Breaking News: Politician Held Hostage on Bus Surrounded by People Holding Milkshakes

Actual news headline that appeared on the h2g2 Guide Twitter feed while the Editor was writing this column.

Human consciousness has been a constant for thousands of years. We're not actually smarter than our Paleolithic ancestors: we just know more about different things. I personally found this out at the age of twelve. My ancient history teacher told us to make a tool out of things we found in our backyard. Since my backyard was full of slate, I was stumped. I ended up making a sort of mallet using a chicken bone tied to a stick with sassafras bark. Mr Kaplan approved, but it made me appreciate the mad skills of the Stone Age.

The problem with human consciousness is that it has a lot of potential, but it needs something to work with. What we know depends a lot on:

• When and where in the space-time continuum we happen to be.
• What our environment gives us to think about.
• The attitudes and communicated thought processes of those around us.
• The tools we have available to educate ourselves with.
• How much time we have to think.
• Our own personal decisions about thinking. (More on that later.)
• Our personal decisions about what guides our thought processes: people around us? The written/audio/visual record of our species? A particular philosophy we read in a book somewhere or learned from a group we joined? Extra-dimensional communications, if we believe they are possible and are willing to listen?

There may be other influences, like drugs, alcohol, and rock'n'roll. Anyway, these days, we seem to be facing a global crisis in our perception of reality, and it might be a good idea for us as individuals to take private stock of our personal epistemologies. That's where the personal decisions come in. We have to stop thinking that we're cleverer than our ancestors because we can push buttons and send our most banal remarks around the planet at the speed of electricity. Satellite hookups don't increase our brain power, though they may add enjoyment to our days. The human race is in severe danger of suffering from a terminal case of 'garbage in, garbage out'.

Presented for your consideration a brief list of things some people on this planet claim to believe these days:

• The Earth is flat because somebody on Youtube said so. Alternatively, the Earth is round because somebody on Youtube said so, and he has a PhD. [Do you believe the Earth is an oblate spheroid? If so, why do you believe this? Could you explain your reasoning, or do you just believe it because Neil deGrasse Tyson said so? Do you even know what an oblate spheroid is?]
• The Earth is (pick one) about 6,000 years old or about 4.5 billion years old. [If you think this is a spiritual question, why? If you think you can prove the age of the Earth, why? If you think proving the age of the Earth 'disproves' a collection of ancient writings, what exactly do you mean by that?]
• The deaths of John F Kennedy and thousands of people on 11/9/01 either (pick one) have been adequately explained, or were part of conspiracies subject to massive coverups.
• Human civilisation is the result of (pick one) trial and error over centuries, divine intervention and encouragement, cultural transmission from space aliens.
• Vaccination (choose one) saves lives or is part of a government conspiracy and besides, causes autism in children.
• Donald Trump is (choose one) a genius and great leader or a malignant narcissist and major threat to western civilisation, if not all life on this planet.
• Things can be both true and false at the same time. (That's some philosopher or other.)

Just in case you like to think that people in the past were wiser than we are – after all, fewer people saw UFOs then, and there was no Donald Trump – here are some of the beliefs humans have held at one time or another:

• Rocks that fell from the sky were of supernatural origin. The best thing to do with them was to make a statue and worship it. Alternatively, rocks never fell from the sky, because that wasn't scientific; therefore, anybody who said they saw a rock fall in the south forty was an ignorant, lying hayseed.
• The shape of people's heads and faces showed their personalities and characters. (Aristotle, for one). Alternatively, whatever animal you most resembled showed your character, because everyone knew what character traits were associated with what animals. I mean, who doesn't know that lions are brave?
• Women have fewer teeth than men. (Aristotle again.) This is the one where you shout, 'Why didn't he try counting them?' followed closely by the unbidden vision of Athenian housewives chasing Aristotle out of their homes while yelling for the police.
• Digging up the ground causes rain. This insane idea of climate change led to devastating ecological disasters about a century ago, so don't get too smug.

You see what I'm driving at. We have so many nutty notions in our noggins, it's like what Paul Simon said:

When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school,
It's a wonder I can think at all…

Knowing how we think and why we think what we think is important. It's important for writers, for two reasons: one, you can do a lot of damage if you have no idea what you're talking about. (See politicians for a horrible example.) Two, when you're writing about other people, real or imaginary, you really have to ask yourself about their epistemologies. What do they think is going on? Are their thoughts even remotely reasonable, given their circumstances? See, this is the sort of thing you need to be thinking about. Now, for some reason, I'm hungry for a milkshake…

PS: Immediately upon finishing this column, I looked at Twitter again. (I was waiting for a reply from a h2g2er about publishing a photo, if you must know.) This time, somebody had posted a 'har har' sign saying 'Welcom Turist We Spik Inglish' as an example of a hilarious mistake. A second look caused me to retweet it to h2g2, inviting Researchers to spot the reasons this was Fake News, such as the US highway signs (I-95, anyone?), the US petrol station, the landmarks in the background…Hush. It's milkshake time.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

10.06.19 Front Page

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