Infodemic

It came softly, first, with the timidity of a new student matriculating halfway through the year. Transmitted through the tight spirals of familiarity and trust bred by otherness. Infecting and propagating unfettered until awareness dawned too late, that, independence is a learned behavior. That because the skill-set and will necessary to think for oneself has long since fallen out of fashion we faced this catastrophe absent inoculation. And so it was that scholarship was overtaken by the social media perpetual motion machine. Which values only the sensational. Ushering in this new decade in our great age of enlightenment awash in epidemic ignorance. Contracted through eyes, and ears precisely tuned for the reception of information which changes continuously and cannot be investigated. Bolstered by the compulsory and universal acceptance of godheads speaking and writing fast enough to recraft the world in the image of their half truths and whole lies.

White Noise reigns from the pulpits of power granted the popular and we can no longer distinguish fact from fantasy. Because, questioning is anathema to the salvation promised the obedient. Because the threat of excommunication, of cancellation, hangs over the heads of those faithful lest they do or say or think anything outside the approved messaging. Conformity, even and especially in the pretense of individuality, has become our god and our country. And it came softly. Welcomed into our homes in the shortened news cycle, the lackadaisical relationship with accuracy, and the appellation to authority usurped from the worthy by the exciting. Ours will not be death by disease, stress, war, famine, or loneliness. Rather all those and more as functions of the greater pandemic, ignorance.