Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
We’re facing an epidemic of misinformation.
The election was stolen; the pandemic is a hoax; and a secret society of Satan-worshipping cannibalistic pedophiles are running a child sex-trafficking ring and trying to take over our country — these and other conspiracy theories have taken center stage lately, despite having no basis in fact.
They stay alive through opportunists and true believers who prefer their own misconceptions to real truths: Biden really did win the election, COVID-19 truly is a killer, and Q-Anon is a whole lot of made-up nonsense.
Of course, those conspiracy theories are from the conservative side of our political divide, but the right doesn’t have a monopoly on far-out conspiracy theories. Many a liberal believes in one sketchy conspiracy theory or another about John F. Kennedy’s assassination, or what really goes in corporate Wall Street board rooms, or what those “con-trails” up above are actually doing to us. Maybe there are more conservatives drinking the Kool-Aid these days, but that doesn’t mean they have a monopoly on misinformation.
Nowadays, it’s easier than ever to advance a baseless conspiracy theory. Just go online, where algorithms constantly collect data on you, then keep you engaged by pushing you toward your biases. For some, that’s led them into extreme thinking, and it’s become so bad these days it actually poses a threat to our democracy.
Thankfully, there are two checkpoints that can catch us as we go down this slippery slope.
One is critical thinking — using empirical evidence and fact-based analysis for reaching reasonable conclusions. This is not an intellectual’s exercise only; it’s also the way a mechanic “trouble-shoots” and fixes an engine, and how that IT person figures out your computer problem. If more of us would apply critical thinking, along with a healthy skepticism, to all the nonsense out there on the World Wide Web, we’d all be better off.
The other checkpoint, one with a long-term impact, is exposure to the truth.
Look at it this way: False and misleading information is like a dark cloud over our lives; it reduces our ability to see our surroundings clearly. But the truth is like a ray of sunshine peeking through those clouds to illuminate our world.
Falsehoods, on the other hand, are like secrecy. They stifle our understanding of the world as it really is and encourage us to imagine the worst.
Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:
