For those who aren’t familiar with the term, it means believing something that probably shouldn’t be believed, or being influenced to believe something that’s not necessarily in your best interests.

  • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    Used to believe that humanity would inherently self-improve, especially the more easily information became accessible.

    People couldn’t read and write at first, and didn’t know much about the world, and now we have instant communication and access to vast repositories of knowledge.

    I believed that people were naturally curious, and wanted to learn and figure things out. Education systems sucked, but with improvement it could foster that curiosity in everyone!

    Turns out that was incredibly naive. Humans have an inherent ego that tries to make themselves more than reality. Their problems are more real than another’s. Their inconveniences are more important than anything bigger-picture. I thought religion were old dinosaur structures of primitive belief systems that lasted for too long, but humans will literally make shit up or believe in some made up shit from someone else if it helps them ignore the inconveniences of reality.

    COVID-19 really helped sink that in.

    • Soggy@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      People are naturally curious but we live in a system that punishes curiosity.

    • DJKJuicy@sh.itjust.works
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      13 hours ago

      Oh man. Yeah, I remember in middle school reading about WW1, WW2, Vietnam, the Civil War (USA) and thinking that thank god we’re smart enough to be past that.

      Yes, also, COVID killed any hope I had left. I remember before the pandemic thinking that if aliens landed all of humanity’s petty bickering would end once we had something that united us all, and when COVID hit I thought “this is it, we have no choice but to come together as humans and face a challenge”…holy shit was I wrong. In the years since the pandemic I’ve had to actively try to forget most of what happened for my own sanity.