Truth

While updating my blog yesterday I found an old quote that I love: “First, fill your mind with truth; second, fill your life with service; and third, fill your heart with love” – Thomas S. Monson

I feel so grateful for that advice, is from an article from 1995 but it seems that applies today more than ever

Over the past few weeks I’ve seen a lot of people sharing videos, articles or change.org petitions about the most wild theories mixing half-truths with a lot of nonsense from obscure sources

One of these recent videos is a short movie called plandemics (Judy Mikovits). That video has been taken down or flagged as false information at several social networks, but believe it or not regular users (not fake profiles/bots) are still sharing it like that is a competition or a fight against something!?

Here a fact-check of that video, in case you are interested, as that video will probably still float in social media for a while

But the main thing I’ve been wondering is why people choose to believe such false claims?

One side of the problem I guess is about filling our minds with truth: or in other words about reading articles from valid sources, checking facts etc. Some articles or truths are difficult to understand without more research however knowledge can be accessed almost anywhere anytime

So how is it possible that in 2020 people still believe that the earth is flat?

It turns out it may not be a concious action

A long article by a sociologist points to denialism, as someone defined it as “when an entire segment of society, often struggling with the trauma of change, turns away from reality in favor of a more comfortable lie“. It is a complex scenario because the behaviour is tied to desires and feelings, therefore there is little or no point on trying to convince a flat earth believer with facts, for instance

But the danger of denialism is that “offers a dystopian vision of a world unmoored, in which nothing can be taken for granted and no one can be trusted. If you believe that you are being constantly lied to, paradoxically you may be in danger of accepting the untruths of others. Denialism is a mix of corrosive doubt and corrosive credulity”

Stated otherwise, if you start to live in denialism (consuming conspiracy theories etc.) you are more prone to accept more false content, and more prone to make bad decisions because of that

Just to elaborate a bit more on the dangers of denialism: early in the Book of Mormon, Nephites and Lamanites, two original tribes, split (after the Nephites ran away from them to avoid war). Many years later when both tribes get in contact again the Nephites learned that the Lamanites taught their children that Nephi robbed their fathers, so all Lamanites should hate, rob and murder the Nephites. That caused wars and destruction during generations

A more kwown case is the Holocaust or Nazi genocide, yet there are theories that deny it ever happened

So in times when media is filled with conspiracy theories and false claims be a hero, read books, fact-check things first, fill your mind with truth