Common Courtesy

There’s a deluge of misinformation and disinformation out there, and some of us are just lapping it up. But why? Why would someone want to think that anything except the truth is worth repeating, or hearing? The truth is we want to believe what reinforces our own beliefs. It’s a matter of emotions over logic. Think of a five-year-old, and you tell that child not to touch a pot that’s on the stove. What happens next? If you leave that child unsupervised, they may still end up burning themselves. Curiosity is an emotion, and that emotion can often far exceed self-preservation, especially for children. As adults, we’re supposed to “grow out of it,” but the truth is, we don’t necessarily succeed. With limited time and resources, we often either don’t have time to fully 360-inspect a news item. So we take what we can get, and if it feels true, we don’t bother looking farther.

What does this have to do with common courtesy? The common courtesy is not letting them believe crap. When we hear someone spewing nonsense, the courteous thing to do is correct them. You may not be thanked for the effort though! We discuss this and other topical items in this episode.