Atrocities Speak Louder Than Absurdities

VOLTAIRE is one of those people from whom one is incessantly tempted to borrow a pithy and profound quote, seeing as how he was the consummate wordsmith. He said: "Those who can be convinced to believe absurdities can be convinced to perform atrocities." I almost wish he had made it more direct, something like: "Those who believe absurdities commit atrocities." Voltaire never fails to make you think, and I started thinking, about what seems to me to be an alarming number of people, almost everyone, it sometimes seems, who seem to harbor at least one, and usually more than one, ridiculous belief. Amid all our modern science, we somehow seem to be living in an age of belief in the unsubstantiated incredible. It seems that nowadays anybody is likely to believe almost anything. And then there are the atrocities, which follow, even as the wheel follows the hoof of the draft ox, to quote the Dhammapada. The most glaring example is of course climate change, and the fact that, despite absolute scientific proof concerning what's happening and what causes it, half the people in the United States refuse to believe it. A hundred million Americans, like frightened ostriches, head in sand. The atrocity which follows this absurd belief (lack of belief) is the failure of the United States, despite being a primary cause of climate change, to allow its government to take action to reverse it. Every month the planet warms, America does nothing, under Trump. An obvious atrocity. Examples, of absurd beliefs triggering atrocities, abound in modern America. We currently have a measles epidemic due to people refusing to believe that vaccinations work. What an atrocity. Nobody should have measles. White supremacy, the absurd to the point of being insane albeit tragically common belief among conservative Americans particularly among conservative Christian Americans, that people with lightly pigmented skin are actually in some way, shape, or manner "superior" to darkly pigmented people is so widespread that it infects every nook and cranny of American society and culture, and, tragically, determines much government policy, foreign and domestic, and has since our nation's inception. The entire history of the United States of America, including the present, is a racist atrocity, deriving directly from the nearly ubiquitous presence of the utterly absurd, insane concept of "racism", and "white supremacy". Absurd beliefs engender atrocious behavior, to paraphrase Voltaire. Again, the list is nearly endless. One might have hoped that by the year 2020, in which everybody has a computer in one's pocket and access to nearly unlimited information, that absurd beliefs would be far less common, or at the very least, not widespread to the point of including nearly everyone. But alas, in our information age we seem as capable of abusing information, of twisting it into fantastic unreal shape of our own choosing, as utilizing it to achieve wisdom and know truth. Let's just hope that the good folks who believe that highly advanced alien beings are living among us, disguised as human beings, gradually taking over the world, don't get a notion to do something about it, organize, and arm themselves with easily obtainable fully automatic assault rifles, and go out hunting aliens in disguise, disguised.