Reason to believe?

Where do you place your trust? It’s long established that you can’t believe everything that you read. Stuff is often written with conscious or unconscious bias and you’re reading it with opposing or parallel attributes, likely the latter since you chose the medium. They used to say that seeing is believing but unless you were there in person this is also subject to nefarious effects and editing.

It’s gotten to the stage of scepticism that I believe nothing. If Tesla damages their supposedly bullet-proof car window in a press event my default is to assume that it’s a set-up. An average car launch is not that interesting but throw in an ‘accident’ and suddenly it gets more traction. How come there was a metal projectile so readily to hand and why would you choose to try something so risky and never previously attempted in such a public forum? I now know that Tesla has a cybertruck in development, which otherwise would’ve escaped me. Given that there were 150,000 orders placed in the 48 hours post launch perhaps it wasn’t exactly the disaster it seemed. 

In the ongoing UK election fiasco, there’s been reports that the Conservatives have deliberately made shoddy videos in the hope they’ll go viral. Their aim is that non-supporters will share the footage in order to mock it, whilst the overall effect is to gain a greater share of audience and spread their message wider. Subsequently, I may mock dePfeffel Johnson’s inability to make a cup of tea or embarrassing attempts at mixing with ‘normal’ people or his failure to know the words to a children’s song. All the time I’m doing this I’m increasing the quantity of references to his name and inadvertently building his brand. If that’s the kind of brand he wants then he’s welcome to it, but the adage clearly remains: no publicity is bad publicity.

Electioneering is now an insidious business. Politicians are so terrified of making mistakes that they’re barely stepping outside their mantras. So scared of being savaged and shared that they think neutrality is an option or so wary of being dragged down by someone else’s negative rating that they can’t admit the reality that somewhere along the line they’ll have to make deals with them. Consequently, we get bland when we need bold, placid meandering instead of giant steps, old tropes in place of new hopes.

Photo by Arnaud Jaegers on Unsplash

It has been the most depressing of campaigns in the dreariest of days. Try as I might to step out of my comforting political bubble by engaging others with different views, it’s a wasted effort. They want to stay in their bubbles too and until such time that facts and logic take precedence over entertainment and conflict, we are doomed to repeat this procession. We need someone with strong morals and genuine passion to give us a reason to believe, even though they often turn out to be fakes. Scepticism rules in the interim and nothing can be taken at face value. Wake me up when it’s over, if it ever is.