Is A T S , and other thought provoking sites

a kind of minority report .?

It seems to me that the vast majority of the population

are quite at ease with their heads stuck in the sand ,

and even visiting a site like this , will never happen .

Are we / us / the seekers , the wheat , and the chaff ,

everyone else . Is ignorance bliss and wisdom pain ?

I'd hold off on the self-congratulations for now. ATS people have no greater claim to the truth than anyone else. At best, we consider non-standard sources of information, entertain ideas that the vast majority of people never even hear about, or reject out of hand. However, most of these ideas are crap.

Before you flame me, understand that I'm not saying they're *all* crap. If I thought that, I wouldn't even bother coming here. But since we're open to possibilities, we encounter far more than our share of nonsense, wishful thinking, fraud, trolling, self-deception, disinformation, and so on.

The reason I know that most of this stuff is crap is because if some is true, the rest can't be. Take 9/11. If the official explanation is true, the others aren't. If the no-plane version is true, then the rest aren't. And so on. Most of the 9/11 theories are wrong; but which, if any, is right? I don't know.

The same reasoning applies to all our theories. If one's true, that means all the rest about that topic aren't true. Since we've got dozens of theories for just about everything, most of them are wrong.

Sounds hopeless, but I don't think it is. No, we can't reliably tell what's true and what's not. We're constantly finding out that one of our pet theories or facts has been thoroughly and conclusively debunked. Hell, I once thought Bushman (famous Chicago gorilla) played baseball. We all have our bitter disappointments.

The one advantage we do have is that we *question* things. We don't just swallow the standard explanation. We ask questions, we listen to the oddballs and so-called "lunatic fringe", hear the ideas of those dismissed by most people. Many of those we listen to are, indeed, crackpots or con artists or hoaxers. Often we'll be misled. But at least we're thinking and questioning.

The wheat and chaff is symbolic of a harvest.

Is ignorance bliss? Quite possibly so but how many ignorant people know how to bake a loaf of bread or sew?

Originally posted by radarloveguy




Is A T S , and other thought provoking sites

a kind of minority report .?

It seems to me that the vast majority of the population

are quite at ease with their heads stuck in the sand ,

and even visiting a site like this , will never happen .

Are we / us / the seekers , the wheat , and the chaff ,

everyone else . Is ignorance bliss and wisdom pain ?

Knowledge that isn`t acting upon , is a greater source of torment than `never knowing`.That is a price one pays for being curious , that is if ones sense of curiosity is used as a device to further understand oneself and the environment we inhabit .

You may of set up a false dichotomy .

Ignorance /wisdom
Wheat /Chaff

Surely there is more to it than `one or the other`.