OPINION|
I make careful footprints down the frosty, slippery hobbit trail. The hillsides are festooned with dusty pale snow that glitters in the bitter cold. I greet the Oracle with a compliment: she looks lovely, like a bride graced with baby’s breath. The sun breaks through the pale clouds and a burst of light glows on her stony countenance. She’s blushing!
Reality is a harsh mistress. The Oracle sheltered Ozarks natives 10,000 years ago who remembered and practiced thousands of survival lessons. They knew native plants, first aid, hunting, way-finding, trails, enemies/friends, language, clothing, religion, culture, songs, birds, weather, weapons, childbirth, food preparation and lots more without a single written word to guide them.
Knowing the truth was a matter of life or death and the cruel logic of Natural Selection wasn’t in books; it was in their daily decisions. If your child ate the wrong plant, she died.
Today we celebrate truth with spy movies. Their plots build on a common scaffold: there is a certain truth that is worth killing and dying for. World-spanning wars and the lives of millions are won or lost by access to reality. And within the modern fantasy of a spy movie, we understand what our ancestors knew: bad information leads to bad decisions.
Now, we swim in oceans of lies and nonsense. Some are planned like our vibrant and immersive fantasy worlds: dragons and wizards and magic princesses and space ships and time travel and exorcisms! But some fantasies are manufactured to confuse and deceive.
The sheer volume of misinformation and the rise of artificial intelligence places the needle of truth in a mountain of hay and we are left adrift and bewildered. Until we finally elect our first American Dictator, every citizen needs reality tools.
And it turns out, within our culture, there are institutions whose whole purpose, reputation and longevity is determined by their search and display of reality. Two prominent examples are Journalism and Science. And because these disciplines are operated by humans, they are flawed and they are also insufficient. The food colors on your plate mean you’re getting good nutrition and similarly, you need a menu of professional journalism to keep mentally fit. Even that isn’t enough.
Start with periodicals whose reputation is formed by truth-telling and not opinion. Apply skepticism, reason, evaluation, synthesis and common sense. This is called “Critical Thinking:” a practice despised by dictators, propagandists and some, but not all religions.
Real professional journalism costs money and lies are free. So, truth costs money, but not much more than a monthly Starbucks habit. Critical Thinking is what you should have learned in school and if not, there’s YouTube channels for that.
Here’s the best news: For a small amount of money and the discipline of a trained mind, anyone, any color, any religion, any age, any gender can reach out and grab a big ole dose of Reality.
And if all things are equal: better information will lead to better decisions. But heed the Oracle: people laboring under the yoke of bad information will make bad decisions. This plays out on every scale: your decision to change jobs, select a mate, buy a car, vote for a president or keep the planet from burning.
The Oracle says the future is like those who crawl through her deep, dark passages: through tiny tubes of stone in complete darkness, a terrifying and claustrophobic unforgiving maze of silent, sudden danger. You must avoid plunges down crevasses, falling rocks, spiders, mud slides, deep pools of frigid water and the occasional hibernating black bear. To survive, you need a light.
Truth is a light, and like spies and ancestors, we must be obsessed with it.
The bitter cold cuts though my coat. The Oracle says goodbye with a gentle puff of condensation to join the fog bank that grips the hillside. And now she sleeps: cloaked and quiet once more.
Transcribed by her humble and worthless scribe: Dan Chiles.
