How Do We Know to be True What We Think We Know?
Maybe We Should Be More Patient With The Opinions of Others
In today's world, there is far more to know than in the world of our great grandparents....or even our parents.
But oddly, very few of us can really know much. We can know the weight of a tool in our hands, or the color of our home, or how many children live with us. We can readily observe these and many other things that are near us in space and time.
Information about almost everything else we think we know comes to us from other sources. That is a good thing and a bad thing.
It’s a good thing because we can obtain information from others and extend our knowledge. It’s a bad thing because we usually cannot verify the information directly. In other words, we have information, but we can’t really know whether it is true or not. Because we normally cannot independently verify, we usually think we know a thing if we trust the information source, or if it fits our existing beliefs or values.
This is obvious, but it points out a problem for a diverse society: we do not have common information sources that we trust. It was not that long ago that Americans had more common trust in mass media, for example. The graph below from Gallup shows where we were and where we are:
According to this information (in which I have some trust because Gallup is a generally respected polling organization) most (70+%) Americans had a great deal or at least a fair amount of trust in mass media as recently as the 1970s. If these data are accurately reported, in 2022 more Americans (34%) had no trust at all in mass media than either those who didn’t have very much trust (28%) or or those who had a great deal or fair amount of trust (34%).
The point is this: 2/3 of Americans have little or no trust in these most widespread sources of information about current events and analysis. Furthermore, we Americans are getting our information about what we think we know to be true from different sources with divergent biases of news and analysis.
This is pretty obvious. Here is one perspective on biases in American media:
For example, I may be getting news about a major event from MSNBC, and think I know what is happening. You may be getting yours about the same event from Fox News, and you think you know what is happening. But both of us could be wholly or partly wrong about the facts, or one mainly correct and the other mainly wrong.
Then there is social media and search. These actively encourage disunity as the algorithms that power them optimize profit from eyeballs and minds. Disunity delivers profit. Unity: not so much. Hate, blood and anger are much more profitable than friendship, love, and unity.
Because we Americans have been tribalized, we tend to trust that what our tribe is reporting, analyzing or posting about is truth. But is it really?
I am about 90% on believing there are maleficent individuals and groups beyond our government, our political parties, and our liberal/conservative inclinations. They constitute “the Empire,” to use a Star Wars metaphor. The Empire pulls complex strings utilizing the wide scope of the Internet, social and mass media, and increasing skill in psyops.
The Empire needs Americans to be broken up into little cliques based on race, age, politics, ethnicity, religion, etc. They need it because “a house divided against itself cannot stand” was true when Jesus first said it, it was true when Lincoln said it in his famous 1858 “House Divided” speech, and it is true today.
Ideally, the Empire also wants us to hate one another, because we will be easier to conquer. And hate is only a short distance from violence and death which would make conquest even easier.
The Empire seeks, well, empire: power, money, status. To continue with the metaphor, the Rebel Alliance stands in its way.
We advance Empire plans when we snipe at each other for having different opinions about what is true. This is painfully ironic because we don’t REALLY know what is true!
We can frustrate Empire plans by listening to one another in our differences, and by being patient and kind to one another. We can consume mass media and social media with a skeptical eye and ear. We can destroy the Empire’s Death Star by stubbornly holding on to love, Constitutional freedoms, and calling out evil action on the political, institutional and commercial stages across our land.
If there is indeed an “Empire” as I am ready to believe, I am in the Rebel Alliance. We are many. We seek a reunited America. I hope you will join us.
See also my essay, The Restored American Republic.
I was slow to come to this conclusion. It is hard to believe that so few have so much power.
But since Covid and my reading, I am about 100% sure. The book "The Real Anthony Fauci" by RFK,jr made me sure. Previously, around 2018, I tried to to speak to the other side at a local town hall in Culpeper, VA.....thinking to myself, "we will never make progress if we don't talk". Having been a civil rights worker since age 10, imagine my surprise, when within 10 minutes of starting a conversation with a participant, an outside person joined our conversation and called me ignorant and a bigot. Right after President Trump's election, i traveled 4 hours, to Dave Brat's first town hall after the election. An angry mob used the most profane language in a tiny VA town at the very mention of the word GOD.
I do not believe we can save our country without a spiritual revival. Many churches went along with the progressive move of society so I do not really know what to do about that. God's Word of course stands alone and the test of time. Truth does not change. That is why the few have worked so hard to destroy the influence of God.
I remember the women lib movement in our lifetime...."I Am Woman" and can do it all. Having been born with an alternative gene that I did not want to pass along, I remember working so hard and realizing that there is no way I could properly have a family. Then at 64, helping some friends with a newborn for 3.5 years, I intrinsically knew that Mothers need to be at home caring for family. Of course there are exceptions to every rule, but Mothers need to be at home creating family. Look at what has happened. You know I never thought of this till right this moment.....women need to make a home for their husbands too.... We have succeeded in destroying the foundation of society. What would hold a couple together if both people come home exhausted and competing.
I have no real world experience, but i could see it. I often said I needed to rent a wife when I was working so hard. Does that make me sexist to think in those terms. For the first time at 73 I am getting to live the dream life of a woman of my time. I love it.
This morning I heard about a book written by a GEN Z : The End Of The Alphabet. The Author's hypothesis is that Gen Z is the most culturally conservative generation since the 50's and they have hope that they can change the world. I do not see that and have no way to see it, but even if it is partly true, I guess we need to focus our efforts on this generation as well as to survive until they come to power.
Thanks for writing and i hope i can figure out how to share this essay.