What separates a semi-intelligent person from mastery of a topic is familiarity. Geniuses will pick up a subject insultingly fast, but most of us will need time to adjust and learn.

The good news is familiarity is a choice: we decide how much time we allocate to learning a new skill or becoming proficient in a new field. The bad news is that, once we accept that familiarity is a choice and a matter of time, there’s nowhere to hide.

Familiarity is a choice

The atomisation of society is not all bad: finding niches in which we can enjoy our passions with like-minded people is a privilege of the current age. However, it has led to a dissonance: we have become less able to interact as members of larger groups, in which a disparity of opinions is not only inevitable but ever more common, as everyone becomes more entrenched in their atomised passion groups.

It’s natural to struggle with this conflict. Most of us grew up in a society with a solid mainstream, in which the best and most popular were often accepted as the same, and everyone knew what everyone was talking about. Now, it’s not unusual for many not to know the most famous people, and most people are completely unaware of some of the most celebrated figures in specific fields.

As usual, such difficulty should point the way in which we should work. Significant issues are seldom easy.

Seldom easy

Many experts concur that mis- and disinformation are the most imminent threats to peace and harmony. One doesn’t need to be an expert in history or geopolitics to see that the current trends can only lead to global conflict and mass deaths. At the heart of it is the insatiable greed of the very few, those who fuel polarisation to continue to grow ever wealthier as most of us grow ever poorer.

If mis- and disinformation are the main ways in which the global order may collapse, it’s about time we punish them as hard as we punish the worst crimes. Of course, that would mean going after those very few at the very top.

Punishing disinformation

It is no coincidence that defenders of impartiality and freedom of speech are often the same: that is, people who have no intention of defending either principle but only their self-interest.

Those who accuse organisations that attack them of being biased cannot have any credibility. One should defend oneself, one should have the right to defend oneself, but there is no guaranteed legitimacy. If one has committed a crime, no defence will withstand the burden of proof, the knock-out blow of objective truth (can there be any other kind of truth?).

Charlatans have become adept at disguising themselves as victims of conspiracies and cabals that exist only in their imaginations and the media they own. The attacks on the institutions that should attack these threats to freedom and impartiality are equally imaginary—but no less effective.

Charlatans vs the truth

I am from the place where I became the person that I am, not the one people want me to be.

If the place I’m from has changed, am I still from there? If I have changed, am I still from here? If I’m from somewhere that doesn’t exist anymore, am I from anywhere? Can I be from nowhere? Can anyone?

An origin may no longer exist, and the same goes for a destination. Only movement matters, the current position, this point in space and time. We are this point. The rest is out of our control.

This point

A musician drives us to tears every time we replay a song they performed at a concert we attended.

An author keeps an obliterated village alive by writing the intertwined stories of those who once inhabited it.

Paying for art is never straightforward. How much are emotions worth? What is the price of memory? We could probably agree that art is invaluable. We still need to ensure artists can make a living. A healthy society inevitably has well-fed artists. (Rather than artists who are fed up.)

Martian Thoughts

Familiarity is a choice

Seldom easy

Punishing disinformation

Charlatans vs the truth

This point

Well-fed artists