I tweeted the following on April 2nd, 2019, about one month before deleting my account:
Our technology is evolving faster than we are. We have built ourselves a twenty-first century library when we possess stone-age critical thinking skills. What did we think was going to happen?
I later learned that Dr. E.O. Wilson once made a similar point, in a statement often quoted by the Center for Humane Technology:
The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.
His version may be better than mine. I'm just glad I'm not alone.
I’ve been an ideologue at times. I’m sure I still am in certain ways, in ways I don’t even notice. Perhaps we all are. Still, I find ideology exhausting and uninteresting. I rarely enjoy talking to people about meaningful issues when I can predict their beliefs. For this reason and others, I’m frequently saddened that our current environment has made so many of my peers so closed-minded. Of course, it wouldn’t be right for me to end this post without blaming social media, and true to form, I do believe the filter bubbles of social media play no small part in this phenomenon.
When we talk to others one-on-one, especially about difficult topics, we have a responsibility to ensure that our message is heard. However, if it becomes clear that the message won't be heard, because the listener isn't genuinely curious and open-minded, we owe it to the listener and to ourselves to move on. This fact seems obvious, yet we seem to continually forget it.
I think of science as a verb, a process for discovering what's true, rather than a body of knowledge. Some people might say it's a process for discovering what's not true; that might be more accurate. In either case, when I run into people who distrust science, I wonder if they see it the same way.
We need to do away with the myth that cults are simply religions that are new, strange, or misunderstood.
Unitarian Universalism is very new, having formed in 1961. Few people really understand the group and it is unusual in its acceptance of diverse beliefs. Still, I don't think it's especially dangerous, destructive, or controlling at this time.
Cults punish disobedience. They demonize doubt. They rip families apart, attack critics, and teach that critical thinking is a trap. They convince their adherents that the world is out to get them and they demand that authority is never questioned. Cults treat dissent like a virus, hastily exiling nonconformists and freethinkers before their views can spread. They treat their doctrine as perfect and their people as disposable. (Of course, their doctrine can become more perfect over time.)
Focusing on beliefs misses the point. All religious groups espouse beliefs which others find strange, but not all religious groups behave this way.
Cults destroy lives. When we fail to label them properly, we give cover to that destruction.