Not Today...

I have a really great idea for a short story. The plan was to write it today for a little Friday Freaky Fiction. I'm hoping that I have a rush tomorrow of inspiration and time and get it done then instead because it's not happening today.

Today is another school shooting day in America. Another day where my feed is full of rhetoric and hate and the same old talking points and we wonder why our kids keep facing school shooters.

I also have a lot of Yanny/Laurel leftovers and the one I found to be fascinating that I posted today where I could change what I heard based on what I told myself I was going to hear. Now, I have two friends who have kids the age to play with the toy that had the recording, neither of them could make the recording sound like anything other than what it actually was. They knew it too well. Their facts were solid, you might say, so their brains rejected any other option. Fascinating.

The Yanny/Laurel recording sounds like Laurel to me. Can't force the change, can't hear something else unless I go to the postings that have adjusted the frequency to higher and lower so people could hear what others heard. But I hear Laurel when it's set "right" and I cannot hear anything else. In this case my facts are solid, but if given a different angle I can hear what you are hearing, I just know it's not right.

How often do we intentionally change the frequency to hear only what we want to hear?

People talk a lot about bubbles. We live in our own bubbles of people who think like us and act like us and believe like us so we wrongly assume everyone else thinks, acts and feels like us. We narrow our fields down over and over again so the only people we interact with are in our bubble. It's normal. Most people don't like conflict and many people cannot handle differences of opinion without it becoming a nasty conflict.

The other night I told Brent that I think it's only fair from here on out if someone calls me a libtard I get to call them a Republicunt. Usually this is where he says no. Instead he said, "Sounds fair." Because I'm tired of it. He's tired of it. We should all be tired of it. I am super progressive and very liberal, neither of those should lead you to make it an insult. I have facts to back up what I feel. I've read and researched what I believe. I also know there are areas where I am more conservative because I believe in those stances as well. I'm fiscally conservative. I don't think we should have programs we can't pay for. I just disagree with capital R conservatives what the programs deserving funding are, and honestly at this point about the funding programs instead of increasing debt load. There are discussions we should have and compromises we should make. But they no longer happen.

And part of that is people adjusting their frequency to hear what they want to hear. Anti-vaxxers, birthers, flat earthers, climate change deniers, 9/11 conspirators, second amendment junkies, and on and on. There are facts, scientific facts, research, reality based evidence, out there that we should listen to. But you change the frequency so you tune out anything that doesn't agree with what you already believe.

There are other countries in the world with stricter gun laws and they don't have the mass shootings, and single shootings, and gun suicides that we have. You can study it. But you ignore it. Change the frequency and find something else more in line with what you believe, or change the frequency so when I say we need to screen, register and insure you hear we need to confiscate all of the guns and probably throw the gun owners in jail for good measure. 


We are the only developed country that has turned climate change in to a political divide. There can't be warming because I had to wear a sweater today. How's that for your frequency change? Anti-vaxxers can be shown article after article about safety and the real reason we have a vaccine court and they will change the frequency and find a website devoted to the things they already believe and they will put aside everything else because this is what they want to hear.

On and on it goes.

Don't like what you are hearing? Change the frequency. Find something you want to hear more.

And then be boggled at people who know what is right, their facts are solid, who refuse to hear what you do. Even if they can understand what you are hearing, they keep telling you that you are hearing it wrong because their facts are straight and you have just adjusted the frequency to your own happy place. How can they be so sure they are right? Why trust science when you have all of these feels?

It's frustrating.

Stop ignoring the preponderance of evidence just because it feels better to believe that one blogger who agrees with you. Even if that one blogger is me. Though I would think it would be a rare situation where the preponderance of evidence is against what I'm saying. Even though I hear green storm, I know the right answer is brainstorm so I'm not going to tell you that I'm right. I'm not. My frequency is just off.

It's okay to be wrong. It's okay to even feel like it would be more comfortable to be right, yet you know you are wrong. It's okay to look for more evidence. It's not okay to ignore anything that goes against what you think and find the one obscure thing that agrees with you and act like they are the same weight.

No false equivalence in our frequency range, okay?

Ninety-nine scientists to one means that it's more likely the 99 are right. Stop arguing that the 1 is just as valid. If they were then there would be others who agree.

So yeah, I'm not writing fiction today, but trust me, it's a good one. I'm already pleased with it and I haven't even written a word.