Thread by @PnictogenHorses

we in the Pnictogen Wing are perhaps nearly alone in thinking that "flat-Earth" people, i.e. human beings who cling to the notion that the Earth is not a spheroid but instead a disc, are not totally pointless.

flat-Earthers are, for most of Western society, safe targets.

(1/x)

for that reason alone, we are drawn to try understanding the phenomenon better, rather than simply discard flat-Earthism and its adherents as worthless and laughable.

what drives a person to endorse such a quixotic worldview, one that insures their permanent ostracism?

(2/x)

there's emotional benefits to belonging in a mostly-despised faction, of course. the faction experiences so much pressure from outside, the society *inside* the bubble is practically forced to be orderly and well-disclipined—a safe haven from an otherwise chaotic world.

(3/x)

belonging to a faction furnishes a sense of purpose and loyalty to a single cause. corporations behave this way, and political parties, and fandoms; so do the flat-Earthers. they all confer a similar sense of belonging and common cause.

but why *flat Earth*? why that?

(4/x)

here we can only speculate, because we've never personally known any flat-Earthers nor have we watched anyone testifying as to their *radicalization* into flat-Earth belief. we can't easily imagine what it's like to think, all of a sudden, that maybe the Earth isn't round.

(5/x)

but let's start with something obvious: the citizens of Western civilization are inundated with *lies*. we live practically submerged in an ocean of deceit.

all sources of news about the world available to the citizen of the West are, in some way or other, deceitful.

(6/x)

this is inevitable in fact: one conceals truth merely by picking and choosing which bits of truth to report. one may "lie by omission", as the Catholics put it—@elonmusk's club of propagandists, @mtaibbi and @ShellenbergerMD and so forth, exploit this to maximum advantage.

(7/x)

all news media massage the truth, to lesser or greater degree.

mainstream American news media, for example, tends to conceal the sins of whoever's President. sources aligned with the @GOP (e.g. @mtaibbi and friends) amplify Democratic crimes and hide GOP crimes from view.

(8/x)

*everyone* in #media lies, in some way or another—especially the people who most forcibly advertise themselves, @FoxNews style, as tellers of unvarnished #truth.

people sense that they're adrift in a sea of lies, even if they're not sure about the nature of the deceit.

(9/x)

this fact, sadly, makes Western audiences particularly susceptible to propaganda and confidence tricksters.

common people of the West place huge emphasis on #faith—whether it's faith in a religion or ideology, or faith in a specific person—and this makes them vulnerable.

(10/x)

they don't know whom to trust, hence are apt to put all their faith in anyone who claims that they're always telling the truth. @GOP politicians do this, as well as @TheDemocrats' politicians; fraudsters like @dalepartridge and @elonmusk sell themselves as truth-tellers.

(11/x)

when you trust *nobody* and *nothing*, you're cut completely loose of your moorings, intellectually. who's around to correct your blunders, if you don't trust anyone to be correct?

hence, you're likely to be susceptible to especially grandiose lies, like @elonmusk's.

(12/x)

if you think *everyone* is lying, and your rigid mind doesn't allow you to distinguish between small lies and massive lies, then you're more likely to believe in truly enormous falsehoods.

#Christianity is to blame; it's erased distinctions between small and large sins.

(13/x)

but still, why *flat Earth* especially? there's so much else out there to place all your trust in, if you feel that everyone else on the planet is abusing yours.

we can only guess. the commingling of fringe beliefs into loose coalitions must have something to do with it.

(14/x)

as Dan Olson ably pointed out in his semi-recent video on the flat-Earth phenomenon and how it's merged with the reactionary "QAnon" conspiracy-theory crowd, a lot of these fringe movements have a common thread of Biblical faith; they treat the Bible like a history text.

(15/x)

the #Bible doesn't explicitly say that the Earth is flat anywhere that I recall, but (taken "literally") its cosmology is extremely simplified and thus quite consistent with a worldview in which all that really matters is Earth, as a sort of stage for God's great drama.

(16/x)

the Earth might as well be flat, in other words; if Earth is merely a training camp preparing us for war in Heaven (the war for which evangelical #Christians of the @dalepartridge / @PastorJohnHagee sort are especially bloodthirsty), then does the Earth *need* dimensions?

(17/x)

we suspect there's something else at work, though: a semi-conscious repulsion from the way in which #space is itself a kind of cult idol: Western nerd culture idolizes the "conquest" of space and glorify American space exploration as the pinnacle of human achievement.

(18/x)

that's not necessarily a bad thing, but in the last couple of decades, the space geeks have gotten especially obnoxious. @elonmusk and @SpaceX are partly to blame for that, as well as the coarsening effects of #capitalism, which corrupts and debases everything it touches.

(19/x)

there was a time when Western #space exploration seemed like a worldwide achievement, not just a Western one or an American one; in space travel, people saw a glimmer of hope for selflessness, international collaboration, and the transcendance of national boundaries.

(20/x)

that's all gone sour, and now space exploration is a crass, commercial thing—just another one of @elonmusk's loopy schemes for enriching himself and hewing out a personal kingdom. that attracts a certain sort of crowd—a toxic, self-interested one (q.v. @Teslaconomics.)

(21/x)

our most visible spokesperson for #astronomy and the scientific aspects of #space is Dr. @neiltyson, whose public reaction to the New Horizons Pluto discoveries was sneering about how Pluto was really a comet.

there's no wonder or awe in space, only smug triumphalism.

(22/x)

it's probably unwise to conjecture that the flat-Earth cult is somehow a *reaction* to excessive boasting and boosterism about the "conquest of space" and its commercial exploitation. but these things do feel to us like the extremes of a spectrum of belief about space.

(23/x)

too much pride and eagerness about exploiting space on the one side; complete denial that space travel is even real, on the other.

*shrugs* I suppose we've thought too much about this matter.

~Mona Drafter

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