LISTEN. For Matt-
Looking for Life on a Flat Earth
...we have video from space of the rotating spherical earth the earth is round... what's what's odd is there are people who think earth is flat but recognize that the moon is round, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and the Sun are all spheres but earth is flat... Star Talk
...Eratosthenes asked himself how, at the same moment, a stick in Syene could cast no shadow and a stick in Alexandria, far to the north, could cast a pronounced shadow.... The only possible answer, he saw, was that the surface of the Earth is curved... Cosmos
What a burgeoning movement says about science, solace, and how a theory becomes truth.
...Believing in a flat Earth is hard work; there is so much to relearn. The price of open-mindedness is isolation. “It took me about four months before I could talk to someone outside the apartment about this,” Marble said during his presentation. “You’ve gotta be ready to be called crazy.” Several people described the relief of “coming out” as a flat-Earther. “You can tell people you’re gay, you can tell people you’re Christian, but you don’t get ridiculed like a flat-Earther,” I overheard one woman say. “It’s really that bad.” At the bar, I fell into conversation with a woman who was attending a real-estate conference in the hotel. She asked what my conference was about; when I told her, she doubled over with laughter. I cringed a little, protectively, and glanced around to see if anyone had heard her.
The reward is existential solace. This, I came to understand, was the real draw, the thing that could make, say, an unemployed clerical worker drive twelve hours, alone, from Michigan to Raleigh. To believe in a flat Earth is to belong not only to a human community but to sit, once again, at the center of the cosmos. The standard facts of astronomy are emotionally untenable—a planet spinning at a thousand miles per hour, a mote in a galaxy of unimaginable scale, itself a mote in the vast and expanding universe. “That, to me, is a huge problem,” Campanella said. “You are a created individual. This is a created place. It’s not an accident; it’s not an explosion in space; it’s not random molecules joining together.”
You, we, are special. “It’s like God is patting me on the shoulder, saying, ‘You deserve this!’ ” a man from New Orleans told me. He was a trucker, the son of a former newscaster, and an occasional musician. As we were talking, an older man in a wheelchair approached and, in a drawl, introduced himself and asked if we were Christians. He brought up the notion of infinite space and the lack of a creator. “How can people live with that?” he asked.
“Those people are fucking miserable,” the trucker said. “They’re so unhappy.”
(continues)
...Believing in a flat Earth is hard work; there is so much to relearn. The price of open-mindedness is isolation. “It took me about four months before I could talk to someone outside the apartment about this,” Marble said during his presentation. “You’ve gotta be ready to be called crazy.” Several people described the relief of “coming out” as a flat-Earther. “You can tell people you’re gay, you can tell people you’re Christian, but you don’t get ridiculed like a flat-Earther,” I overheard one woman say. “It’s really that bad.” At the bar, I fell into conversation with a woman who was attending a real-estate conference in the hotel. She asked what my conference was about; when I told her, she doubled over with laughter. I cringed a little, protectively, and glanced around to see if anyone had heard her.
The reward is existential solace. This, I came to understand, was the real draw, the thing that could make, say, an unemployed clerical worker drive twelve hours, alone, from Michigan to Raleigh. To believe in a flat Earth is to belong not only to a human community but to sit, once again, at the center of the cosmos. The standard facts of astronomy are emotionally untenable—a planet spinning at a thousand miles per hour, a mote in a galaxy of unimaginable scale, itself a mote in the vast and expanding universe. “That, to me, is a huge problem,” Campanella said. “You are a created individual. This is a created place. It’s not an accident; it’s not an explosion in space; it’s not random molecules joining together.”
You, we, are special. “It’s like God is patting me on the shoulder, saying, ‘You deserve this!’ ” a man from New Orleans told me. He was a trucker, the son of a former newscaster, and an occasional musician. As we were talking, an older man in a wheelchair approached and, in a drawl, introduced himself and asked if we were Christians. He brought up the notion of infinite space and the lack of a creator. “How can people live with that?” he asked.
“Those people are fucking miserable,” the trucker said. “They’re so unhappy.”
(continues)
What an amusing notion, and an even more amusing conversation. It’s strange that we need this conversation, but I believe it’s only natural considering the rise in skepticism toward scientific authorities. Only look toward our current political “climate,” but I digress.
ReplyDeleteNow, natural? Maybe so. Concerning? Even more so. It becomes extremely hard to reason with individuals who posit empirically false notions, ones disproven by firsthand experiences. At the point of providing all the evidence, what more can you do? It’s rather frustrating at times.
Fortunately for us, the flat earth theory doesn’t really negatively effect anything. It’s merely a symptom of another underlying condition. So, I just look on and smile.
I've come to think it's not so benign, in a time of rampant "misinformation" and dishonesty in public discourse. As the Center of Inquiry post above says:
ReplyDelete"A generation ago, the flat-earther at the end of the bar or the anti-evolutionist in front of a congregation could be ignored. But today's science deniers—climate change skeptics and Covid anti-vaxxers—threaten all of us: solutions to both global catastrophes require the public's collective buy-in..."
But yes, it's frustrating to argue with someone who's immune to evidence and indifferent to science. Better to just share accurate information and try to raise the next generations to be more committed to critical thinking.