Friday 8 January 2021

context collapse

Disturbing we learn, via the Morning News, that whilst perhaps less immediately dangerous and radicalising than some other conspiracy theories, with may possibly started as a tasteless joke, there are some who doubt the existence of Helen Keller—an individual who was able to overcome significant obstacles and go on to author a dozen books including one on socialism that was put on the Nazi biblioclasm and campaigned for civil rights, perhaps desperate for the incredulity of a biography having accomplished more than their able-bodied selves. While it might be tempting to fault this latest theory on the naรฏvety of digital natives, it is endemic to older generations of course as well—found in the sensibilities of those who ascribe the ingenuity of Antiquity to Ancient Aliens, those triggered by climate activism and those who make the ‘Mandela Effect’ not the statesman’s accomplishments and social reforms but rather misremembered childhood memories of the shared delusion of a cohort and not wanting to admit that it is dismissively, demeaningly racist to not accept Shaquille O’Neal as a genie in a movie rather than the comedian Sinbad and some paranormal phenomenon must be invoked.