Photo by Mitchel Lensink on Unsplash
The Steemit community is fantastic. It’s full of people with admiral goals and noble intent. Many believe that with vast amounts of new information and blockchain technology we will usher in a new era. Freedom from centralized governments and oligarchs is finally at hand!
I don’t think so and here’s why. History has repeatedly shown this not to be true. Every generation has it’s Zeitgeist filled with the promise of a new age. For instance from the 1990’s the general consensus has been that the internet would provide access to all the information we needed to change the world. In the 1980’s it was the computer and before that it was radio and television that promised to educate and free the masses. They said the same thing of Gutenberg’s movable type and the ability to mass produce books. I’d bet ancient scholars said the same thing about the invention of papyrus, stone tables and paintings on cave walls. This time it’s different! This is a game changer!
But they all made the same mistake thinking that all we ever needed was the distribution of more information. Access to better technology and more information was never the problem. The inability to distinguish factual information from misinformation is the problem. If we cannot discern fact from fiction more information will not help us.
"It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so." --Mark Twain
The inability to tell fact from fiction is a problem but it can be addressed with proper education. There is a larger, more insidious problem we all need to address and it is simply this; once a belief is accepted as true it is nearly impossible to change that belief. In order to change a deeply held belief we must go through some very unpleasant emotions so we naturally try to avoid it. We are “sticking to our guns” and will not “flip-flop” on the issue.
Can I ask you a question? How do you feel when you’re wrong? Do you feel embarrassed, ashamed, humiliated or even guilty? Wrong! You don’t feel any of those things when you’re wrong – you feel them when you realize you’re wrong and most people will go to great lengths to avoid that realization and the associated emotions.
The availability of more information exacerbates the problem by overloading the believer and providing the misinformation needed to maintain false beliefs. The internet has made it extraordinarily easy to create our “own private Idaho’s,” where our beliefs remain safe and unchallenged.
The world is not made up of good guys and bad guys, it is made up of true beliefs and false beliefs. It is the false beliefs that make otherwise good people do bad things. Excluding psychopaths, most people really do mean well and would like to see a better world. It’s only when our false beliefs take control and make us feel the need to protect them that the problems start.
If we think of beliefs as parasitic replicators that infect our minds we can come to some interesting conclusions. Most animals don’t kill each other but we do rather excessively at times. Could it be because we have beliefs and animals only have instincts? Imagine a parasite that infects our minds then protects itself by making us, the hosts feel bad when it is threatened and actively tries to eradicate competing beliefs. This would explain everything from the Inquisition to the Holocaust.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
The notion that government is the problem and anarchy is the answer seems simplistic given the insight above. Governments are run by people with a set of beliefs that make up their worldview resulting in policies. Even corruption in government can be attributed to and justified by those beliefs.
In our “democracy” we the people elect those who supposedly share our beliefs and interests. This doesn’t seem to be working out that well not because of them, the elected but because of us the misinformed. Anarchy and decentralized government does not address that fundamental problem.
Remember that there will always be a ‘lie’ in the middle of believe.
Photo by Chris Li
Even if we live in a democracy we all know that it’s the rich and powerful that run our government. It’s a wonder why anyone votes! But the rich and powerful aren’t “the bad guys” either. Sure they align their beliefs with their interests but they also have to live with themselves and they all believe they are “the good guys” so they must somehow justify those beliefs.
Take the Koch brothers for example. People on the left believe the Koch brothers to be greedy individuals hell-bent on power and riches at the expense of the earth. People on the right believe them to be small government Libertarians. Who could be against more liberty?!
Liberals tend to ignore all of the non-profit charitable organizations founded and supported by the Koch brothers and remember all the climate denying think tanks they support. How can you deny science?!
What’s interesting here is not how good or bad the Koch brothers are but how we perceive them based on our beliefs. There is evidence for both sides but we see only what our beliefs allow us to see.
You can apply this way of thinking to anyone, even the worst of the worst. The most greedy, narcissistic, egomaniacal despots in history had belief systems that made them “bad.” But if they couldn’t convince others to believe in the same things, they had no power. We the believers allowed them to do what they did. We are ultimately responsible for our beliefs and the good or bad that results from them.
Whether or not you accept that our beliefs control us literally or figuratively doesn’t matter because the resulting solutions arrived at are sound. Epistemology and critical thinking skills should be required in our schools. Examples of how easily we can be fooled into believing things that are not true should be taught early and often. History should be viewed from the perspective of a few leaders deluding the many followers. These steps would help to inoculate us from false beliefs.
Technology and the blockchain won’t save us. Only our ability to discern fact from fiction will save us.
I would like to thank kennyskitchen for inspiring this post and I encourage you to read his post: "Let's Achieve Anarchy, Before We Argue About Adjectives"
Comments are appreciated and thanks for reading.
