Believing the Endlessly Repeated Lie More than the Truth

Fighting against the Republican War on Science can be wearying. Sometimes I just need a break. So I read Life on the Mississippi, by Rinker Buck, which is a story of how Buck and his crew built and floated a flatboat down the Ohio and then the Mississippi Rivers, recreating in modern times the flatboat trips that helped establish the United States of America as an economic power in the early 1800s. The book is delightful, and I highly recommend it. It was a much needed distraction from the antiscience battles that fill my days.

But in the final pages, Buck was grousing about the litany of falsehoods he had heard when he was planning his trip. He mused about how many people exaggerated the dangers and predicted his certain death. Then Buck wrote these words, which struck me as being more true for the modern day claims of antiscience forces than for doomsday predictors for a flatboat excursion.

“Shared falsehood, endlessly repeated, is more powerful than the truth. In fact, all of these dangers were just problems to solve, a chain of circumstances that, taken apart link by link, could be overcome. But we don’t want to take things apart piece by piece — that’s too laborious, and too lonely. The human mind defaults toward the herd, believing the endlessly repeated lie more than the truth.”

That last phrase, “believing the endlessly repeated lie more than the truth,” is true for those denying climate change and those hesitant to be vaccinated. Don’t default toward the herd. Examine the science piece by piece, even if it’s laborious and lonely. Don’t let falsehood be more powerful than the truth.