What a great video. Thanks, Stephen.
The whole thing is worth quoting, but I’ll just give a few choice snippets:
“The same claims are repeated year after year…or shouted with more confidence.”
“Contradictions aren’t resolved; they’re framed as proof of deception.”
“It trains people to reject corrective feedback.”
“It locks certainty in place and then it builds walls around it.”
The Flat Earth mythology is one of the real successes of social media and the internet. Always a fringe bit of fluff typically associated with a whole host of similarly fervid opinions*, it exploded on YouTube right from the beginning. Now my perception is that there was just as much satire** early on as genuine belief, but now on YouTube there are endless opportunities to revel in the gospel of the Frisbee Earth.
But before there was video there was a literature of sorts. The classic text is ** you do not have permission to see this link ** written in the 19th century by Samuel Birley Rowbotham. This screed, the source of all the Flat Earth mythology, whether or not current believers are even aware of it, began with a pamphlet distributed in 1849, expanded into a book in 1865. What’s interesting, at least to a fringe watcher like myself, is that Rowbotham includes no appeals to Holy Scripture – that came later – but regards the issue as a matter of scientific proof. He provides detailed pseudo-scientific explanations for most observable celestial phenomena. For example, if the earth is flat how do you explain eclipses?
My own favorite current author in this “field” is a gentleman who goes under the pen name of Zen Garcia. Garcia goes full tilt appeal-to-scripture so his is a useful resource for references in the Old Testament to the ancient three-tiered cosmos. See ** you do not have permission to see this link **. Great stuff!
Finally, here is a video ostensibly aimed at children. I suppose we could debate the ethics of this kind of thing but of course Fittest Flat Earther thinks he’s preaching the truth to a dark world befuddled by godless science.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
*Notice how often hard-core FEers are also superfundie Christians.
**I can appreciate the value of taking an “alternative” position just to see what responses you get.
My own absolute favorite historical crank is ** you do not have permission to see this link ** (Now that I am retired I look forward very much to making a pilgrimage to this holy site.)
The whole fascinating story has been told in a terrific book written by journalist Lyn Millner entitled, ** you do not have permission to see this link **. People seem to think cults and fringe occultists and God-driven zanies originated in the 1960s but man oh man that decade had nothing on 19th century America!
I have relatives in Estero and visited them recently. Noticed the Koresh place but did not go. The brochures made it sound interesting and perhaps quit nice.
Stephen, in that area there is a massive farm to table store which had shrines to Donald Trump in it, which may cause you to re evaluate how odd different centuries have been.
Here is a very readable scholarly paper entitled
** you do not have permission to see this link **
that helps explain why so many people believe such strange things. The authors use the Flat Earth mythology as an example to illustrate their points.
Here’s a brief synopsis (with links to the original paper) written by one of the authors for those who don’t have time right now to read the entire 25 page paper.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
I’ve started the ** you do not have permission to see this link ** and hope to start posting on the Masons fairly soon.
I just came across an older ** you do not have permission to see this link ** by the same author that looks of interest. However, since it’s not available as an e-book and is pricey, I’ll have to wait until I get it through an interlibrary loan.
I’m about halfway through the book and should finish it in the next few days.
But since its aim is to educate readers on the origins of the Masons and not to detail why the conspiracy theories involving them are mistaken, it might take me a while to look into some of the claims that conspiracy theorists make. After doing that, I’ll sift through what she’s written to see how well her research refutes them.
In the meantime, here’s a passage of interest I came across:
Freemasonry could make abstract ideals like reason, equality, and self-governance concrete, even if difficult to attain. By 1750 around fifty thousand European and American men had joined lodges; by 1785 there were probably well over fifteen hundred women freemasons. The colonial numbers are unknown, but the lodges, like the churches, spread with empire. They expressed the highest ideals articulated during the age of Enlightenment; they could also be places of exclusion, purposefully remote from peasants, workers, in many places women, and in all places slaves. Yet in their search for equality and merit, for self-governance, free speech and religious toleration, the lodges look to the future, toward human rights and egalitarian ideals. For that reason alone they would be hated by the enemies of democracy, both in the eighteenth century and also in some of the recently created emerging eastern European and Russian democracies. It is still possible to get into a taxi in Moscow and be told that the country is being run by Jews and freemasons.
P.S. After I’m done with the Masons, I might start looking into the Illuminati.
Stephen said:
First start with the fun stuff-
** you do not have permission to see this link **
If I do eventually get to the Illuminati, the above will definitely be something I’ll want to read – I saw a little bit about it now, and it looks like a ** you do not have permission to see this link **I think I’ll use it as the dessert to get to after I’ve had my main course. I’m cautiously optimistic that I’ll be able to find something on the Illuminati that isn’t as dull as dishwater.
The easiest thing in the world is to make stuff up. People do it all the time. I suppose they want themselves or their origins to be more exotic than they actually are.
Why else would a middle-class Jewish kid from Hibbing, Minnesota tell stories of running away to join a circus, hitching the rails, and other such nonsense?
This is what the Masons did – long extravagant tall tales that are eventually picked up by those who want to see them as the behind-the-scenes movers and shakers of all that goes wrong in the world.
As the author indicates, separating fact from fiction is often difficult because we often just accept the stories we hear about them.
Bart recently mentioned in his very entertaining podcast with James Carville that Dan Brown got nearly everything about the Council of Nicaea wrong, so it will probably come as no surprise to any of us that Dan Brown got the origins of the Masons wrong as well.
There is nothing in the least fanciful about them. They arose from the ** you do not have permission to see this link ** It began with masons but shifted to include a variety of other professions, which eventually came to dominate.
Lodges were social organizations that took much of their inspiration from British political life in the time of Cromwell and later from Enlightenment culture.
They had constitutions, elections, and debate. There was equality among the different social classes that might make up a particular lodge, although the members were predominantly skewed toward the literate and educated.
One of Jacob’s main points is that long before democratic governments were the norm in Europe, the lodges were a microcosm of what we would eventually expect of them.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert