From the World of Smoke and Mirrors

Capital Thinking • Issue #113 • View online

These days we are bombarded with facts, opinions, views, posts, and videos of every type and description.  

Most of these confuse volume with clarity. No offense, but more folks screaming louder, longer, and from more directions at once is something we really don’t need.

So, how are we to make sense of the world around us? What is real news and what is “fake”?

A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can put its pants on.

I’m sure you’ve all heard that quote before, but have you ever wondered who first said it - and when?

Mark Twain and Winston Churchill both seem to get credit for stringing these words together, but turns out that neither man actually did.

In fact, the sentiment, if not the actual wording is really over 300 years old (you can see for yourself here) and is probably much older than that.

Why?

‘Cause people don’t change.

Broadly speaking, we are a “Monkey See, Monkey Do” species and far more likely to believe a juicy fairy tale rather than a much more boring truth - especially, if the story contains enough gossip, blood, or misfortune.

Sorry to say, that’s just the way it is.  Something hard-coded in our genes to do with loss aversion, I suppose.  

That doesn’t change the fact that jumping to conclusions can, and often does, lead to problems.

Eight years ago ...

… a plane crashed.

In point of fact, July 17, 2014 was the day a Malaysian jet airliner crashed in the Ukraine. Reporters, newspeople, politicians, and pundits all began to leap to conclusions as to the responsible party.

Everyone began pointing fingers long before any evidence was actually presented and it wasn’t long before the talking heads were demanding answers from their representatives.

Now, sometimes the mishandling of information is done on purpose, with the intent to deceive or distract. That wasn’t the case here, but even so, years later not everyone is satisfied with the answers that have surfaced to date.

And then there there are those times when tiny mistakes occur that get blown out of proportion when outsiders believe hidden agendas exist despite all evidence to the contrary.  

This is the story of such a case.

An incident really, that’s long been reduced to the footnotes of history. But it was a big deal at the time and it cost this insider his job.

Here’s the story:

Count to ten when a plane goes down...

Just a little under 31 years ago, I played a key role in a conspiracy theory that grew up around a passenger plane downed by a Russian missile. Trust me, I did not mean to be involved. On September...

John C. Beck, author of Good vs Good

*Featured Photo by Noah van de Wetering on Unsplash

*Originally appeared July 18, 2018