It does often seem to be correlated to reactionary conspiracy sentiments. There is the “non-white people could not have possibly stacked rocks this big!” thing

I guess also flat earth?

  • EnsignRedshirt [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    21·
    6 months ago

    It’s just branch of anti-intellectualism. It comes from the same place as vaccine skepticism and extreme views about homeschooling. The ivory tower academics want you to believe that their mundane explanations for mundane things are correct, but what if wild speculation based on things I made up instead?

    It’s also just kind of fun, like astrology. If you’re taking it seriously then you should be institutionalized, but if you just view it as a weird hobby/LARP/creative writing exercise then sure, why not indulge a bit? Who are you hurting by seeing what kind of crazy thing they say next? It’s so far outside anything that would be taken seriously that it feels pretty safe to put in the list of things you can enjoy knowing that it’s all pure fiction, even if some people believe it.

    • keepcarrot [she/her]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      13·
      6 months ago

      (after writing this): Hopefully this doesn’t come off as hostile. I’m a bit drunk and bouncing around.

      I mean, both vaccine skepticism and homeschooling as cultural values can be seen as (partly) the ownership of children, as well as anti-intellectual skepticism (marxists here have reason to disagree with most economists, which could be seen as anti-intellectualism by a certain crowd). How dare you tell me to do something with my property? While any one individual might have legitimate reasons for whatever, its interesting to explore why these ideas spread beyond any one person.

      I think a good example to use is the spread of right wing money churches in the US. While any one individual might have grown up in it, or have been swayed by the rhetoric, you can’t ignore the serious funding prosperity doctrine got from this business consortium. It isn’t particularly interesting to say “Oh, they’re all dumb” or “Oh, they were all brought up in the church” because we can’t do much with those explanations and they don’t offer much explanatory power as to why they spread or why they have entrenched power.

      I think it’s fine for individual people to have a pile of “wrong” beliefs. Frankly, to verify everything would require more time and emotional energy (should they choose to give it, not necessarily a given), so everyone is going to have some. What I think is more interesting to question and explore is why particular ideas have draw or power in our society, even if a number of people have a harmless avenue towards that belief.

      • EnsignRedshirt [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        4·
        6 months ago

        All good points. I should clarify that when I say “anti-intellectualism” I don’t mean “being stupid” but rather the more systemic issue of people being propagandized into distrusting the concept of basic institutions, to the benefit of reactionary forces. “Do your own research” isn’t really skepticism, it’s a more fundamental rejection of reality. There’s a difference between being critical of prevailing institutions or ideas, and being skeptical of the idea that these institutions are legitimate in the first place. Even Marxist critiques of economics are made in the context that the academic institution overall has some merit (or else there would be no reason to be critical of economics, specifically).

        I think the ancient aliens stuff is sort of the sillier end of that more general rejection of reality. It doesn’t really matter if you believe in it or not, but it comes from the same place, which is a rejection of some basic assumptions that most of us do take as given. My guess, if I could make a better attempt at answering your question, is that it’s a low-stakes way of testing the waters with people about their willingness to challenge the more substantial baseline assumptions about reality. You put out an idea that is both unverifiable and irrelevant, like Jesus being an alien, and you plant the idea that there could be other things that might be wrong about what the established institutions say about things. Then you leverage that wedge of uncertainty into getting people whipped up about whatever your actual ideological goal is. More importantly, you do it in a way that undermines people trying to accurately describe the world, because accurately describing the world goes against reactionary ideology.