Tag: conspiracy

The Long Proud March of Ignorance

As you probably already know, I read. In fact I read a lot about many different subjects. I read not only because of my profession, but for my own growth and learning. Reading was a habit that I acquired when I was very young that I have sustained over the years. What’s more, I try to place myself in contact with people who will inspire me to read more due to the depth and breadth of their own knowledge. These tend to be my most enjoyable interlocutors.


I offer the foregoing as a preface to the video below, which I consider an insightful treatment of what for many of us is an urgent topic. I have long been concerned that too many people lack the requisite knowledge to grapple with the profoundly complex challenges that we face as a species. The penchant towards increasingly simplistic ways of knowing and understanding reality have contributed to rampant ignorance, susceptibility to conspiracy theories, and even a deep-seated anti-intellectualism.


Lastly, like the great Amadou Hampâté Bâ, I do consider orality as a form of literacy, and recognize its historical import as both a form of knowledge and a mode of social practice. I fear that much was lost in the decline of the great oral traditions of our ancestors. Thus, more than literacy’s decline itself, my fear is already being realized–the widespread celebration of ignorance and its elevation as a way of being in society and the world. This is captured quite beautifully in a Yorùbá proverb which states, “Ọgbọ́n ní ńpẹ́ kó tó ran ẹni; wèrè kì í gbèé ran èèyàn; wèrè Ìbàdàn ló ran ará Ògbómọ̀ṣọ́,” that is, “Only wisdom takes a long time to rub off on others; imbecility does not take long to affect others; it is the imbecility plaguing Ibadan people that rubbed off on the people of Ògbómọ̀ṣọ́.” We are, I have long suspected, living in a time where the ascendance of idiocy will increasingly imperil our lives.


The rise of the post-literate society | DW News https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6t-BBQ8fUQ

On denialists’ folly

I recently watched an interesting video on YouTube titled, “Why flat earthers scare me,” which offered an analysis of the recent history and pervasiveness of this perspective. I agree with many points raised in this video. There are two points that are made that were valuable to me. First, the commentator cites a study that states that people who believe that the Earth is flat have a lower than average level of scientific literacy, but a higher than average degree in confidence in the veracity of their beliefs. Second, she notes that at some point in the mid-20th Century, science, reached a level of complexity beyond the comprehension of the average person—which poses important challenges in terms of scientific literacy more broadly.

This is all very consistent with my experience with individuals who claim that the transatlantic slave trade never happened. I have observed and interacted with individuals who seemed to know very little about history, cultural anthropology, or biology, whose ignorance limited both what they knew, but also what they were capable of understanding. These same individuals were also quite dogmatic in their views, insisting that those who knew far more than them were in fact ignorant of the truth.

Additionally, I see the basis of this ignorance as primarily social—that is, that it is a product of pervasive and intergenerational anti-African propaganda in the US, coupled with the suppression of information regarding African and African Diaspora history and culture in schooling system. 

Further, I think that this kind of ignorance is not only foolish, but that it has significant negative political implications for our community. Their view (that we are, in fact, native to the Americas) consigns historians, linguists, cultural anthropologists, archaeologists, and certainly geneticists to being a part of some vast conspiracy against an implausible belief. Further, they must ignore the preponderance of African cultural retentions in the Americas, accounts by African Diasporans in the 18th and 19th Centuries, as well as actual slave narratives to sustain such flawed premises. Lastly, our historical, cultural, and political connections to the rest of the African world have been and are a vital tool in our struggle for freedom. Such denialism undermines these connections and the potential that they possess.

Finally, these denialists demonstrate a political myopia—that is, not only is their idea historically and scientifically fallacious, it is also politically impotent. They have exchanged our actual ancestral legacy for one whose veracity is non-existent and whose legitimacy will always be contested. They reflect the Yoruba proverb that states, “Ibi tí a ti ńpìtàn ká tó jogún, ká mọ̀ pé ogún ibẹ̀ ò kanni,” which translates as “Where one must recite genealogies in order to establish one’s claim to inheritance, one should know that one really has no claim to patrimony there.” This means that  legitimate claims seldom require such elaborate performance. They do not require the suppression of evidence or its fabrication. They stand on their own merits.

Sailing on the high seas of irrationality

One cannot debunk conspiracy theories with logic or evidence. Logical arguments only demonstrate one’s conformity to the mode of thinking that the conspiracy theory seeks to unseat. All evidence contrary to the conspiracy theory is perceived as evidence of the conspiracy’s existence. The durability of conspiracy theories is predicated upon such circular reasoning.