The Truth Is Not A Meme - an essay
Many people mistake entertainment for philosophy - or worse, they mistake propaganda for philosophy.
I've heard many people repeat the ideas of a comedian that "Cigarettes might take 10 years off your life - but those are the shitty years where you'll get food by a tube and poop in a colostomy bag," - and use that idea as a rationalisation for their tobacco addiction. Of course, the idea doesn't stand up to a moment's scrutiny. If cigarettes do shorten your life, it's not like they'll just take off the bad years - they'll just make the bad years come earlier.
People repeat advertising slogans like "An apple a day keeps the doctor away," or "Diamonds are forever." It's not true - diamonds aren't particularly rare, and are a rather poor store of value. As Epstein writes in his famous piece for The Atlantic: "The diamond-holding public, which includes people who inherit diamonds, had to remain convinced that diamonds retained their monetary value. If it saw price fluctuations in the diamond market and attempted to dispose of diamonds to take advantage of changing prices, the retail market would become chaotic. It was therefore essential that De Beers maintain at least the illusion of price stability."
Another phrase which I read carelessly thrown about, is the line from Tim Minchin's poem 'Storm' - "Do you know what they call alternative medicine/That's been proven to work?/Medicine." - even that wouldn't be so bad, except that people normally stylise it as "Do you know what they call alternative medicine that works? Medicine." - a subtle change in wording which makes a much bolder statement. With either statement, in the context of the poem, Minchin's point is that we shouldn't use alternative medicines, and that we shouldn't even consider the use of them. To go along with that, we'd have to assume that either: the modern body of scientific knowledge is perfect and lacks nothing, or that the pursuit of truth is beyond lowly non-scientists such as ourselves, or even to scientists who are outside of a laboratory. If we are interested in truth, the ideas which we carry in our heads should open us to greater paths of knowledge, not limit us to our prejudices.
Your thoughts, your words and your actions are valuable. Don't allow anyone to get a free ride in your brain. "Culture is not your friend." Don't allow a pithy expression to be accepted as true, just because it's cute. The truth is not a meme.
About me
My name is Kurt Robinson. I grew up in Australia, but now I live in Guadalajara, Jalisco. I write interesting things about voluntaryism, futurism, science fiction, travelling Latin America, and psychedelics. Remember to press follow so you can stay up to date with all the cool shit I post, and follow our podcast where we talk about crazy ideas for open-minded people, here: @paradise-paradox, like The Paradise Paradox on Facebook here, and subscribe to The Paradise Paradox on YouTube, and on iTunes
The truth is infinity. We will constantly be learning new things that adjust our prescription for seeing part of what the truth is. In some cases that may be a good adjustment, in other cases it may make our vision worse.
We will never see all of what truth is. Yet we do strive to see as much of the big picture as we can.
That definitely will not fit onto a meme. I do get what you are saying.
Yet if a meme were to say "Our body is predominantly made of water" then that would be true. Yet a meme certainly is not THE Truth. That's too big to fit on a meme, or even all of the methods we could record data combined.
Like I said though I do get what you are saying. I refer to people that regurgitate the sayings as though they are wisdom as people spouting platitudes. Memes are awesome for conveying platitudes.
So is a fortune cookie.
Hi @churdtzu
Good post, the one thing I cant understand is that although smokers may joke as stated above they know that they harm themselves immensely, but they still carry on doing it
Yes. I remember my brother used to say that he smoked roll-your-own tobacco, and so it had less chemicals added and was less damaging. I said to him once that I didn't think it was true, the major brands probably still add chemicals. He said yeah probably but I just like saying it. Hahah.
I do think the perils of smoking have been exaggerated to some extent. The tobacco lobby was trying to prove that smoking was healthy for you, so the pushback on the other side had to show how terrible it was, and so now we have this exaggerated idea of how bad it is. Not that I think it's a great idea, but I don't think it's quite as bad as they say.
The point in the post is, even if they know they're joking, sometimes they use these cute phrases to rationalise things to themselves, and I think we're all guilty of it to some extent.