The reality of pseudoscience and conspiracy theories today makes me skeptical of the theories and the people who believe in them.
On the other hand, being reminded of the vast differences makes me relatively realize that my own values and thinking are closed in a certain world.
All people believe in some kind of fiction.
Unlike classical fictions, modern fictions are not clearly presented as rites of passage or biblical ones, and many of their believers are often unaware that they believe in them. It can be said that they are passive believers who have irresistibly accepted the "norms" and "common sense" of the society to which they belong.
Passivity does not necessarily mean that the strength or blindness of the belief is weak. However, in today's world, where trends change year after year, it is relatively easy to switch the object of one's belief through various discoveries and realizations.
Fictional structures and communication technology
The structure of these fictions is largely dependent on changes in accessibility of information with the development of communication technology.
From a time when accessibility to information was extremely limited, the development of telecommunications technology led to the rise of mass media, enabling the masses to access information from centralized information agencies.
Furthermore, the development and diffusion of Internet communication technology has made it possible for individuals to selectively (or personalized) receive all kinds of information from their personal devices.
Here, we focus on the spread of telecommunications and Internet communication technologies, dividing them into three eras. Although there have been several triggers in the history of human communications that have dramatically improved accessibility to information, such as the invention of letters, paper, and high-speed means of transportation, for the sake of convenience, we will focus on the period after the early modern era.
With the development of communication technology, we have moved from an era in which diverse values could coexist due to physical limitations, to an era in which the mass media has created a shared illusion that transcends physical distance, to an era in which the Internet has created a decentralized polytheistic world.
How to behave
Our predecessors have expressed a wide variety of opinions.
Some ideas have been rejected, others affirmed, and third ideas have been considered, thus creating a continuous succession of contexts. Sometimes a discontinuous idea (which is often rejected by the majority) emerges, but it is continuously combined with some context.
What we can learn from them in common is that the attitude of believing and aiming for the uncivilized absolute truth that lies ahead is what makes something truly creative, after accepting that what we have known at the time is mixed with lies and that much of what we believe is fiction.
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