#even when said neighbors are actually just. factually wrong in ways that are easily verifiable

[aeide-thea]

there’s something really fascinating to me (and frightening tbh!) abt a worldview that says ‘i’m going to ask whatever people happen to be in front of me, who don’t have any particular credentials or relevant expertise/experience i can verify, abt X topic,’ vs a worldview that says ‘i’m going to go do my own independent research abt this’?

like. watching a whole argument unfold rn abt like. antisemitic bias in the story of jesus and ths moneychangers in the new testament and multiple Uninformed Christians have asked one of the tumblr users involved in the conversation things like ‘could you point me to some sources for this?’ and even ‘what’s wrong with the KJV?’ and i’m like. literally why would your first step here not be, idk, wikipedia even! esp when this person has already said ‘my response is a synthesis of various sources i’ve forgotten and i don’t have anywhere to point you’—that clearly isn’t someone who can provide citations and if you need them, which one always should, you should be doing some independent research, because frankly this person has a stance of their own and even if it’s largely correct, which i’m inclined to think it is bc the NT has an agenda that involves painting jesus as enlightened in all his actions and his non-christian contemporaries as benighted, you ought to be trying to confirm that with evidence from a different, scholarly source! ideally sources plural!

though of course if you don’t feel equipped to do independent research, or to evaluate the validity of what such research might turn up, then i can understand why you might look to others to spoonfeed you; but even then, god, the level of naïveté in assuming that randoms you encounter online are both sufficiently knowledgeable and sufficiently trustworthy for you to just—open up expectantly for whatever it might occur to them to offer you?

anyway, yeah, i did get the impression the folks involved were american and i do think ultimately this all speaks to how poorly most americans’ educations (which i’m pretty tempted to put in scare quotes, i admit) equip them to research and evaluate anything for themselves, such that they’re unsettlingly eager to set up total randoms as Authorities whose assertions they’ll treat as word of god (a loaded description here but honestly, i think, an appropriate one; these are christian sheep in search of a shepherd) if only the person sounds certain enough!

#no real conclusion here but like. scary tbh #i didn’t quite realize how fundamental a divide this was until my dad moved out of the city in 2020 #and it became clear that small-town ppl‚ or anyway the small-town ppl we met‚ really base their stances on what their neighbors endorse #even when said neighbors are actually just. factually wrong in ways that are easily verifiable #but actually checking would involve a very different worldview than just. believing what dick and pat down the road say abt the issue #anyway it was uh. a really eye-opening experience for me tbh #and really left me feeling. not super optimistic tbh. #anyway i thumb-typed all of this so. i will be stopping now lol #metatumbling #hard to talk abt this without sounding condescending and i don’t know that i’ve managed it #but really if anything it’s not so much that i think i’m Above ppl who think like this #as that i worry i’m going to wind up trampled under their boot soles #in their rush to soak up the preaching of every tom‚ dick‚ and demagogue