The above image was made with stable diffusion using the prompt 'easter island stone heads.'
It's common for us, as people, to believe things that later turn out to be untrue. One of my favorite examples of this was the unfounded belief that the big stone heads on Easter Island had no bodies. It was only recently that this belief was proven false, when scientists started digging around a couple of the heads and found them to have matching big stone bodies.
Another of my favorite misconceptions involves population. Beginning in the 1960s, many began to fear that our numbers would just keep shooting up forever, leading to intractable overpopulation. As it turns out, our population growth rate is slowing, and will likely level off by the end of the century, largely as a result of declining fertility.
Looking at our history, I was taught in school that men in ancestral societies were hunters while women mostly gathered herbs and cared for children. This division of labor continues to be used to rationalize all kinds of assumptions about gender predispositions. It's also a total fantasy, as women in foraging societies hunted as actively as men.
Have you ever run across someone who categorizes people as "left brained" or "right brained"? Apparently the former is logical while the latter is creative. The big problem with this way of categorizing people is that brains don't work like that at all. No matter how logical or creative you are, you're using both sides of your brain except in exceedingly rare cases.
In light of these and other follies of thought, it seems certain that at least some of what we currently believe may be mistaken. This is a troubling prospect, but I also find it strangely empowering. Each mistaken belief listed above was one that I myself held at one time. I thought that the big stone heads were just heads and worried about overpopulation. I bought into the myth of man as hunter and took people seriously when they talked about the right and left brained.
What corrected these misconceptions was new information, combined with a willingness to reconsider my perspective. This willingness came easily on these points because the stakes were low. I risked very little by adopting new views.
The truth has always been a moving target, and that target has been moving faster and faster since 2020. I was fooled more than once during the pandemic psy-op, and I tend to be somewhat discerning. At this point, I sort of expect to be surprised by new information that challenges my understanding of the world.
That's the part that I find empowering. My views on society are admittedly grim, so I like when these views are challenged by true information. The process can be bumpy in the moment, but the end result is that I feel like I have a more accurate understanding of the world.
Read my novels:
See my NFTs:
