Humanity is a mixed bunch, some of them are artists while others are engineers. Some are naturally gregarious and extroverted while others prefer the solitude that could be classified as introverted behavior. They also come with their fair share of insecurities and social constructs that change from society to society, geography to geography, religion to religion, gender to gender.
Some of us like our fears and anxieties assuaged, so we will sometimes make up stories to get that attention. Some of us like for people to remember us as being more than the mere mortal existence, we inhabit. After all, not all of us are secret agents or information technology, multi billionaires or powerful politicians changing the fates of millions. It is those ordinary people that sometimes in a mixture of craving for attention or masking their own insecurities will invent or imagine events and realities that never exist or have never occurred. One must not confuse knowledge and factual information with opinion. Opinions are built upon information or can be just made up out of thin air. Some opinions are frivolous and prone to being changed easily due to a person not giving it too much weight. Others tend to hold onto their opinions with the much more ferocity, regardless of how nonfactual and illogical they might be.
A more common term for such ideas is nonsense. Previously, the only way for such ideas to propagate used to be drawing room discussions, tabloid columns or the trashy television show. The Internet, however, has changed the rate at which nonsense propagates and infects humans.
The year is 2001 and I am waiting on the teacher at my Cambridge Education Board school (
Where the majority of the elite and middle class in Pakistan in the larger cities prefer to send their children) for Pakistan History to arrive and begin her verbatim recitation of the Cambridge assigned textbook that is supposed to teach our nubile minds on Pakistani history. This day was different, it was September the 12th 2001. As if by some odd sense of irony, the night before I was flying a Bell 204 Jetranger on Microsoft flight simulator 98 – a true classic, and had tried several landings on the 2nd tower of the WTC which had the helipad when CNN broke the news. I watched in silence till the early AMs of Pakistan standard time and went to sleep thinking Who would do it? Why would they do it? How airliners could be flown in so tightly in between buildings without trained pilot at the helm? Where was the USAF in intercepting these aircraft? Surely the New York and Washington Air National Guard would respond as it is standard practice to have a ten minute alert and so on and on….
Now, I failed to mention that I was obsessed with aviation as a child which is why my glasses were an unfortunate event in my life. That still did not keep me from buying every other book and magazine on aircraft and other defense matters from the various thrift book stores that line Islamabad and Karachi since the age of 10. So why the age of 14 I was quite well versed in topics much different than the usual occupations of boys that age.
Back in class, our teacher whose existence I detested with all my heart arrived in class looking more ashen faced than usual. In a rather callous manner I presumed that someone in her family had died. “
Did you know what happened?!, The Americans will take revenge, my cousin told me that they have oxygen eating missiles that will asphyxiate all of us in 30 minutes” and then she burst into sobs. Most of the class looked bewildered and some of the more emotional sassy girls also decided to cry because it was important to score points and why not?
My mind however, drifted onto thermobaric warheads and the ridiculousness of her assumption since neither the Minutemen Series or Trident was equipped with them as they employed thermonuclear warheads which wont asphyxiate us as much as fry us or blind us. Furthermore, strategic ballistic missiles in general were not equipped with conventional warheads; so where did this woman who I already considered a stupid sass pick up this nonsense?
What did become clear to me at that age was that people in Pakistan will believe anything that their cousin, uncle or shopkeeper tells them. They don’t seem to want to verify anything with at least a few other sources; if it is what they want to believe or they don’t want to believe then nothing can change their mind.
What is it that is the Pakistani mind that it decides to accept hearsay and unverifiable information as factual and and believes it to an extent that it surpasses their own religious beliefs. As I would grow older I would realize this is not a Pakistan specific condition, but it extends across the human race. The majority of humanity is generally lazy and prefer willful ignorance to the verification of any information that they gather via all of their senses.
@Horus Why I know too much
@CriticalThought why I emphasize a LOT, a LOT of reading from multiple sources
