Tuesday, February 17, 2015

The Gospel of YouTube.

What do you know of the Illuminati?
 
I know absolutely nothing about the Illuminati, very little about the Freemasons, and a great deal of rumour and innuendo about the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission. I am not a conspiracy theorist, you see, and so for the most part do not care that much about the nefariousness of the aforementioned Illuminati, Freemasons, Bilderberg Group or Trilateral Commission. I may be wrong, but I do not believe that the world is in the secret grip of a tiny, organised, well-connected elite that manipulates world events with decades'-long foresight. (I do not believe that Barack Obama's presidency was planned in the year of his birth when his father struck a deal with a secret cabal that would plant newspaper stories about his birth in American newspapers, et cetera, et cetera.)

I do not see silent black helicopters in the nigh sky every time there is a terrorist attack on our fair land. I do not go to bed wondering whether the regulatory cold shoulder given to KTN, NTV, QTV and Citizen TV by the Communications Authority is a plot by the Kenyan chapter of the Bilderberg Group to control the four main media houses in order to sell more telenovelas, and the ads that go with them, to unsuspecting housemaids, stay-at-home wives and the Lotharios who hang around.

I am a student in all that I attempt, even when I have done something for years. I remain a student, because it is in questioning received wisdom that I hope to gain wisdom. It is not in my nature to blindly follow the pack simply because the pack believe in the Gospel according to YouTube. It is my duty as a student to ask tough questions and to question the accuracy or veracity of the answers I get. It is therefore very difficult to believe that a well-connected, highly intelligent, truly wealthy cartel will sit down in a room to co-ordinate the election of a half-black/half-white man from a broken home fifty years before the man goes to school and becomes an accomplished community organiser in a state known for political corruption of a truly frightening scale.

How can I accept that a woman who was completely unknown a decade ago would be groomed for world domination by being steered into a girl band, leave the girl band for a solo career, take up with a ,man whose ego needs no introduction, marry that man, bear a child with him only so that she can become the Queen Bee of a Hive that will obey her every command, even if those commands are subliminally transmitted to her Bee Hive without thinking that the peddler of that particular morsel of conspiracy theorising must ask for his school fees back?

It is known as the scientific method, my friend, a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry is commonly based on empirical or measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. If you haven't sussed it out yet, if, in your disquisition on why Beyoncé is Illuminati and why I should be afraid of this development, you fail to demonstrate how this tidbit will help me acquire new knowledge, or correct and integrate my previous knowledge, I don't think you and I should be in the same room together. You are unlikely to take my reaction to your declarations kindly.

Simply because you assert something with a tone of confidence does not mean that I will accept it as true or accurate. I will test your assertion. I will subject it reason and if it falls short of my measurements, based on my knowledge, I will discard it as intellectual dross. Should you wish to challenge my choice, please marshal all the empirical and technical information at your command, and leave out the University of Google or the Gospel of YouTube, please. If you cannot do that, please join the rest of the Luddites in the ash heap of history, where the Sun revolves around the Earth, the Earth is flat and an object cannot displace its own mass in a body of water.

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