A couple of years ago I removed myself from Facebook. What started as a great new way to connect with my friends and family had become a twisted funhouse mirror that magnified everyone’s worst fears and insecurities. I used to have interesting discussions via Facebook with people but at some point conversation became impossible from everyone talking at the same time and no one listening. Birthday notices are the only thing Facebook is good for anymore, all other functions have been taken over by “news” (big airquotes added for ironic emphasis) or as it’s commonly referred to: ‘super-important information that you have to know about right now and if you don’t agree with me then you are a mortal threat to all I hold dear’.
Some of you may be too young to remember telephones with rotating discs on them. It was a more civilized age. Phones were attached to the wall with wire and so as a result people were required to observe certain etiquette in order to function in society. Back in the dial-up days there used to be a rule: “Never talk about politics or religion”. I heard that said as a kid and I didn’t understand it. What was wrong with talking about those things? Surely these topics could be discussed as well as any others. After all, people were logical beings with thinking brains and could share words with each other without becoming fearful or angry. Oh, the innocence of a child. Now years later I long for the serene simplicity of this world view, the faith in humanity’s ability for self-awareness and restraint.
Now it seems like politics and religion is all anyone ever talks about. It seeps into other areas. You can’t have an online discussion about anything without it turning political. The line between facts and opinions has been scribbled over with crayons. I thought things would get better once Trump was out of office but he is not the problem. Lunacy is everywhere I turn. Our media has embraced those with a post-factual worldview as a suitable target audience for informational and editorial content (the cultural space formerly occupied by journalism). I have found it necessary to retreat even further to maintain my equilibrium. I have to wonder, am I the problem? Why am I so hung up on critical thinking and logic? Why does a lack of respect for science bother me so much? It’s not like I have a deep understanding of biochemistry or electrical engineering. I don’t really understand how the microwave oven works but I still use it to heat up my cinnamon buns. I don’t have to actually fly myself up into orbit to see the curvature of the Earth with my own eyes to accept the ‘theory of sphericism’.
Foucault’s Pendulum was an experiment conducted in 1851 by Léon Foucault. It allows an observer to witness evidence of the Earth’s rotation by suspending a large pendulum and letting it swing over a marked circle on the floor. The angle of the pendulum relative to the floor will appear to shift throughout that day, and the rate of this change is consistent with the rotation of the Earth and your position on the surface of the globe. The position of the pendulum is predicable based on the time of day. It is an extremely simple apparatus and it allows anyone to observe direct evidence of the spherical nature of our planet. The pendulum swings from a fixed point while the earth rotates beneath it.
‘Foucault’s Pendulum’ was also the title of a novel by Umberto Eco first published in 1988. I’ve read it a couple of times now, and I think I want to read it again. What’s it about? The Mother of All Conspiracies. I would describe Dan Brown’s ‘The DaVinci Code’ as a brain-damaged stepchild of ‘Foucault’s Pendulum’. The main protagonists are publishers who stumble into a tangled international conspiracy that traces its roots back to the Middle Ages.
The novel is dense and complex by design, challenging the reader to discover its secrets like an ancient labyrinth. It contains passages in many different languages and the twisting plot has many dead ends. The author intended the book to be obscure and his intent was to create a sense of intellectual confusion that puts you in the mindset of a conspiracy theorist. (I won’t spoil the ending – you have to get there yourself) The main point of the book is not the plot, it’s the puzzle itself. The allure of a mystery is a powerful drug and those that are addicted to it can be very dangerous. The mind of an addict is devious and all things can be distorted to support their addiction. Facts become twisted when you are convinced that there’s hidden powers keeping a big secret and everything you encounter will only add to your belief. Once you believe in a conspiracy it is almost impossible to disprove it because all evidence is ‘tainted’ by people that are ‘in on it’.
There’s a few great passages that are sometimes quoted from the novel, and below is one of my favourites:
There are four kinds of people in this world: cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics…Cretins don’t even talk; they sort of slobber and stumble…Fools are in great demand, especially on social occasions. They embarrass everyone but provide material for conversation…Fools don’t claim that cats bark, but they talk about cats when everyone else is talking about dogs. They offend all the rules of conversation, and when they really offend, they’re magnificent…Morons never do the wrong thing. They get their reasoning wrong. Like the fellow who says that all dogs are pets and all dogs bark, and cats are pets, too, therefore cats bark…Morons will occasionally say something that’s right, but they say it for the wrong reason…A lunatic is easily recognized. He is a moron who doesn’t know the ropes. The moron proves his thesis; he has logic, however twisted it may be. The lunatic on the other hand, doesn’t concern himself at all with logic; he works by short circuits. For him, everything proves everything else. The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars…There are lunatics who don’t bring up the Templars, but those who do are the most insidious. At first they seem normal, then all of a sudden…
Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum
It’s a wonderful passage for a number of reasons. Eco has lampshaded this philosophy through the narrative context of the scene; these are three friends out for a night of drinking who are having one of those ‘solve all the world’s problems’ discussions that contain equal parts genius and nonsense. It’s also self-depreciation since the speaker includes himself in the four types of people. He points out that everyone is wrong, none of us have all the answers. The dangerous ones are those that are convinced that they have the answer, even in the face of irrefutable evidence to the contrary. The pendulum is a poignant metaphor for this. Something brilliant becomes a tool of madness in the hands of lunatics. The most powerful lies contain a grain of truth.
When Eco wrote this book in the 1980s, the Cold War was still on. The world was locked into a bi-polar power structure, and yet there were still conspiracy theories, the moon landing was fake, ancient aliens built the pyramids, the templars were hiding something. To the believer the world cannot be as it seems; the truth is being kept from us. In the dial-up days the answers were buried in libraries and archives, only to be discovered by those that could master the arcane systems of records and files.
The Information Age was supposed to bring on a new enlightenment. Knowledge would no longer be locked behind a musty bureaucracy. With open access to all the texts of human history, people would not have to rely on the interpretations of experts, they could see the truth for themselves. No-one thought that there would be multiple truths to be seen. The conspiracy phenomenon hasn’t been corrected by the internet, it’s been accelerated. The gatekeepers of intellectual rigour have been swarmed by an angry mob. The lunatic fringe now has a level playing field with true academics. Like the pendulum, the internet has been twisted into a perversion of its intended purpose. It is simultaneously the easiest and the hardest thing to change your mind. Thoughts have their own momentum and shifting their trajectory can be like deflecting an asteroid. When faced with our own errors it can sometimes feel better to claim that the entire world is wrong.
So here we are in the post-factual landscape and I am at a loss. Market-driven culture has enabled the philosophy of “I’m Entitled To My Opinion-ism” to obfuscate reality. Oxygen is consumed by issues about which there should be no debate. No the moon landing was not faked, yes people should get vaccinated, no masks are not a health hazard, yes climate change is real and imminent threat to humanity, no gender-neutral bathrooms are not that hard to figure out (you have one in your house right now), yes slavery was wrong and the South lost the Civil War, no there are not fine people on both sides.
Yes the earth is a fucking sphere, you lunatics.
rootwood 