Hey Everyone!! :-)
I've got a little more of Alyce's adventure to share with you, today! Enjoy! :-)
Excerpt from sci-fi satire novel:
I waved it away. "Whatever. You want to know some of the terrible things people have done in the name of 'preserving life'?"
The two aliens nodded.
I shrugged. "Sure, why not. I guess I could start with the videos, though that's not even close to the worst thing that has happened."
"Videos?" asked Yax.
"Yeah. A couple of years ago, a group of people who wanted to slander women's health clinics like this one," I gestured at the exhibit, "secretly filmed some of the staff who worked at one of the clinics while they were discussing the transport of some of the medical waste they had to medical research facilities that could use it to help further their research. Then, those people took that video and edited it to look as though the clinic staff was trying to sell fetuses for profit. Nothing could have been further from the truth, and the people who created those videos were criminally prosecuted for fraud, but there are still plenty of people who believe the lie."
"Why would people believe that the videos were real when they've been publicly exposed as fakes?" asked Squid-boy.
I shrugged. "Because that's what they want to believe."
"But refusing to believe the videos are frauds doesn't make them true," pointed out Yax.
"No. But the fact that they are frauds doesn't prevent people from making decisions and engaging in actions as if they were a realistic depiction of these clinics. Those fraudulent videos succeeded in convincing a lot of people that clinics that serve the health needs of low-income women should be denied funding and shut down. Which is what the people who created the videos wanted. They don't care that it took a lie to accomplish their goal; they just wanted to keep women from accessing the health services they need. And they were successful in that."
The big alien shook his head. "I don't understand how so many of your people can be so willfully, determinedly ignorant."
"Again, because it's what they want to believe. Human beings are never more successful at deception than when we work to deceive ourselves. And it's much easier to convince people a lie is the truth than it is to get them to reconsider their assumptions."
The two aliens looked at me as if I had suddenly sprouted a second head. "That's… rather unfortunate," ventured Squid-boy.
I shrugged. "But true, nonetheless. Like I said before, we can't fix a problem unless we identify it, first."
"And are your people working on fixing it?" asked Yax.
"Some people are. It's always hard to escape your own perspective, but some people try to examine their beliefs and fact-check their assumptions on a regular basis. Other people are less vigilant. And some people still refuse to acknowledge a problem exists, at all."
"That seems a common distribution of responses for your people."
"It is. Generally, the best you can hope for is a plurality of any given group to react intelligently to a situation."
"It's a wonder your species has survived as long as you have," muttered Squid-boy.
I grinned. "Yeah, well, we reproduce quickly."
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