Opinion Editorial
JUST THE FACTS
by James Strauss
Imagine that you are flying aboard a twin prop supply aircraft and one of the engines develops a problem and smoke is streaming down the fuselage. There’s nobody else aboard, by the way, and you are the pilot. You can either risk landing the aircraft with one bad engine, which would probably work, or you can take the serviceable parachute sitting in the co-pilot’s seat next to you and bail out. If you bail out, you know you have more than enough money in your accounts to buy another plane of exactly the same kind, and in the same condition. What do you do? If you have a brain, you bail out.
And that’s what is happening today within every culture on the planet. People are bailing out left and right, because of fact checking.
Fact checking today, is where people go online to see if what they’ve been told by a particular person or group can be confirmed by information available on the internet. Fact checking is well understood by everyone exposed to the new information technology explosion. The effects of fact checking are not so well known, or understood. In fact, the people selecting to bail out are cloaking, as much as possible, the impact of their actions. What are the fact-checked people, who have been determined to be in error, or telling out and out falsehoods (according to data on the Internet), doing? They are bailing out, on the people who fact-checked them. They are doing it quietly, and without fanfare, and so are you. Nobody, however, is admitting this. Most people who dump other people over these often un-discussed, and seemingly small slights, won’t talk about it. As this new technology allows ever deepening penetration into the social order of man, humanity has to increasingly adjust to the possibility of having to live with the truth, and full exposure, all the time, and in every situation. The results may well be that the race of man will become much more silent, less mythically based, and therefore potentially less imaginative, and less able to creatively invent itself into the future.
Last Monday there was an intense discussion about some wording used by a famous author with respect to the Napoleon Hill book Think and Grow Rich. One of the people discussing this declared, in front of a group of people in a local coffee shop, that he was going to fact-check what I’d said because he thought I was in error. That particular individual was wrong. The quote I used was correct, but the effect on me was exactly the same as if I’d been wrong. I bailed out on that guy the instant he admitted that he was fact-checking me, simply because he was doing that. I bailed out of that damaged relationship the same way I would have bailed out of that airplane. Why take a chance on a crash landing? Why take a chance that the next time that that individual could be correct, and I might experience public embarrassment? I don’t have to take that risk, anymore than the mythical pilot of that aircraft, so why endure it?
In this new millennium, it isn’t fact-checking alone that is causing this restructuring of how society receives and responds to information. It is merely emblematic of what today’s easy revelations of truth are doing. Humanity still lives in a mythical world made up of mostly invented history, fictional present and imagined future. Reality has always trailed behind man’s perception of the phenomenal world he has created, with some reactionary distance. That distance has narrowed with the advent of new technologies. Truth has come home to roost in the present. And it’s not going well for man’s dependence on the phenomenal world, or the continuance of the species as it has known itself to be. For example, when a person answers a cell phone call, while in your presence, it is because that phone call is judged to be more important than his or her interaction with you. When a person leaves the room to take a cellphone call, it is because they want you to be excluded from the conversation, and hence your importance is diminished.
When a person fact-checks you, in your presence, the mere act of doing so diminishes your importance, by evidencing doubt in you, and/or what you said. None of these acts, although easily and deftly explained away, can outweigh the simple fact that you are being shown a truth that you cannot ignore, and are unlikely to accept the explanation for. The person on the cell phone, or fact-checking you, may explain that it’s too loud to talk on the phone in your presence or it’s important for the fact-checker to confirm your accuracy and knowledge, but the truth will not escape you. And you will jettison yourself from that ‘aircraft’ of life, if you are all about survival. And we are all about survival.
There is no such thing as ‘trust with verification’. There is trust, or there is verification. The combining of those three words was invented a few years back, just as “disremembering”, was created by the staff of President Richard Nixon. Everyone knows that requiring verification is not trusting. The phrase is used to hide the fact that someone does not trust, just as “disremembering” has become an accepted word for lying. Human beings live in mythology, not in truth. Yet all humans are taught from birth to lie consistently about that life-giving fact. Attorneys, judges, cops, priests, sales people and social workers, all know about the wholesale nature of lying. You, as a private person, however, may read this article, and turn to the person you’re with, and declare that the article is wrong, and that you never lie. Only yesterday in downtown Lake Geneva, someone said, in front of a whole group of people, the idiotic words you and I both have heard so many times: “from these lips a lie has never passed.”
If you get nothing else from the reading of this article, it should be a sense of relief. You are human, and therefore you are a liar. And no matter how great or small your lies, or your reasons for lying, you now know that you are, indeed, not the only one.
And that’s a fact! 🙂
Yes it is, Charlene!
I hate being fact checked so I always give myself a way out..
Hmmm Moderation. No free speech here.
Thank you for your comments, Holly.
We leave moderation open to assure a more general audience flavor. We do not edit but reserve the right to NOT post offensive material.
Thanks again for your support
This is so true. People of all kinds will lie to make other believe they are honest when telling the truth they will make them selves look bad and hurt there reputation. Take care.
Again thanks for your time and energy ot comment, Howard.
Also we are noticing “people” of noteriety making possible false declarations and the public accepting because of some supposed position of authority.
Have we become a “personality” Ethic centered public or do we still cling to a Character Ethic direction?
Trust is something that one earns. Whether it is my trust in others or their trust in me. When I am told something I always do some fact checking. Sometime it is comparing it with previous items that I accept or tentatively have accepted as true. At other times I go to outside sources, which I also fact check with previous information. With people it is not always trust or don’t trust, but areas in which I can trust a person. I believe in absolutes. There is a right and a wrong, good and evil and so on. I may not now them but I believe that they exist and like science I refine or adjust my understanding of them as I learn. So if I fact check what you say it is because I am human and not a god that knows the truth or a animal that can not comprehend it, but a human being who is pursuing it.
Well stated Terry.
Thanks for you input.
I only fact check a statement if is seems wrong first. Usually I am correct.
Always love to hear from a person of
“Conviction”, Greg
The truth is that the only thing wrong with the human race is the humans that are in it – the plans the ideas the formulas as well as the way that the structures and concepts are conceived with all of the thinking that humans can conjure up is all well and good but then when it comes down to it – there is the human factor that is then what seems to be or at least is blamed for one mistake after another or one misstep after another or one untruth after another – and if that is not bad enough it is also true that someone else – whether intensionally or with or without malice may somehow either begin a lie about another person or spread (through conversational discussion) a lie about another person that may (or may not) damage them for life –
but why in heaven’s name are things this way – why does the human have so many flaws that the mind of man knows are wrong – that the mind sets up so many rules and regulations – practices and exercises to prevent these human flaws to take place and instead – exactly why do these human flaws occur and trip up these best laid plans of mice and men –
Is it because we are from a different Universe – a planet so far from Earth that we still have not detected it for such a long period of time that we are beginning to doubt the small hint of the existence of such being that were not only so far superior than us that they themselves had these perfect minds that we ourselves have within us but they also had the technology and transportation ability along with highly developed skills to plant their minds within the confines of the bodies that we now occupy and which we refer to as human that may have actually been transformed by these beings from a distant Universe so many eons ago –
for what other reason might you imagine that we with our what we consider superior thinking abilities even begin to act – behave – misbehave and torture ourselves as we in this human race do constantly and with an ever increasing frequency –
I for one – would certainly like to know what any of you sane minds in the bodies of the humans here on Earth think about what I have said here – if – you in any way can express that to me here – but without getting you humanness involved in your answer –
thank you!
Walter
My simple answer to the question, Walter, is that we are all born equally in the Image and Likeness of Greatness. BUT have been bestowed with Free Will and it is so much easier to take the path of least resistence, which produces the insanity of humanity run amok.
Your thoughts on that answer.
Seldom does this site receive such deeply thought out and erudite comments such as the one I’m responding to exhibits. Thank you Walter. As you intended, I really have to give your comments some thought. I will say that there is absolutely no ‘taking the humanness involved’ out of anything ever for human beings. We are not, as the highest intellects we know to exist in the universe, given certain gifts. We can’t understand why we are here, where here came from, where here is going and we certainly can’t remove ourselves, physically or mentally, from this here to contemplate anything. We can make believe we can but then, we are given the gift of being able to make believe anything. If this makes any sense to you.
I much appreciate the content of what you are writing and I look forward to reading more of your thoughts so well expressed.
well perhaps someday somewhere somehow Chuck there will a great vision out of the sky that descends and somehow shows us the error of looking for and taking that path of least resistance –
may I never fall into that trap and may I continue enjoying putting the work and effort on a more serious basis with everything that I do –
until now this has been able to create great joy in my life and well and keep me sane to such a degree that I never want to stop working on those things that I really love doing and also – that I remain flexible enough to be able to utilize my free well to transform myself to be able to able to love whatever tasks that are placed in front of me along with loving every moment of breathe of life that I am able to live on this earth-
Thanks for sharing your wisdom, Walter. James has posted several thought provoning opinion-editorials on this site. Have you read any others?
Hi Chuck – I have only been able to read and respond to this one article till this point in time – we have had family visiting from California –
ahh James –
make believe – now that is something worthwhile discussing and looking onto and developing since it is the make believe of the Imagine nation that drives so much worthwhile in our society today:
here is certainly a look back worth reviewing at least once:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHzAtxW3TzY