As I write this it’s the end of the first month of 2025 and I’m approaching the start of my 40th trip around the sun.
Growing up in the late 80s’ and 90s’ I was full of hope. Computers were just coming on the scene, the economy in the United States and around the world was booming and the future looked about as bright as it could get. We had some problems, things like the satanic panic and blaming the AIDS epidemic on the gay community, but for the most part we seemed to be on the right track as a species.
The world has always been a messy place. Peace never lasts long, greed always seems to conquer good and prejudice seems to win out way too often. Even when the solution to a problem seems obvious, we find ways to mess up even the simplest tasks.
But we also have always seemed able to overcome the bad.
Just in the past few hundred years we’ve managed to cut way down on outright owning other people as property and we’ve actually made some strides in recognizing that the human beings responsible for bringing each and every new person into existence are actually worth as much as their counterparts. We are far from perfect, but for the most part we seem to have been trying for the majority of the past couple of centuries.
Then the year 2000 came along, bringing with it a new technology unlike anything humankind had ever seen. The internet.
The world wide web had been around for a while by the turn of the millennium, but it finally started seeing wide adoption as we dealt with things like hanging chads, 9/11 and the first black president in United States history.
With mass adoption came a demand for a wider variety of content and websites. Like the wild west during the goldrush, towns in the form of new sites popped up and grew famous seemingly overnight. Myspace, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and many others would spring up in the course of a single decade. Communities formed, relationships sparked and died and what was once seen as a passing fad quickly became pivotal to life as we knew it.
Entire industries came into being to manage this new frontier. Programmers, data engineers and many other careers were created just to keep up with the growing demands of companies desperate to be at the cutting edge of whatever was coming next.
And it wasn’t just companies lining up to take advantage of the massive piles of money appearing. Individuals dreaming of fame and fortune found themselves becoming “internet famous” overnight. Many found themselves going to bed one night as a nobody, only to wake up the next morning with millions of eyeballs on them.
The world of the social media influencer was filled with those who had no idea what fame meant, and who didn’t know what to do with the new money that was falling their way. Betting everything they had on their viewership, they did whatever they had to in order to stay relevant. Losing popularity meant being unable to pay their bills.
And many of them were young, leading by example and showing others following in their footsteps what was possible if you were just willing to do something stupid in front of a camera.
Among all of this, a storm was brewing.
For all the possibilities the internet offered, the worst was the ability for misinformation to propagate. A famous quote, attributed to many possible speakers, says that a lie can make its way halfway around the world before the truth can even get its pants on. Though the person who first uttered the words might be a mystery, the meaning isn’t.
In the age of the internet, however, this saying should be updated.
“A mistruth will make its way around the world, finding new lies to accompany it, before the truth even wakes up.”
In an age where the answer to almost any question you might ask should be available at the press of a button, we are struggling to even answer basic queries. Even things that seem obvious have become murky.
But how did this happen? And what can we even do about it?
One big issue we’ve faced is a failing education system. Rather than teaching kids HOW to think, we’ve focused on teaching them WHAT to think. We’ve spent decades focused on just getting kids through the school system, from birth to high school graduation. If they get a diploma in their hand we consider it a success.
Can they even spell the word ‘diploma’? That doesn’t matter.
Things like the No Child Left Behind Act purported to fix gaps in the system, but even that was only fractionally effective. And as soon as districts found ways to skirt the new rules they did.
My oldest daughter is an example of one of the kids failed by that system. They put her on an Individualized Education Program (IEP), originally meant to help her catch up to her peers after a rocky start, and used it to push her past 3rd grade despite the struggles with reading she had.
And even when the school offered ‘extra help’ it was never really what she needed. We were able to help her catch up over the course of a couple of years, but the system didn’t do anything positive in the end. We even had to fight with the school to get her off the IEP when she caught up, because they didn’t want to lose the funding that came with it.
But even if we didn’t need to help with the basics, we definitely needed to step in and help teach them things that the school didn’t. Things like critical thinking and reasoning.
Don’t get me wrong, math, reading, writing, history and the like are all important for kids to learn, but none of those things mean shit without the ability to think critically about the world around them and determine truth from fiction.
And that’s where the education system we have really fails each and every kid that walks through the doors of any public school in this country.
The inability to think critically, to really examine one’s beliefs and determine which of those beliefs comport with reality, has hurt the United States and the greater world at large more than the inability to add numbers or read.
That comes out in a big way when you look at the political climate in the U.S.
People believe things politicians say without stopping to think about whether those statements are true or if they even mean anything. They share stories on social media that spark an emotional reaction rather than focusing on the content of those stories and they live in bubbles of like-minded individuals where no one exists to challenge their worldviews.
And when those worldviews are challenged, they focus on ‘othering’ the person who is challenging them instead of looking critically at their own views and determining if those views match the world we live in.
And this is the part where I shift into talking about religion, because while a lack of critical thinking and logical reasoning aren’t exclusive to religion, it is a major driver going against them.
I was brought up religious. Being born Lutheran before eventually winding up in a church of Christ. We were taught a variety of things, including to love the sinner but not the sin (a way to say it was ok to hate being gay among other things) and to steer clear of anyone who didn’t walk the path of Jesus (those damn angry atheists).

As it was the 90s’, I listened to Carmen and I’ll never be able to forget the sound of “Satan, Bite the Dust” blaring from the speakers of our Chevy Astro van as mom would drive us around the dirt roads in northeast Ohio.
I didn’t dare ask any questions and made sure to adhere to what I learned in church for fear of winding up in hell. It wasn’t until I was well into adulthood that I started seriously questioning my religious beliefs, and even then I was hesitant.
I’d always been told that asking questions was a sin. God worked in mysterious ways and sometimes we just had to accept things as they were and trust that God had a plan. No matter what hardship I might be going through, it was all for some bigger purpose and I just needed to be patient.
But, as I started really questioning my faith, I found that those answers no longer sufficed.
It wasn’t enough to hear “just have faith”, I needed more. I had questions that no preacher could answer, that no religious person that I knew wanted to address. I started leaning into the search, trying to figure out the answers, and ultimately I found the most important question I could ask.
Why?
Why do I believe this? Why is this the best explanation? Why is the religion I was born into the right one?
I was starting to think critically about what I’d been told my whole life. It was a scary, yet liberating, experience. If I just kept asking why, I would find my way to the root of the belief and at least get some kind of answer. And sometimes that answer would wind up being simply, “I don’t know”.
And that answer would lead me to more questions and more research. As I went, I didn’t just stick to religion. I looked into my belief in ghosts and things like aliens, bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, any and everything I had ever believed or even considered believing in became a candidate for being put under the proverbial microscope.
Even my political views were suspect, and over time I changed many long-held beliefs. Being brought up in a religious household, I’d been against same-sex marriage, for instance. Looking at it from a logical standpoint, there was no reason I should hold that view. What’s wrong with two people of the same sex, who are in love, getting the same legal protections that a heterosexual couple would get?
I would look at all of my views in that way, and I still do.
It’s important to keep a level head and really examine what we believe and why, and change our views when evidence that contradicts them presents itself. We’re all fallible.
And that brings me to the “how can we fix things” part.
It seems like the world is just so gone. War, famine, hate and so many negative things rule the day, and as individuals all we can really do is survive. We’ve all got our own problems, and some of the bigger things seem impossible to overcome.
We can start by focusing locally.
We should take a look at ourselves in the mirror and examine the things we believe in. We need to really look deep and be willing to admit we could be wrong about each and every belief we hold.
Then we need to look in on our friends and families. In times like these it’s important to make sure those we love are doing alright. Maybe someone you know needs some help with groceries or cleaning, maybe they need someone to talk to or a shoulder to cry on. Even if it’s only a small gesture, you never know how 5 minutes of your time might make a positive impact on someone’s day.
Next, we should focus on building a small, local community. Start by finding others near where you live that are looking to be a part of a support network of some kind. Get together for coffee, network, help each other out. It’s all about building a system where people can go, without fear of judgement, to find what they need.
Expand on that community over time. Maybe include different groups within the group, meeting the needs of the member based on interests and hobbies. This is where things like book clubs, gardening groups, addiction recovery services, religious deconstruction groups and so on can form and bring people a sense of belonging.
Nothing that’s worth doing is easy or fast. Building a strong community takes time and dedication, but the results speak for themselves. When a local community is strong, able to meet the needs of its members, there is nothing that can tear it apart. When you can rely on those around you for support in hard times, you don’t need to reach outside the community for help and events in the world at large have less of an impact on you.
As a quick example before I wrap this all up in a nice bow. Grocery prices in general have been going up, and egg prices especially have been a hot topic as of late. If you are able to work together as a community to grow your own basic fruits and vegetables and raise some chickens, you could just find that those rising prices aren’t such a burden.
No matter what you wind up doing, remember to always question your beliefs. You can never go wrong if you start by asking one simple question.
Why?
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