In his July 13 opinion column, “Why Americans are so prone to conspiracies,” David Von Drehle explained our conspiracy theory dilemma but didn’t offer any biological reasons for this tendency — or potential solutions to curb it.
Human creativity is connected to our minds’ powerful capacity
for pattern recognition; we have the capacity to believe literally anything. And we don’t always question what we see or hear from others within our beloved
tribe. We assume there are obvious connections even when there are none. Our
past successes have built unwarranted confidence and a limited ability to
understand reality. Our brains, originally wired to assist our families and
tribes to survive and thrive, must now adapt urgently to cope with the
acceleration of global chaos.
Conspiracy theories will continue. Some are justifiable — and
sometimes, they may even be true. But Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse
Tyson has articulated a concept very useful for healing our species’
current detachment from reality: the difference between our personal, political
and objective truths. In our current era of accelerating truth decay,
relearning how to think and how to relate to the real world as it truly is
matters now more than ever.
Chuck Woolery, Rockville
Below is a much longer and poorly written letter I originally submitted. They did a fine job of editing and condensing it - but left out some details that might deepen our understanding of our mind's inherently flaws.
David Von Drehle explained
our conspiracy theory dilemma (Sunday op-ed) but didn’t offer any biological
reasons or potential solutions.
Our conspiracy beliefs are primarily
driven by several flaws in our Pleistocene mind within our brain.
First, our species uses reactionary
thinking instead of the deeper thinking it is capable of.
Second, our creative genius plus
our opposable thumbs has enabled humans to swiftly advance our ability to survive
and thrive - The two most important things that every life form is hardwired
for.
Our mind’s creativity is
connected to its powerful capacity for pattern recognition, enabled by 5 (maybe
6) variable sensory receptors. (Note that plants have about 20 different sensor
mechanisms and they have existed for about a billion years longer than primates). Our mind has the capacity to believe
literally anything. And we don’t always question what we see or hear from
others within our beloved tribe. We
assume there are obvious connections even when there are none. Thus, our mind’s past successes have built
unwarranted confidence and a limited ability to understand reality.
So, over the last 6000 years,
human populations have expanded as our minds created certain concepts like
religion, politics, trading systems.
These helped bond and protect our growing tribes. But these concepts too often lead to killing others or insisting they
adapt.
Primates will always fight
and compete! But only the human species
has created weapons of mass destruction and a mindset that can justify mass
murder or genocide on a scale our human DNA was not hardwired for.
So now our minds are in control, not humankind’s original spirit of ‘being human’ and resolving conflict without mass slaughter, which originally was not a conscious option. Yet that is what we are now choosing.
Our mind’s original purpose of assisting our family and tribe to survive and thrive must now urgently adapt to avoid our current acceleration of global chaos, massive suffering, and preventable deaths.
We must collectively grasp
that our family is humankind. Abraham
Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and other wise souls, using deep objective
reasoning, have summarized that we will either live together as family or
perish together as fools.
Charles Darwin recognized in evolution that things are always changing. Life
forms that fail to adapt become extinct.
Of the billions of life forms ever existing on our Goldie locks planet -
99.9% have gone extinct. Unless we
quickly recognize that all humankind is genetically 99.9% the same - with an
intelligence that has now created non-biological super intelligence - our
family’s only chance of survival is one or both sources of intelligence finally
gaining collective wisdom. And then,
deciding to stop defending the various concepts that once worked but are now
our greatest mental problem.
Conspiracy theories will
continue. Some are justifiable and sometimes true. Neil deGrasse Tyson wisely framed a concept
very useful for healing our species’ current detachment from reality - and our
insanity of doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different
outcome. He observes three types of
truth. Our personal, political, and
objective truths. The first two have
flaws that should be self-evident to any deep-thinking being. And the understanding that objective Truths
are never governed by majority rule.
Truths like gravity, 2+2=4, unalienable rights, and a child should not
die before their parent(s). In our
current era of accelerating truth decay, re-learning how to think and how to
relate to the real world as it Truly is, is now more than ever.
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