This article is not about tabletop role-playing games. It is my blog and I’ll cry if I want to.
This is a little different from what I usually write. I’m usually in a good mood discussing something that’s not real. Exploring my creative mind and unleashing its potential force.
But not this morning. This morning I haven’t slept. Not because my daughter cried in the night. She may have, I wouldn’t know, I’ve been in the spare room. So, I can sleep and be rested. So that I can complete my roles of father, husband, and teacher.
But even tucked away from my family I didn’t sleep.
It is my own fault. I let myself get drawn into an argument with someone. On the internet. I know, it’s 2021 and I should have known better. But this was someone that I know… used to know, I guess. Twenty years ago. I let the ill-informed disrupt my tranquillity. I tried to educate, that is my job, after all, someone who just wanted to prove their ‘truth’.
They believed in binary.
I am not talking about computer coding.
They believed that there is good and bad, right and wrong, black and white. That there are two sides to every story. They didn’t directly say this, which, if they ever read this, they will fight me on. Because people like this never know their own sub-text. Their argument was a binary one and nothing is binary.
It is the spectrum that surrounds our existence, not the binary.
The binary is a lie fed to us throughout history. That men do this, and women do that. That left is this, and right is that. It is easy for masculine men to say that gender is binary. It is easy to discuss the issues of race when you are removed any impacts of those issues. It is easy for people of privilege to talk about the left and right of politics. As if politics has one enemy.
As if one side of a political argument could be wholly right and one wholly wrong.
To think this way is to diminish the beauty of our universe. To reduce everything to this or that… what about these? There are parts of our world that do not fit into the solid conforming molds laid out to us.
It is important to know that we can’t know everything.
We can’t possibly know everything. Even as a collective we rely on databases to store knowledge. But as an individual, we cannot know and understand everything. It is not our job to do so. Some things take centuries to understand. A scientist will dedicate their entire life to researching one small fragment of our world and may only unlock the smallest piece of knowledge.
Then some yobbo watches a ninety-second video on Facebook, doesn’t get it, and says it’s bullshit.
This is a problem.
Just because you have all human knowledge available in the palm of your hand that does not mean you are able to comprehend it.
And that’s ok.
You are not less of a person because you do not understand the intricacies of molecular biology.
As humans, it is our job to become informed and educated in what is happening in our world. The first step towards that is building critical thinking capabilities and media literacy.
Critical thinking is not questioning everything. Media literacy is not how to navigate an app. These skills take time, practice, and reflection to develop.
Without those two skills will be fooled by everything on the internet.
What is the takeaway from this?
- Learn how to analyse the media you consume,
- read a wide breadth of content,
- accept you might not understand everything,
- don’t be a cunt.
And lastly.
Racists, homophobes, transphobes, sexists…you’re not welcome here.
