall in the rain, invade our bodies and make us sterile by design...

OK, so this is not a post about the what of unusual ideas are out there, so much as a bit of a distress cry over the seemingly complete lack of critical thinking I am observing.

I look at some of this stuff and think to myself: "A FIVE-year old should be able to tell that this information contradicted itself, as well as most known laws of physics, six times in 800 words."

The thing that I find somewhat baffling and ironic at times is that so many purveyors of "invisible and unprovable threats" embrace their theories with exceptional fervor while actively rejecting such ideas as "God" or people "talking to ghosts" as *"complete nonsense only idiots and the feeble minded would believe!"

Uhmmm... Pot... Kettle... Black?

But I digress...

What I find more interesting is the pervasive "end of the world obsession" I frequently run into. It's entirely possible I'm just too dense to get it when all the doomsday stuff comes up, but I find myself (quite sincerely) wanting to say something like:

"OK, I'll give it to you. You were RIGHT. The world has now ended, and YOU and everyone else is DEAD. Now what? How did this HELP you?"

Of course, I don't get any popularity points for saying such things (which I actually have, on a few occasions), because when someone experiences too much cognitive dissonance they tend to just dig their heels in, get angry and "attack the messenger," rather than actually respond to what is being asked.

But again, it's not my place to tell people what to think; just to gently suggest that they do think about what they are thinking, before they think it. Like one friend of Mrs. Denmarkguy's who has a new theory every week for why her knees are in chronic pain... but the only theory she's not been willing to consider is that years of competitive high school/collegiate cross country running and volleyball, along with smoking a pack a day for 20 years, caused joint damage.

Which brings me back to the Kool-Aid issue: Shouldn't the first thing you consider be the most obvious, rather than the most far fetched?

But that's one of the problems we face in our modern society... and how the whole "Drink the Kool-Aid" saying even came about: Many people desperately want something to set them apart as "special," even to the point that they reject ordinariness. It's just not interesting to simply have "seasonal allergies" if you can immerse yourself in the throes of the "Rare and Elusive Bingo-Bongo Virus from Outer Mongolia," instead.

It's a whole different kind of "Snowflake..."

Thanks for reading, and hope your weekend was a good one!

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Created at 20210208 00:17 PST
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