It’s not mere extremism that makes folks at the fringes so troubling; it’s extremism wedded to false beliefs. Humans have long been dupes, easily gulled by rumors and flat-out lies.1
— Jeffrey Kluger
One of the best things I did in my life was to abandon the notion of having beliefs. I mentioned this in Herd Immunity, but at this point in my life, I have three core beliefs that I hold dear. The rest of the ideas are just “working hypotheses.” I call them this because that’s what they are: I state a hypothesis and then go about living, reading, studying, and gaining cursory experience. If new evidence contradicts a working hypothesis, I examine and decide whether or not to adopt this working hypothesis or abandon it. One faulty dogmatic statement I held dear for years that I later abandoned was my views on yoga. Before, I thought yoga was stupid or was only for chicks. However, I was challenged by some female friends and coworkers to do yoga every day for 90 days. I came to love yoga for the health and mindset benefits and not just because it is a great place to meet girls and stare at butts.
Thanks to the COVID-19 Pandemic, many things that we thought were true have been challenged, especially in education. The notion of “working from home” or “taking online classes” are new paradigms in the corporate world and education system. However, adaptation became necessary, with companies and jobs worldwide adapting to the struggles of staying open during a government-mandated lockdown. If you were a “Boomer Boss” who believed everyone had to be in the same building to “take part in the wonderful company culture” (yes, this is a real trope from my short-lived corporate career), then you had two options: either close your business down during the Pandemic or loosen the thumb screws and allow people to work from home. I have a friend that perfectly illustrates this problem…
My friend and her husband live in the suburbs, and her job’s physical office is in the city. Working at this job requires a minimum of thirty minutes of commute one way to work. For many years I made that commute five days a week, so I don’t know how she’s done it as long as she has. With good behavior and years employed, she accepted a promotion in which one of the perks was that she was allowed to work from home three days a week. However, because her “Boomer Boss” needed her in the office two days a week, this company spends money for her to have an unused parking space five days out of seven. They also needed plenty of office space, so everyone in the company had a physical desk. How much do you want to bet that my friend isn’t the only employee in this company that could do their job from home just as efficiently as in person? If my friend could do her work from home every day, her “Boomer Boss” wouldn’t need her in the office, knowing she’s just a phone or Zoom call away. So was it really about my friend being in-person to absorb that amazing corporate culture? Or was it a control mechanism that “Boomer Boss” used to control his employees?
Thankfully, many people got to experience work-from-home conditions for the first time in their careers thanks to the Pandemic. Since this article is about education, I’m a big proponent of online classes and self-directed learning. Many say they don’t like online courses because they find it challenging to stay focused, or they feel they need in-person learning to get help from instructors. Plus, a certain element of learning is made better by being in person. However, I argue that the need for in-person learning, except for certain classes and labs, has become obsolete with secondary and college education. A motivated person could take many courses of study in a fraction of the time and cost of college. Self-directed learning threatens the current education paradigms: if people don’t need to spend four years and five or six figures of debt for one to three useless degrees (depending on their course of study), then why does college exist in the first place? Food for thought.
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Faulty Beliefs From Non-Belief
This is where intelligence can trap you. Just because you have the wherewithal to question societal dogma doesn’t make you immune from dogma. Misanthropes fall into their dogma as well. Two great examples of being trapped by dogma due to questioning dogma are the Flat Earth Society and QAnon. On the one hand, they’re correct in their desire to question society’s blind acceptance of Earth being an oblate spheroid and that there is a secret pedophile cult that involves Hollywood and the world elite, respectively. But, on the other hand, they abandoned one dogma, only to go “balls-deep” down the rabbit hole, trapping themselves in another dogma. In truth, Flat Earth is pseudo-science at best, and QAnon is just computer nerds LARPing as political activists. But good luck trying to get these misled people to see this.
One of my beliefs based on non-belief that I abandoned in my adult life was identifying as an atheist or secular humanist. On the one hand, I studied the Renaissance, and I’m fascinated by Humanist writings. On the other hand, if you couldn’t tell from Herd Immunity, I’m all for people challenging faith and the existence of a deity or deities. I do believe there is an energy that permeates the universe, I think some people need faith to make sense of their lives, and I do believe that many people can feel this energy, even if we can’t define it. Unfortunately, some people choose to identify this as “God.” One of the things that turned me off to atheism is the dogma and behavior of said atheists. They abandoned the church’s dogma, only to get sucked into the dogma of being self-righteous. These pedantic assholes waste their entire lives trying to argue the non-existence of God with anyone who stands in their proximity. It’s okay to not believe in a god; it’s another thing to speak down to people like you know. Billions of people on this planet belong to one of the big-five religions, without accounting for atheists and paganism. As long as you aren’t killing in the name of God, I don’t care what you believe. The problem with atheism and antitheism is that people trade their zealotry. At one time, they were zealous towards faith; now, their zeal is directed towards being anti-faith. Dogma is still dogma.
Another fascinating observation I’ve made in my quest to separate actionable knowledge from dogma came from the fitness industry. Since we now know that countries with an adult population greater than 50% percent experienced ten times the COVID-19 deaths, this has caused the “Healthy at Any Size”/ “Big is Beautiful” crowd to own up to their dogma.2 Rather than admitting they were wrong, they doubled down like the short-lived Kentucky Fried Chicken sandwich of the same name and continued to base their illogical arguments on emotion and aesthetics. They challenge that people don’t want fat people around because they think it is a disgusting aesthetic. At least I have the balls to say it—a fit woman is always more appealing to me than an obese or morbidly obese woman. I found it interesting that even though my argument is that obesity is not only unhealthy to the individual but also unhealthy for your country (causing increased healthcare spending, unnecessary deaths, and unnecessary lockdowns), these “fat crusaders” still made their counterarguments about the aesthetic. Numbers don’t care about your feelings or your pants/dress size.
From a dogmatic standpoint, this is fascinating to me because both the fitness industry and the antithesis of the fitness industry (Which I call the “Fatness Industry”) are making their arguments steeped solely in aesthetics. Amid a worldwide health crisis exacerbated by an adult population living an unhealthy lifestyle, people still chose to make their obsession aesthetics-based instead of health, function, and quality of life. I also argue that the “Fatness Industry” is spearheaded by the pharmaceutical industry and designed to make people obese, putting them at risk for many quality-of-life diseases and disorders. This, in turn, makes them lifelong customers for copious amounts of prescription drugs and medical treatments. One could make the case that our food is being poisoned to make the average person a lifelong customer of the pharmaceutical industry after watching documentaries such as Supersize Me and Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead. However, at some point, a modicum of self-control and personal responsibility has to come into play. I’m still waiting for governments to mandate that all obese people go to the gym and eat better and that all smokers quit buying tobacco products to boost their immune health. To paraphrase the idiom, the fitness and Fatness industries are “the opposite side of the same coin, and it is counterfeit.” Both sides are blinded by dogma and unable to see the bigger picture that the secret to enjoying life is health, not aesthetics.
One of the main challenges of Herd Immunity is abandoning dogma, questioning previously-held beliefs, and challenging yourself to be open to changing your mind when new evidence presents itself. I’m grateful for the process of writing this book (Now split into two) because it forced me to do just that. There were ideas, sources, and thought-leaders I once respected and cited that no longer served my life because I forced myself to be honest about the efficacy of their advice. It may be credible for some, but not me. Be willing to abandon all mindsets and beliefs that no longer serve you. This is the greater purpose of education: to question previously-held beliefs and discover new ones.
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1 “Jeffrey Kluger Quote.” A-Z Quotes. n.d. Accessed October 24, 2022. https://www.azquotes.com/quote/160862
2 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2021. “Obesity, Race, and COVID-19.” September 15, 2021. Accessed October 2, 2021. https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/obesity-and-covid-19.html