I have a friend ….. or rather, an acquaintance …. who has led an interesting life. And then about two years ago it took a more interesting turn. And IMHO he has not dealt well with it. Novelist James Lane Allen allegedly said “Adversity does not build character, it reveals it.” My acquaintance has faced the adversity and what has been revealed has not been good.
To paraphrase someone ELSE who famously said things (as passed through my father and now paraphrased by me) “If you don’t learn from other’s mistakes you’ll have to make them all yourself.” And this is where my acquaintance finds himself. Ignorant of history and refusing to learn from it. He admits the only thing he really reads are headlines he agrees with. Anything that happened before he was born is useless. So he finds himself making a LOT of mistakes. And still not learning much from them.
He HAS time on his hands. He COULD use it to learn something – ANYTHING. History. Geography. Philosophy. Linguistics. He’s inquisitive enough. He jumps RIGHT on his Googlebox when faced with a question. But he usually settles for the first answer presented and goes no further. The spark of innate curiosity seems extinguished by the first result. This DOES have the advantage of never sending him down a rabbit hole but the decided disadvantage of never providing any real information beyond the superficial.
It’s been exasperating. I’d like to be a candle in the darkness here but he keeps snuffing me out – to continue an already tortured metaphor. I can’t POSSIBLY have anything to contribute because 1) I’m old, 2) the googlebox says otherwise and 3) I’m going against a headline he read a few days back and agreed with. Rational conversation has been rendered impossible. Meaningless case in point? He believes the NFL uses deep fakes to alter in-game instant replays to control the outcome of games. This doesn’t even rise to a red/blue, vax/anti discussion. It’s reality (“that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” – Philip K Dick) vs make-believe.
I’ll close with a quote from some he’d HATE if he was intellectually curious enough to be aware of her existence: Ayn Rand – You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.” He’s going to have a bumpy ride. For how long? No idea. I just hope those riding along don’t suffer too much.
Checking the Fridge for Leftovers 