I learn many lessons from social media. One of the most frequent is that it’s not okay to mock people’s beliefs–or people for their beliefs.
Unless, of course, it is.
It seems we all know better up until we come across someone whose beliefs are just so far out of line with our own we can’t respect them for holding those beliefs–even if those beliefs don’t really do anyone any harm. It’s stupid, therefore it’s okay to mock.
Take, for example, the Flat Earthers. They’ve been around for a long time. I remember hearing about them over thirty years ago in my ninth-grade earth sciences class. Our teacher made their case for us one class period, as was his habit. Every week or two he’d take some time to explore some of the more unusual theories and events in a quest to get us to think. Perhaps even more interesting/entertaining was the Hollow Earth Theory, but I found it all interesting, stored it away, and moved on my life.
Here we are thirty years later, and I’m hearing about the Flat Earthers again. As best I can tell, the only catalyst for this resurgence is a man building his own rocket in an attempt to prove the world is flat. He’s already accomplished the first stage of his effort and is now working on the next stage that will put him close to his goal.
And every few days I see something pop up in social media mocking Flat Earthers. Everyone has a good laugh at their expense, and it goes away again until someone thinks of another good jab. Harmless fun, right?
I’m not so sure. Behind it all seems to be a sense of offense. People seem offended that these people can hold on to such ridiculous beliefs in the face of incontrovertible evidence. Never mind that we regularly see that people on all sides of the socio-political spectrum doing just that, but over issues that are more mainstream. The epithet “science denier” applies in all sorts of directions, depending on the topic.
But so long as it’s someone the vast majority can all agree are blatantly foolish it seems to be okay to mock them.
It may be legal. It may be tempting. But is it fair? Is it who we claim we want to be? Though the term “bully” is thrown around far too much these days, this seems a clear case: the majority uses their position of power to denigrate those who can’t really fight back. It’s not like these people pose any threat. They’re not, as best I can tell, doing anything that would harm anyone (except themselves, perhaps, in the case of the rocket guy). So why do we need to mock them?
I’m not sure we do. It really says more about us than it does about them. We can be quite petty. I suspect that’s more harmful than believing the earth is flat.