When applause is more important truth
The video shown here:
https://x.com/BGatesIsaPyscho/status/1879207701521261046
is deceptively cropped to hide that the video is sped up by several factors, to make it look like UFOs instead of helicopters.
X is full of deceptive/gullible people who muddy the waters for sincere research. For every one account that looks more closely and consciously, there are a hundred accounts that don’t.
This happens naturally when you become more interested in likes/shares than truth/reality. Then, instead of reality you get entertainment. That’s fine as long as you can tell the difference. If you can no longer tell the difference, you’re not going to have a successful life because success comes from knowing what is real.
When I see an account appear on my feed with obvious falsehoods a dozen times, I mute them.
“But doesn’t that deprive you of their otherwise good posts?” I take truth more seriously than that. It’s a karmic responsibility. If you expose yourself to too much untruth on a daily basis, you lose touch.
A few weeks ago a friend of mine thought that the typical winter Fog was chemical warfare, based on conspiracy-theories she read on X. She believed it so much that she started coughing. I mocked her for believing it and told her that I had been doing outdoor activities in the fog for many hours without problems. Her cough soon disappeared.
Likes/Shares are a dopamine fix, as any sort of acknowledgement or appreciation – both for the giver and the receiver. Nothing wrong with that.
The “wrong” creeps in when the appreciation-fix of “likes/shares” supersedes telling the truth.
I know this phenomenon from my own life. Currently one of my oldest books, “Parallel Universes of Self” is outselling all other books.
This has led to a people recommending I do a follow-up on the book instead of focusing on books that don’t make money. I’ve been told this by four different people on separate occasions.
I ignore the advice because it’s short-sighted. Making money the only factor of work is for slaves, not conscious creators. “Don’t you understand that for 10 years the book wasn’t selling very well? Every book has its time. And if it doesn’t – who cares? I ENJOYED writing it, even if nobody reads it”.
You know this from your own work: It feels much nicer to praise someone than to tell an inconvenient truth.
But if you always choose good-feeling over truth, you lose both truth and good-feeling in the long run because there is no growth in that.
