I feel like the Covid times broke many people. 20 years ago I was the crazy person in the family. I was the one questioning the narratives and talking about how corrupt the government was. All the ways they had lied to us. I would get blank stares from most in my family. For the record. My position hasn't changed much on that front. In fact, most of my conspiracy theories have come true or been proven true.
Today my experience is much different. I tend to hear insane theories from some in my family. Theories they would have rejected 20 years ago as crackpot nonsense. Its interesting to watch how many have lost faith in authority figures and institutions. I haven't had this faith for decades now but at the same time I don't believe every random social account selling fear either.
Recently a relative of mine shared how they are convinced the current cold weather front is due to weather modification. The question to ask here is always, why? The answer. They want to kill people. Who is they? I don't know. What do they gain? I don't know.
Weather modification is a thing. Its effectiveness is disputed but it isn't a question of existence. It does exist. It has been a project pursued by many groups and is even used by some governments openly. That's not a question. The thing I have witnessed is a drastic shift from complete trust in "the system" to a complete loss of control over logical thought.
I'm sure I'm not the only one witnessing this but it is interesting to witness. I think many people just want a single theory that explains everything and they lack the ability to think critically. When they lost trust in institutions and the system they became rudderless and are at the mercy of snake oil salesmen. And there are a lot of them ready to feed their addiction the "them" fallacy.
Do you have a better explanation for this? Are you seeing it in your social circles?
My guess is that they just aren't any good at thinking through unapproved opinions yet because they were allergic to doing so for so long.
We have the advantage of experience and knowing that in most cases "They" would be perfectly willing to do whatever horrible thing is being alleged but also that "They" don't just do every horrible thing that can be done. "They" have reasons for their behavior and we've learned to think through whether there seem to be any reasons that make sense.
That's a good way of looking at it. Adversarial thinking takes practice.
I dig this frame. Gonna have to remember this.
I definitely have friends like this. Once red-pilled they seem to just go all the way, and believe in almost anything with little ability to distinguish fact from fiction, plausible from implausible.
Despite my utter distrust of today's "expert" class, I still maintain that people need experts. No one has the time to verify everything, and we need to rely on peoples' opinions that we can trust. It's just sad that the current expert class is so captured by state and corporate interests (as well as a very poorly incentivized academia structure), that they've become very untrustworthy
As Michael Malice says, you are supposed to take one red pill, not the whole bottle.
While I don't think the weather modification cause being likely, on the off-chance that it would be:
Narrative.
Kinda weak as far as effort to gain. Much cheaper and easier to push social media or do a FBI / False flag event to distract. But yeah, narrative is ALWAYs a good way to frame something. Its just not always the strongest signal of a conspiracy.
I mean... it is winter. It is funny that people that reject the idea of climate change will so quickly accept things like this. Just interesting to me.
I agree with you. Also, back when Opti was little we called this superfuntime, because no school and you got to ice skate and sled and build snowmen (though I guess these are snowpeople now) and have snowball fights and what not.
People are just pissed that "global warming" doesn't mean you get that sweet Caribbean weather in Boston but you still have take out another credit card just to afford that AA flight to Marin International and the Condado Marriott. And wall street charging you over 10% yo...
True
COVID shook trust and left a lot of people grasping for simple explanations. You’re right to stay grounded and think critically.
Losing faith without gaining critical thinking leaves people easy to manipulate.
That's why we have to share with them the good news of Objectivism. So they can outsource their thinking and donate their money to us instead.