We live in a brave new world of trivia. Or, to be less polite about it, bulls**t. And the really scary part about it, most of us are taking the latest wacky theories and speculations that abound on social media very seriously.
I’ve never been a great fan (partially) of excessive use of social media. I have always tried to regard any doings on the web as good business practice mostly, and kept interactions with others to what is mostly necessary rather than as a major lifestyle like some people. Too much interaction on the web acts like a a powerful force that can foster hypersensitivity, neurotic behaviour and many other symptoms that one sees from users of hard line drugs. We have people out there obsessed with aliens, others obsessed with the next plague, individuals screeching about various fears and phobias, and perhaps the most common of all, the great public panic over Global Warming.
Okay, let’s get some perspective folks. We have trashed the environment for decades and Mama Earth is fighting back. She’s losing her cool and, while humanity is certainly not helping, we live in an incredibly diverse and complex universal system that has been at play for millennia, long before Man stuck his nervously twitching nose out of his first cave. There have been multiple mass extinctions and global warming events long before this one – take the Permian extinction around 250 million years ago. This wiped out 90% of life on earth as the planet warmed up to become mostly desert, but Life, as it always does, finds a way. In more recent times, roughly between 1250 to 1840 was an event known as the Little Ice Age, a period where earth shivered with mostly low temperatures – and this was an era when the population was at most around two billion with hardly a carbon emitting device in sight. Scientists now believe this originated with the eruption of a massive volcano in Lombok, Indonesia, called Sumulu – and when this lady blew her top it was with a force that made Tambora in 1812 and Krakatoa in 1883 look decidedly feeble – imagine the debris polluting the world from this, not to mention the devastation from the resulting tsunami that repeatedly circled the globe! In this modern era, I certainly do not endorse pollution in any form, but we do need to get a better grip on the true facts. With us or without us, the earth will keep changing and have her hot flashes like any woman will. At heart, we are slow to admit we are far more scared for ourselves than we are for the planet – we certainly need to clean up our act, but causing mass paranoia will not help progress but will hinder it.
Another panic button out there concerns vaccines. With Covid 19 crawling into every nook and cranny, suspicion abounds about the validity and ulterior motives of the medicines scientists are now frantic to create. Sadly, many have not had sufficient time to test things to their satisfaction, but ultimately, in the race to save lives, it would be totally naive to believe mistakes would not be made. And to be quite honest, looking at the exhausted state of many in the medical profession right now, any plans they may have had to copy the likes of Dr Mengele are certainly null and void for some time.
Then there are those who say we are just a mass experiment created by aliens intent on conquering the planet. There are those who claim that Trump is the new Antichrist and others who are convinced that the US election was rigged from start to finish, all part of a larger, diabolical plan etc etc. We allow private opinion to overrule reason and rationality and believe what we want to believe. Think of all the horror and sci fi movies that humans love to get cheap thrills from, but we are now playing out those thrills on a global stage – and through our paranoia we are feeding the chaos abounding across the world.
And who, if anyone, is all this helping?
I am no religious expert. But I do have a powerful sense that there is another, cool, calm and calculating silent force in this world who is just lapping up all the fear and phobia driven panic that is leaving us like lambs to the slaughter. And I believe that we all know, regardless of what faith we each belong to, who that force is.
Please, folks. Don’t give him that satisfaction. Look for the truth before grasping at those feeble straws of speculation. Respect one another. Be sensible. Be kind and considerate. And just because something is popular or fashionable, don’t just follow the herd but do what is right. Don’t let yourself get talked into something you know instinctively is wrong.
Over three thousand years ago an eternal list of Do’s and Don’ts was published, carved to last for the ages in stone. This was not just for the ragged tribe of Hebrews roaming the wilds of Sinai but for us all. They are simple rules, designed to help us lead successful lives no matter how rich or poor we are or what faith or skin tone we have. For some mad reason, too many of us debunk them constantly, seeking alternative rules to please ourselves – and those rules of doing and believing whatever we want to are simply not working.
Time to revise these time honoured truths rather than the modern day theories, don’t you think?
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