Behind The Curve: Flat-Earth Conspiracy Documentary
I had the pleasure of watching this documentary the other day. It was a lot better than I expected it to be. It gives a lot of insight into the growing flat-earth community and the history behind it.
It actually reminded me of a few years back when this movement was really taking off. I watched several flat-earth youtube videos. That was a fascinating rabbit hole to say the least. Youtube probably sent me there because I was watching other conspiracy stuff like 9/11 and friends.
Mark Sargent
This guy is basically the main focus of the documentary. Apparently, he is pretty famous within the community. He talks about himself a lot and even has a t-shirt that says, "I am Mark Sargent". His fame within the community goes to his head a little bit. I'll give him a free pass. It feels like this community he's built around himself is a huge part of his life.
"I couldn't leave even if I wanted to."
Many within this community even go so far as to say they can't leave. These outcasts have formed bonds with each other and don't have anywhere else to go.
This documentary tries to stay unbiased but it definitely leans toward poking fun at people who believe in in a flat earth. It would have to in order to be palatable to a wider audience. I was actually expecting it to be a lot worse, but towards the end very good points are made in favor of avoiding elitism.
Surprisingly, the best point made in the documentary is that insulting the intelligence of people who believe in conspiracies is the worst thing mainstream society can do. These people aren't dumb, intelligence is not the issue. When you run around ostracizing people for their beliefs this is extremely counterproductive behavior.
You can't build bridges and engage in healthy dialog by calling someone a fucking idiot for their belief system. The superiority complex that the vast majority of scientists have is a far bigger problem than the people they are criticizing. This applies to all walks of life. I would say doctors are the worst. Atheists are a close second.
I myself am an atheist. I think religion was co-opted by the elite thousands of years ago. It is a means of control. The message has been tainted. Send your money now.
I think the multiverse is far too complicated for the human brain to comprehend. Religion is either completely made up or serves as a gross oversimplification as to what is actually going on around us.
But that's just what I believe, and I seem to be in a small minority. What practical purpose could it possibly serve to insult those who think differently? My delusions of grandeur are already strong enough as it is, thanks.
They never bring up religion in Behind The Curve, but I feel like this is a Christian thing. Correct me if I'm wrong, it just feels like this is a faith-based conspiracy theory. For whatever reason, you have to start out with the idea that the Earth is flat and then set out to prove it.
This encourages strong confirmation bias. The truth is a moving target. If you keep shooting in the same place one is bound to miss. If you want to know the truth you have to be willing to change your perceptions based on the evidence presented.
However, I think we can all agree that there is a lot of weird stuff going on with NASA and outer-space in general. It's not hard to see why people would start coming to some pretty wild conclusions.
Division in the ranks!
My favorite part of the documentary was finding out about the argument of whether our flat earth has a dome or not. That really cracked me up.
How could anyone believe XYZ?!?! They must be fools!
Honestly, my experience with people who believe in outlandish conspiracy are actually "smarter" than average. There are multiple kinds of intelligence, so I might be playing favorites here, but it takes a lot of intuition and extrapolation to go against what you've been told and come to a new conclusion.
The irony of global thinking.
Conspiracy theorists are global thinkers. They start with sweeping generalizations and try to deduce how the world works by using this top-down approach. From this perspective, it's easy to see how a smart person using critical thinking can come to a wrong conclusion.
We know that money rules the world. We know that very few people have a lot of money and are willing to do anything to get more. We know that controlling information has always been important throughout history; now that we are in a digital age this is exponentially more true. Data has been monetized and weaponized.
What do you get when you add all these facts up? Literally anything. You can't trust ANYTHING! If profit or power can be gained from manipulating perception, then we must assume that is happening. We all have to pick and choose what we believe and hope we are right. Oh, sweet irony that it was "global" thinking that brought flat-earth conspiracy into the world. How marvelous!
Conclusion
If you know for a fact that the Earth is round, which one is worse:
- Believing the Earth is flat.
- Believing everything you are told.
No matter what we believe, we have more in common than not.
Robust diversity is just as important as solidarity.
I'll just leave this here for your consideration
The AE (azimuthal equidistant) map is a complete farce. They always like to mix in lies with truth. Some people think that they brought this topic out to the public as a distraction from #DonaldMarshall. Of course, that is just speculation. Also, I was on youtube watching "conspiracy videos" long before this Flat Earth stuff went viral and it definitely didn't start from a Christian origin. I think the originator was Eric DuBay who is far from Christian.
Interesting and good to know.
Personally when I am looking at a conspiracy theory I ask myself who benefits from the lie. With flat Earth, I've been trying to figure out what the gain is to concealing that truth. The only thing I could come up with is biblical. Satan wants us to worship science over God and all that.
spot on. only there is no satan, just evil men who want you to think there is one, to take the blame for their crimes.
who benefits? those who perpetuate the lie of a 1038 mph spinning ball and a vast, random, purposeless universe, the rulers who own and operate almost the entire world now. give it a few more years, 5G, and the abandonment of cash and they'll have their new world order tyranny.
Jesus smashes it all though, but if you want to survive to the next eon you gotta repent..
Eric Dubay was not the originator. The originator was Math Powerland.
explain to me why they removed the AE map from earth.nullschoool.net then.
watching it made so much sense.. as you watch the air flows in circles around the planet.
it was removed without comment, without any sort of reason given.
but i'll say it was because it made too much sense.
Iv'e been tempted to watch that doc for awhile now but its hard to get away from binge watching the office lol. As a "christian" (and I use that term loosely) I dont believe that the earth is flat, nor do I believe that it is perfectly spherical, due to shifting tectonic plates, seismic activity, gravitational pull, etc. etc. could all warp and shape a planet thats in constant motion.
I'm not sure what there is to gain from spreading flat-earth theory or vice-versa other than to spark attention/enlightenment and cause people to start digging. Thats what happened to me after I saw Zeitgeist for the first time. Growing up christian I was pretty much spoon-fed christian/catholic dogma, but after Zeitgeist I realized I needed to dig deeper into my faith and find out if what I was raised to believe was actually true, and I got the answers I needed. I dont think flat-earth or round-earth is really that big a deal, what is a big deal is exactly what you pointed out, the insulting, name calling, and downright asshole reactions from the opposition.
There once was a man who said "love your enemies" and "do good to those who hate you", and thats the man I try and emulate, and I could only recommend that to anyone being bullied or persecuted for what they believe in.
It was a good documentary indeed. I'm not ready yet to go flat earth but I guess you must make a lot of good friends in the meetups.
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You know that most conspiracy theories these days are started and pushed by the US government!? It's all part of their project at DARPA called Narrative Networks.
Check it out:
https://www.darpa.mil/program/narrative-networks
It wouldn't surprise me if many Flat Earth videos on YouTube were made and pushed by them. 😅
That's all part of the war on information. Flood the narrative with as many bogus conspiracies as you can so all of them get undermined.
It's a lot easier to drown out a conspiracy with 1000 other conspiracies than to try to bury the information. Flood the world with a million different viewpoints and most won't be able to sort out what is true and what isn't. Covering something up has proven to be much more difficult.
Haha. I love how you try to do the "middle of the road" take but it fails spectacularly in this case.
Will you do the middle of the road take of the hollow earth "theory"?. How about Geocentrism? Turtle holding up the world "theory"? Hollow moon "theory"? (notice theory in "")
No. There is no middle of the road take here. One side is demonstrably wrong and the other isnt. There is no number of shady rich guys that can be pulled out of the ass by conspiracy theorists to justify questioning reality.. Treating this as "belief" is wrong as well.
These ideas should never be given the legitimacy of being taken seriously.
Well this is completely false. You can indeed trust many things. In the matter of fact, you can trust most things.
Especially when we are talking major things the conspiracy theorists like to talk about.
Conclusion:
It doesnt mean youre stupid if you believe in conspiracy theories or that the earth is flat. It doesnt make you smart or smarter either.
This is most definitely not my experience. What ive found is that theyre either dumber then average or slightly strange. Especially those over a certain age.
Tell me a conspiracy theory you believe in.
No matter which one you choose there will be a large group of people looking to call you "demonstrably wrong" and a fool for believing such a thing.
I've made it quite clear that the attitude against outlandish conspiracy theory is far worse than the faith in the conspiracy to begin with.
People are surrounded on all side by deception. It makes sense that they would lash out and start guessing wildly as to what they were being lied to about.
Better that people believe something incorrect than blindly trust authority.
Have you seen The Matrix? Your entire life experience is based on electrical activity in the brain. People are ants; they don't know anything. We just run around building things and our economy creates emergent properties that we don't even understand. Ants.
I dont believe in any conspiracy theories. Only things i believe in are those that can proven to a high degree. Theres things you prove with evidence and facts and then there are silly claims based on flawed thinking.
People lash out and make silly claims. Why give that kind of thinking legitimacy?
Youre surrounded by deception. Sure. But theres a difference between saying someone might have tampered with votes in the, i dunno, parliamentary elections and that earth is a pancake.
What? The authority on shape of celestial bodies is astrophysics. So are you saying that its better to believe the earth is a pancake then to trust what your astrophysics professor says?
No and no again.
The best course of action is to understand the science. Slightly inferior, but still highly correct course is to trust those educated and valued by their peers in the particular field of science.
Believing something incorrect doesnt even register on the scale of good ideas.
Really? A cave man that learned how to make fire already "knew" something. We are far beyond that. According to some estimates science understands 4% of the universe. Thats just a estimate, but the fact is that we know much more then a ant.
Im not sure why, maybe because Steemit has a strong tin-foil hat wearing community (few days ago i ran into someone shilling Orgone energy here out of all things) but you seem to try and lift up nonsense a bit and give it legitimacy.. And you dont seem (from reading your posts) as someone that will subscribe to crackpot science and outlandish theories.
Nice Read Edicted. I agree with a lot you are saying here. Especially that religion made to divide. Flat Earth is one of the few theories that i have not dove into myself.
I used to believe that the earth was round and then I believed that it was flat. But now I just don't give a shot what shape it is tbh hahah. It's so confusing but I respect people's opinions
I think mr Sargent knows that for the most part it is a matter of belief versus belief, as most simply believe what they have been told, whether spherical or flat, and most on either side therefore have a hard time disproving the other, which gives him the floor.
I must shamefully admit that I have personally not proven anything and that I adopt the global perception simply because it fits well into my common sense / intuitive perception of how things work!
I think that this idea, theory or whatever you want to call it it's pretty easy to counter, what we have to do to refute it isn't try to explain the complexities of having a spheric Earth it's to let them to prove their crucial fact. Where the hell is the border if the Earth is flat?.
No one can prove that simple question in the Flat earth theory, and it's pretty absurd to try to prove that.
True, according to the documentary, the south pole is the edge.
Therefore, all you'd have to do is fly across the south pole to debunk flat-earth.
However, what would happen then?
No one is going to change their mind.
The evidence will simply be bent around the assumption:
This is why I make the claim that this is a faith-based argument,
because everyone is begging the question and assuming the conclusion is true.
This is why we need to stop trying to provide evidence and animosity in the face of faith-based arguments, and instead attempt to provide trust and love. No one changes their mind because they were insulted or ridiculed; quite the opposite really.