Imagine What You'll KNOW Tomorrow

"Fifteen hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."

--K from Men In Black

I love this quote, and I was thinking about it today when I talked with my mother about how ridiculous it is to check "facts". In quoting "facts", all you're doing is telling somebody listening to you that you're repeating something that somebody else made up. And other people think, "Oh, he's quoting a reliable source, so we're going to believe him."

In the grand scheme of things, though, we really don't know anything. Everything is up for grabs. In the 1600s (like 1616, or something like that... I could look it up, but I find it hysterical NOT to look up facts when writing about looking up facts), Galileo went before the church and told them that he thought the Earth revolved around the sun, and the church placed him under house arrest for the rest of his life.

Come to find out, the church was wrong in what it KNEW.

Conversely, Galileo said that the planets revolved around the sun in a perfect circle and dismissed the oval-shape-orbital-path theory that had been suggested by his contemporary... ummm... let's call him Ted.

Turns out Galileo was wrong in what he KNEW, too. Ted was right. Galileo wasn't.

So I'm going to start taking "facts" a little more with-a-grain-of-salty. Some "facts" are things that I can bet on-- I put gas in my gas tank and my car goes forward when I want it to-- and I don't really have to think about them much. Other facts-- God exists, Republicans are bent on destroying this country and the personal freedoms we all used to enjoy, body fat from dairy products is harder to lose than other forms of body fat, bubble gum takes 7 years to digest in your stomach, teachers and public schools are important and necessary, if you masturbate you go blind, objects in motion tend to stay in motion while objects at rest tend to stay at rest, there is no cure for cancer-- I'm going to think about as much as I want to, knowing that there aren't any Right answers, per se, only answers right now. And if I start to get too upset about stuff and think that people are stupid, I'm going to try to take a deep breath and ask myself this, most important, question: What am I going to have for lunch?

Incidentally, I didn't go blind. So, at least for me, that one's not a fact.
Well... I haven't gone blind yet...