{"id":46,"date":"2023-01-26T00:59:47","date_gmt":"2023-01-26T07:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/civatar.com\/vocalraton\/?p=46"},"modified":"2023-01-26T00:59:50","modified_gmt":"2023-01-26T07:59:50","slug":"our-reality-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/civatar.com\/vocalraton\/our-reality-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Reality Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There is a reason why we need to take a closer look at the human habit of believing things we are told without actual evidence that they are true.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obviously, that has been done throughout history, and there is evidence that it began long before that. It likely began out of the desire to explain events before there was the knowledge to understand causes and effects. An imagined answer seemed better than no answer at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stories of whole families of invisible beings with powers to make the world more friendly, or more hostile, were soon circulated and made more elaborate as they were retold. Believing them seemed reassuring, entertaining, and harmless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as civilizations developed in city-states, countries, and empires, those who wanted power and control found they could convince populations that their gods favored them, and get them to obey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even today the Russian Orthodox church supports Putin\u2019s war, and he makes laws they favor, like targeting LGBTQ citizens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the US, right-wing Christians support Republicans, who in turn deny women the rights those churches disapprove.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the past, most of the beliefs were about invisible powerful beings and the rules they were said to make about human behavior. Some of the rules were beneficial, and some weren\u2019t, But outside of the world of religion, most people recognized reality as reality. Autocratic authoritarian governments often lied to their people, but people in democracies valued truth , a free press investigated government behavior, and usually made sure the facts came out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lying in politics was nothing new before Trump, but his use of it was so expansive that it rivaled entire centuries of religious dogma. A significant sector of the population believed his words, even when they could easily be disproved. The technique of proclaiming alternate reality has expanded to infect the secular world. How can we put this genie back into Pandora\u2019s box?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is making the political process in our democratic system of government much more difficult, Disagreement over policies is one thing, but disbelief in plain facts is entirely another. It\u2019s no longer necessary for the lies to come from Trump himself. We\u2019ve had Q-Anon and anti-vax conspiracy theorists, and it has become common for election losers to deny their loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Believing anything without evidence is a dangerous habit. It makes you vulnerable, and puts all of us and our rights and freedom at risk That doesn\u2019t mean that everyone must abandon spiritual outlooks and myths of the invisible. But we should be careful to question anyone who claims to know what those invisible beings want. Too often those \u201cwants\u201d are your money, certain votes in elections, or to hate or discriminate against certain kinds of people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suspending disbelief is a way to enjoy fiction, but return to the real world when the story ends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a reason why we need to take a closer look at the human habit of believing things we are told without actual evidence that they are true. Obviously, that has been done throughout history, and there is evidence that it began long before that. It likely began out of the desire to explain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":96,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/civatar.com\/vocalraton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/civatar.com\/vocalraton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/civatar.com\/vocalraton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civatar.com\/vocalraton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/96"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civatar.com\/vocalraton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/civatar.com\/vocalraton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/civatar.com\/vocalraton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civatar.com\/vocalraton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civatar.com\/vocalraton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}