| Photo by Carrie Borden on Unsplash
Most of the world is online, and anyone anywhere can reach out to anyone anytime. This technological feat has tremendous consequences on human thought and attitude. There has never been a time in history when knowledge is so accessible. Just think of Google, Alexa, or Siri, which can provide instant weather forecasts of places anywhere in the world, give you the meaning of the word gobbledygook, or the inventor of modern toilet paper in real-time. With a smartphone, one becomes literally a walking encyclopedia. As knowledge grows exponentially and becomes accessible, ironically, the ranks of ignorant people swell.
I have a good friend, an educated and intelligent man, who sends me a collection of videos on politics and health, especially vaccines, from right-wing, fringe media, and bloggers peddling conspiracy theories online, on TV, and on the radio. The ease with which these groups can slip their wares in Facebook, TikTok, or Reels while one is browsing the internet makes it easy for unwitting people to get bombarded with propaganda and misinformation. They employ subtle means to entice and get people hooked on their materials by inciting suspicion or fear. To sow doubts or skepticism towards established order is the purpose of conspiracy theories that are disseminated online. Something is enticing about conspiracies, especially about the government or big industry, which plays a ubiquitous role in our daily lives. They are favorite targets of conspiracy theorists because they are topics that easily get our attention. But, for the gullible, it’s the sure path to ignorance.
With the U.S. presidential election coming in a few weeks, the amount of lies in political rhetoric is raised to dangerous levels. The kinds of provocative and hateful language used against political opponents or immigrants of color without restraint make one cringe or even afraid to vote. Sowing fear among voters is a cheap trick that diminishes their rational ability. U.S. politics has never been this low, descending to the level of a banana republic politics. A cult-driven politics attracts blind followers who lose their thinking ability and have abandoned the truth.
“Social media, such as Facebook, have become many people’s sole source of news and information. The convenience it offers fits in with our culture of instant gratification. We have become lazy in fact-checking what is being fed to us in mass media and online.”
It’s innate in man to be cautious or suspicious of strangers or the unfamiliar, which is not entirely bad if it prompts our critical thinking faculty. When presented with complex facts, unusual phenomena, or the unknown, we feel dumbfounded, a disconcerting experience for most of us. To reduce the dissonant feeling, we look for an easy explanation or develop a hypothesis or a working theory. This is where conspiracy theorists, bots, and propagandists come in with their ready answer that capitalizes on human vulnerabilities. With the increasing use of artificial intelligence, things will get worse, and sorting out the truth from a morass of misinformation will get even harder.
Social media, such as Facebook, have become many people’s sole source of news and information. The convenience it offers fits in with our culture of instant gratification. We have become lazy in fact-checking what is being fed to us in mass media and online. While the internet is the greatest purveyor of knowledge, it is also the primary source of disinformation. It has also become the marketplace where criminals lurk, ready to pounce on unsuspecting victims.
The hot topic for conspiracy theorists is the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine and its iteration, the self-amplifying mRNA, which is an improved vaccine version. Compared with traditional vaccines, the alacrity by which the mRNA vaccine was developed was the bone of contention. This has spawned an avalanche of conspiracy theories from the fantastic to the ludicrous. A reading of the works of Drew Weissman and Katalin Kariko, winners of last year’s Nobel Prize for Medicine, one finds that the foundational science of mRNA Covid vaccine was decades in the making. When the pandemic hit in 2020, they were on the cusp of a breakthrough in their research, and the government funding poured into their project made it possible to produce the vaccine in record time. The recent improvement in the mRNA Covid vaccine, the self-amplifying mRNA, which has been approved for public dispensing in Japan, is the latest target of conspiracy theorists.
Fact check! Fact check! Even if it takes some effort. And never abandon critical thinking.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dr. Fernando B. Perfas is an addiction specialist who has written several books and articles on the subject. He currently provides training and consulting services to various government and non-government drug treatment agencies regarding drug treatment and prevention approaches. He can be reached at fbperfas@gmail.com.
