18)  Ultimate Trump

The ultimate trump card will be played by nature. 

 

What “nature” am I referring to?

 

Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Weather, Human-Nature.

 

As I have discussed before, we can have any belief system we want.  But if that belief system does not include nature, it is going to have problems.  And in today’s world of virtual reality computer games and TV shows and movies, it becomes hard to tell which belief system is incorrect.

 

Napoleon set 250,000 soldiers on a march to Moscow on June 1812.  But by the time they got there in the winter, his troops were way down in number due to starvation and due to freezing.  Napoleon ignored lack of food and winter weather.  Not only did he lose the war, but he also reduced his army’s size so much that additional campaigns failed.

 

There is the anti-vaccination conspiracy theory, which has gained great traction due to anecdotes, but has no basis in medical tests.  It is a theory ignoring nature.

 

And a test case of that conspiracy theory is just now occurring in Samoa.  A couple of kids died a couple years ago due to the incorrect mixing of the vaccine, so everyone in Samoa latched onto the anti-vaccine conspiracy theory and stopped vaccinating their kids.  In October 2019 the measles outbreak started, but since only 31% of the population of the islands was vaccinated, measles became an epidemic, spreading from person to person quickly.   Here we are 2 months later in early December and the epidemic has already infected 4000 people ( 2% of the population) and killed 60, mostly young children.

 

The government of Samoa has set up a massive vaccination program, cancelled crowd functions, doesn’t let anyone enter or exit the islands without proof of vaccination, made non-vaccinated households display a red flag on their door, and is going to mandate vaccinating everyone by law.

 

Nature trumps anti-vaccine conspiracy theory.

 

Of course its proponents will claim that the news from Samoa is just a part of the conspiracy’s detractors.

 

So what other conspiracy theories are out there? 

 

Man never walked on the moon.  At this point, it doesn’t seem to make much difference.

 

I have heard “I don’t believe in science”.  That one strikes to the core of nature.  It means funding for science research could stop, and that means that scientific developments will stop and move elsewhere, and if allowed to proliferate, could send us back to the dark ages, including superstitions.  And by the way, there is no possibility of so many people existing on the planet without scientific systems to manage the resources, so a lot of people will have to move on to get the population down to tribal or feudal sizes.

 

There have been many laws created which say that humans should behave in certain “good” ways, especially about illegal drugs.  But those laws go against human nature and have caused much more harm than the drugs themselves would have.  Besides the normal people who have been introduced to the court system just because they wanted to get high, it has also caused a general disrespect for the government.

 

The big question is this:  can humans learn to recognize unnatural belief systems?  And if they can, can they discard the unnatural ones?

 

Not sure.

 

It is too easy to ignore nature when living in a mechanized and charitable city.  How about sending conspiracy theory believers to a nature survival camp to show them the strength of nature?  Doesn’t sound feasible, and I am not sure it would work anyway.

 

But whatever, I do believe that nature holds the ultimate trump card.