The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Let Waste Away.

 Greetings.

"I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be."

Isaac Asimov Ph.D. (1920-1992)

The human species is subjected to a wide range of stimuli, mostly originating from the surrounding environment, with the modern content screaming at us from the various technologies we have developed over the eons since our gradual meanderings from the savannas of prehistoric Africa. The manner in which we processed such mental 'nourishment' has usually been unpredictable, strongly influenced by each individual's own beliefs, opinions, and experiences, but nowadays, the situation has morphed to a substantial degree, and not always in a positive way. 

When our ancestors came into indirect contact with predatory megafauna (direct contact always resulting in death,) the most adaptable pre-humans were often, but not always, able to successfully avoid the danger, and lived on to spread their reproductive seed to others of their kind. The unlucky ones simply fed the predators of the day. Good for the Smilodons! In today's digitized and polarized society, the threats are far more complex, from a technological standpoint, and far less physically threatening than in those Pleistocene days gone by. For reasons that escape my own foggy, somewhat unreliable intellect, many of our peers have fallen into a trap of accepting inaccurate information as valid, without a second, or even a first thought. The aforementioned trap is often set by the very same person confined by its inaccuracies and misrepresentations, never to escape, even when provided with corrective content. 

Terms like 'fake news' and 'alternative facts' have become a part of our vernacular, reflective of our species' penchant for voluntarily abandoning any and all critical thinking skills or healthy skepticism, in favor of sheer and utter nonsense, blind faith and acceptance, and/or rampant falsehoods. As a result, ideas like faked moon landings, the devouring of human babies, reptilian takeovers of world governments, and Elvis Presley sightings have a life of their own, reinforcing the reality that some (many) members of our species are highly credulous, embarrassingly so. Making the situation even more problematic, some people cannot even describe what evidence is, how it is viewed in a legal sense, and what the scientific research community's definition is. 

Logical fallacies have become only too commonplace, committed by persons of all educational backgrounds and qualifications. Even the most dogmatically skeptical scientists have become intellectual putty when exposed to the more tinfoil-wrapped aspects of the UFO subculture, a sad state of affairs to be sure, and embarrassing to the peers they left far, far behind, in a grounded galaxy far, far away. Scientists who have managed to maintain their professional integrity have become public enemy number one in the eyes of the true believers, who claim to want the participation of the scientific community, but in honest reality are only desiring confirmation, and not a damned thing more.

Our desire for confirmation, our highly biased beliefs and opinions, have combined to keep us from considering information and possibilities that have remained unconsidered, all because we can't see past our own noses. One productive course of action, in my humble opinion, that defeats the disease of intellectual laziness, is the consistent questioning of one's own beliefs, opinions, and positions. Such a mental exercise can, and often does, open one's mind to new information and fresh ideas which may allow for the retooling of the gears carried within our brains. 

Let's use our brains, and not our subjective hearts. 

What we believe does not really matter, what we can prove, through the acquisition of valid evidence, does. Period. 

Thank you for your time and indulgence.