Conspiracy Theories

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A conspiracy theory is an attempt to force a story on a set of disparate, though often distantly related facts and observations. But the real world is not a narrative, not a clever mystery to be unraveled by amateur detectives. Every baroque edifice of conspiracy rests upon a foundational belief that there is a singular truth that diligent investigation will reveal, even if the shape of that truth branches and swirls in an infinite fractal. What this mindset cannot accept is that there may be many simple truths for many disturbing facts.

Jacob Bacharach writing in The Outline

Fame

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Leonardo da Vinci agreed with Young Thug about celebrity being life's game-changing apex, and he further believed that the rich and powerful, by pursuing land and money, miss the whole point of existence. “How many emperors and how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and they only sought to gain dominions and riches that their fame might be everlasting?”   

The internet is a sprawling and anarchic record. In a few decades the internet has swallowed the record, and become coextensive with it. When no trace of something exists online, can it be said to be famous? Inconceivable. Can it be said to even exist? “Pics or it didn't happen” is a stock response to an improbable story told online. To become history, experience must first become pixels.  

Virginia Heffernan writing in Wired 

Learning to adopt

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Today’s students need universities and colleges that will help them navigate a world where constant changes are the norm and where learning how to adapt is the central problem of living and of citizenship. The idea that the college years should be primarily about potential is not idealistic or naive; it is prescient.

Caitlin Zaloom, Indebted: How Families Make College Work at Any Cost 

The Problem of Mindfulness

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It’s often pragmatically useful to step away from your own fraught ruminations and emotions. Seeing them as drifting leaves can help us gain a certain distance from the heat of our feelings, so as to discern patterns and identify triggers. But after a certain point, mindfulness doesn’t allow you to take responsibility for and analyse such feelings. It’s not much help in sifting through competing explanations for why you might be thinking or feeling a certain way. Nor can it clarify what these thoughts and feelings might reveal about your character. Mindfulness, grounded in anattā, can offer only the platitude: ‘I am not my feelings.’ Its conceptual toolbox doesn’t allow for more confronting statements, such as ‘I am feeling insecure,’ ‘These are my anxious feelings,’ or even ‘I might be a neurotic person.’ Without some ownership of one’s feelings and thoughts, it is difficult to take responsibility for them.

Sahanika Ratnayake writing in Aeon

Beating the Social Media Addiction

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Since social media can be a quick or easy fix to avoid negative feelings, you can ask yourself the following questions to evaluate what you could be avoiding and may need to address in another way in your life. 

·     What are you potentially avoiding or using social media to escape from?

·     How is being on social media making you feel? Are you comparing yourself to others or using it to judge others? Does it make you feel inadequate?

·     Do you rely on social media for your self-esteem? If you only feel good about yourself when your posts gets a lot of likes, this could be you.

According to Dr. Logan Jones, psychologist and founder of NYC Therapy + Wellness, it can be helpful to evaluate this time and choose something more positive and intentional you'd rather fill your time with (like reading, workout out, or spending time with friends IRL). 

"The best way to reinforce behavior is to do more of it. So instead of saying, 'I'm not going to do social media', you can say 'I'm working on being more present.' So you want to be affirming healthy, positive things that you're doing," Jones said. 

Mercey Livingston writing in c/net

Stop riding with the brakes on

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We fear failure more than we love life, so we refuse the great adventure. We are careful to do only what we have always done and know how to do well, so we never break the dull repetition of the old routine for the new creation of God. Crawl out of these tombs and prisons - there is a world of light and freedom waiting!

Have faith in God and let life be free. Stop riding with the brakes on. The soul will never grow tied down in a bed with the shades drawn. The higher we build the barricades of caution to protect ourselves, the deeper grows the grave we call our life.

Inbuilt gullibility

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Fake news may be exacerbating people’s inbuilt gullibility. A study published last year in Science, a journal, concluded that “falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper and more broadly than the truth” and that this effect was especially strong for fake political news. Fake news provides voters with a smorgasbord of facts and lies from which to pick and choose.

ln 2004 Drew Westen of Emory University in Atlanta put partisan Republicans and Democrats into a magnetic-resonance-imaging scanner and found that lying or hypocrisy by the other side lit up areas of the brain associated with rewards; lies by their own side lit up areas associated with dislike and negative emotions. At no point did the parts of the brain associated with reason show any response at all. If voters’ judgments are rooted in emotion and intuition, facts and evidence are likely to be secondary.

The Economist 

For the Birds

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The Christmas story absolutely escaped Tom. The whole “God born in a manger” thing was beyond him. Or maybe it was just too simple for him to grasp. At least, until that Christmas Eve when the snow began to fall. He had just settled into his fireside chair and begun to read when he heard thumping sounds on the window and at first he thought someone was throwing snowballs. He went to the door. Looking into the yard, he found a small flock of birds. Huddled there in the snow. They had been caught in the storm and had desperately tried to find shelter by flying through his large living room window.  He knew he couldn’t let those little creatures freeze. The barn! Where the children keep the pony. That would provide shelter if he could get the birds in there. 

He opened the barn doors and turned on a light. The birds didn’t move. Maybe some food would entice them. He sprinkled bread crumbs next to the stable door. Nothing. He tried catching them and shooing them.  The birds went everywhere, except into the barn. They were afraid of him. I want them to trust me he thought. How can I convince them I want to help?  Buy any move he made tended to frighten them. They would not follow or be lead or shooed. 

“If only I could be a bird myself he thought. If I could be a bird and mingle with them and speak their language and show them the way to the barn, then they could see and understand.”

It was at that moment the church bells began to ring. Listening to the good news, Tom understood and sank to his knees in the snow. 

The Happy Catastrophe

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A fire broke out backstage in a theater on opening night of a new comedy production. A clown realized the danger and pushed through the curtains to alert the audience. 

They applauded.

The clown repeated his warning more urgently. By now he was center stage, flailing his arms, his eyes wide with panic. 

The crowd went wild. Whistles. Cheers. Raucous laughter. Never had they seen such a routine!

Is this how the world ends? The human race stands in thunderous ovation, calling for an encore, convinced it’s just another happy joke.