A Stranger in My Own Land, or: Why People Believe Stupid Shit.

The intellectual laziness in this country is breath-taking!! It's amazing the bull crap that people will believe without so much as a cursory exploration of its veracity. They want to be spoon fed what to believe because they're afraid of thinking about the complexities of life. They'd rather give up that responsibility to someone else so that they can stay in their bubble world where they don't have to disturb their minds over the gray areas of life. They settle for such a servile existence because they know to do otherwise would require them to challenge the program they were given as a child. And they're terrified of deviating from that. Notice how people often say they're a Republican or Democrat because their parents and grandparents are. And the same goes with some religious people.

They fear not fitting in with the dominate social group because they aren't confident in their own abilities to think for themselves. They never challenged their parents, their church, or asked questions about life. They don't know why they believe the things they believe--just do because that's what they were told. They fear change because new and different things challenge the world of predictability that they've built out of sand. It might require them having to do something different than what they are use to and that scares them. They haven't let themselves explore new ideas and ask questions and therefore lack the sense of individuality, which gives a person confidence to face change without needing a group to tell them.

Thus the sad rise of the dramatic, yet usually false, forwarded emails infesting the internet today. A lot of the vile that passes for truth in emails bins today is aimed toward the very sheltered and naive people I mentioned before. These are often people who: haven't learned how to critically think for themselves, couldn't or wouldn't go to college, never traveled outside their home country, believe the worst in people or otherwise weren't introduced to the diverse nature of human existence.

Therefore, they often have a limited understanding of peoples, cultures, ideas, beliefs and places outside their small circle of experiences. This then often fuels fears about those aspects of the world that they don't understand. So, in response to that fear they harbor mistrust of anyone not like them or in their social group and sometimes lash out in anger at them if they are challenged. Some will even go as far as isolating themselves from anyone not like them. So, when they see some piece of propaganda that seems to verify their biases, they don't bother to care what source it originated from.

And for the piece de la resistance, stir in a rampant infestation of selfishness and intolerance, and I feel like a stranger in my own land.