The human condition: Faith and Opinions over fact and logic. Peace's ultimate cryptonite?

In a lecture hall, a professor shows students two headlines: one from a peer-reviewed journal, the other from a famous lifestyle blogger. He asks which they trust more. Most point to the blogger. Why? “Because I follow her,” a student replies. No one checks the data. No one asks about the source. Loyalty to personalities has replaced loyalty to facts.

Step into the world outside and the pattern is everywhere. A neighbor buys a crystal bracelet for “protection from 5G” because her favorite wellness influencer swears by it. A cousin dismisses climate science because a talk-show host swore that global warming is a hoax. A coworker repeats that the stock market will crash because a YouTuber “with good vibes” predicted it. 

If you are anything like me, you are sitting at home reading those comments, watching those videos, seeing those news reports and the only thing that comes to your mind is “What the fuck is wrong with people???”.

When did this happen? Maybe recently, maybe during covid, maybe it was 2016 that kick started it all or we weren’t even here when this began. Regardless of when it started, I want to know why it happens, if it can stop and what will happen if it won’t. So let’s get into the nitty gritty and maybe I, We, will find answers to these questions. 

Researchers at MIT studying misinformation during the pandemic found that the difference between people who fell for fake news and those who didn’t wasn’t intelligence. It was effort. Critical thinking is work, and many of us simply weren’t and aren't putting in the mental energy. Laziness, makes us easy prey. Psychologists call this “cognitive miserliness”: the tendency to conserve brainpower by grabbing the nearest explanation instead of digging deeper.

And this is where misinformation thrives. False stories are built to feel good. They’re short, emotional, and dramatic. A study in Science showed falsehoods spread 70% faster than the truth online, not because they were more believable, but because they triggered stronger emotional reactions. Truth takes patience. Lies offer speed or in other words: “a neurological boost of adrenalin and dopamine”, which most of us get progressively more addicted to as the lifetime of the Internet continues.

We’ve entered a culture where faith is seen as more powerful than evidence. Hope is cherished more than reality. And radical acceptance (the kind where people say, “Well, everyone has their own truth”) replaces the discipline of asking uncomfortable questions. It sounds poetic. It feels kind, but it creates a society where doubt, research, and analysis are treated as rude interruptions to the comfort of belief.

Take the spread of miracle cures during COVID: hydroxychloroquine, bleach, even UV lamps inside the body. Millions chose to believe because believing offered control. Faith over matter gave them a sense of hope in chaos even when in this case rejecting reality, can be deadly. Johns Hopkins researchers documented how misinformation directly fueled vaccine hesitancy, which in turn cost lives across nations.

This radical preference for faith over doubt also makes false information “sticky.” Once a falsehood is accepted, it becomes part of identity. Psychologists call it belief perseverance: even when the evidence is disproven, people cling to the belief because letting go feels like tearing out a piece of themselves. In practice, this means someone who once trusted a conspiracy about vaccines doesn’t just need facts to be convinced, they need to undergo an emotional break from their old self. That’s a monumental ask.

And so the cycle spins: lack of critical thinking opens the door, misinformation walks in, faith keeps it fed, and doubt is banished as the enemy. Research becomes optional, curiosity suspicious, skepticism impolite. But a world without skepticism is a world without safety nets. It’s like building a house of cards on quicksand and convincing yourself it will stand forever.

The cracks in our collective reasoning didn’t appear overnight. They widened under the stress test of COVID. Suddenly, the world faced a new virus and even newer chaos. But alongside the medical pandemic came something far more contagious: an outbreak of idiocy.

Movements like MAGA in the United States (even before Covid) or the Querdenker protests in Germany became laboratories of mass irrationality. Here were groups convinced masks were symbols of tyranny, that vaccines were population control, that a global cabal was pulling strings. They framed themselves as freedom fighters while spreading paranoia. The logic was thin, but the sense of belonging was thick. And belonging, as social psychology has shown for decades, often beats truth when people are afraid. During crises, humans don’t just search for facts, they search for connection and reassurance, even if that source is a conspiracy cult.

Social media was the gasoline. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter (+truth social later), and Telegram accelerated chaos. A single piece of misinformation about world news, race, vaccines or lockdowns could reach millions before any fact-checkers caught up. Algorithms, designed to reward outrage and emotional clickbait, pushed false content further and faster than sober analysis ever could.

A 2018 MIT study proved it: false news spreads 70% faster on Twitter than true news, precisely because of its shock value. Platforms had every chance to moderate, but moderation meant less engagement, and less engagement meant less profit. So the lies stayed and a new freedom of speech was born.

And in that digital firestorm, another cultural weapon sharpened its edge: cancel culture. At first glance, it looked like justice. People who had hidden behind status or power could suddenly be held accountable by public outrage. Some of that was necessary, abusers needed to be exposed and treated accordingly. But soon the pendulum swung too far. Cancel culture became not about accountability, but about absolutism. One bad take 10 years ago, one clumsy phrase, and someone’s entire existence could be reduced to that single snapshot despite their effort of becoming and doing better today.

The problem with this? It destroys nuance. Human beings are not flat caricatures, as science and world matters are not a perfectly polished white or deep black. They are messy, contradictory, sometimes wrong, sometimes right and sometimes in the process of learning and changing.

Cancel culture erases that greyscale and paints the world in black or white: saints on one side, villains on the other. A sole opinion, no matter how bad, does not make a person wholly evil. And by crushing dialogue, cancel culture makes it harder for people to evolve. A society that leaves no room for mistakes leaves no room for growth.

This obsession with moral binaries ties back to our illusion of individuality. Social media tells us we are unique, independent, trailblazing thinkers. Look closer, and you’ll see the opposite. High individualism often hides insecurity. People shout their “original” opinions while simply repeating the loudest voices in their feed. They join mobs not out of conviction but fear. Fear of exclusion, fear of standing alone, fear of being wrong. Going with the masses feels safe. Going against them feels like social death.

And so, individuality becomes performance. Instead of using logic and resources to form opinions, we outsource thinking to the crowd or one particular individual. Research becomes unnecessary since we can blindly trust strangers. Independent thought is sacrificed for acceptance. Copy and paste.

So we learned that if you follow the crowd, you are right. You don’t need to think for yourself, you don’t need to research, you don’t need to consider other factors because for all you know you belong to the people that “know the truth”, to those on the right side of history. Right?

If the pandemic showed us how easily misinformation spreads, what followed was an even darker revelation: there seems to be an unspoken agenda to stop people from thinking altogether. Not written in manifestos, but baked into the design of our culture. Don’t ask questions. Don’t dig deeper. Don’t research for yourself. Just scroll, like, repeat.

Keyword: Convenience. Thinking is slow. Research is tiring. Algorithms know it, so they serve us prepackaged answers. Politicians know it, so they craft slogans instead of arguments. Influencers know it, so they sell certainty instead of doubt. The result is a culture where curiosity is not celebrated but punished, because a curious mind is harder to control.

Layered on top of this is what may be the most destructive epidemic of all: the refusal to admit fault. Being wrong used to be a step toward learning. Today it’s treated as weakness or means to punish. Online, where every comment is eternal and every mistake is screenshotted, people would rather defend the indefensible than say, “I was mistaken.”

Psychologists call this cognitive dissonance, the pain of holding two conflicting ideas. Instead of resolving it by adjusting beliefs, many protect their ego by rejecting the evidence. Studies on intellectual humility, however, show the opposite: those who accept their limits are less vulnerable to conspiracies and less likely to spread misinformation.

But humility is rare in a culture built on performance. Our thought patterns are increasingly egocentric. The “self” is the new altar, and every opinion a prayer to our own importance. Social media intensifies this: likes, shares, and comments act like dopamine drops, rewarding us for declaring, not for reflecting. We no longer exchange ideas to understand each other. We clash to win. Debate is no longer a dialogue, it’s a digital gladiator fight where admitting fault feels like being slaughtered.

Even the simple act of hearing out a “false” opinion ends it a boxing match rather than dialogue due to the unwillingness on both ends. Thus the possibility of a potential persuasion of a different opinion or viewpoint is practically impossible. Even the best of the best communication skills can’t save this dilemma. So how can we actually educated one another at this point, when no one listens, no one wants to be wrong, no one can hold a dialogue, never mind have a change of heart? I truly have no idea.

Forward-thinking has become collateral damage. Once, new ideas sparked curiosity. Today, they trigger suspicion. The word “woke,” once meant to describe social awareness, has been twisted into an insult. Curiosity about inclusivity, justice, or alternative perspectives is met not with dialogue but with sneers. Progress is treated as threat. Where people should be asking, “Tell me more,” they fire back, “You’re just woke.” It’s a shortcut to shut down curiosity, one of many words weaponized to cause silence instead of discourse.

Behind all of this are the lenses we wear; cultural, personal, and religious biases that shape what we see, how we see it and what we ignore. A devout believer may reject scientific consensus if it clashes with doctrine. A nationalist may dismiss evidence if it undermines pride. A person raised in privilege may attack inclusivity as overreach. These biases are not always conscious, which makes them even more dangerous. They operate silently, whispering that our view is natural, that dissent is threat. And when entire communities share the same blindfolds, they reinforce each other until reality itself fractures.

The tragedy is that none of this is inevitable. We weren’t born with fragile egos, hostile to new ideas, allergic to skepticism. These are learned behaviors, cultivated by systems that reward certainty, punish mistakes, and feed bias. If culture can build them, culture can unbuild them. But only if we first admit the simplest, hardest thing: that we might be wrong.

When you stack all these patterns together, faith over fact, ego over humility, bias over curiosity, the results are not abstract. They are tearing into the fabric of daily life, shaping societies in ways we can measure, and others we can only fear.

We see it first in families. Thanksgiving dinners where relatives no longer speak because one insists COVID was a hoax while another buried a loved one to it. Marriages strained not over money or love but over what society is being told to think about their kind of marriage. Friendships dissolved by hashtags and headlines. These fractures may look small compared to wars, but peace begins in the kitchen before it ever reaches parliaments and when it collapses at home, it weakens everywhere.

Zoom out, and the consequences sharpen. A world report by UNESCO warns that misinformation undermines trust in institutions, which is the foundation of democracy itself. Without trust, citizens stop cooperating. Laws feel illegitimate. Elections look rigged even when they’re not. This is not speculation, it’s already happening. 

The same pattern appears in public health. Johns Hopkins researchers documented how misinformation about COVID vaccines directly fueled hesitancy, which in turn cost lives. In other words, falsehood doesn’t just make people confused, it kills them. The World Health Organization calls this an “infodemic”: a flood of misinformation so thick it prevents people from finding life-saving truths.

But perhaps the gravest consequence lies in peace itself. Peace is not simply the absence of war, it is a fragile balance of trust, dialogue, and shared reality. When societies can no longer agree on basic facts, peaceful coexistence becomes impossible. Political scientist Cass Sunstein described it years ago: when like-minded groups talk only to themselves, they drift into extremism, making compromise not just difficult, but unthinkable. We see it now in polarized nations, where citizens live in parallel universes. Where one man’s fact is another man’s “fake news,” and one woman’s freedom is another’s oppression.

So is this a real threat to world peace? In my opinion, Yes. Misinformation will not directly cause armies to march, but it corrodes the trust needed to stop them from marching in the first place. The United Nations has already warned that disinformation campaigns are being used deliberately to destabilize democracies and escalate conflicts. Peace depends on cooperation. Cooperation depends on trust. And trust dies in a swamp of lies.

Are the consequences coming in the future or are they already here? Well, I would say both. They are already visible in fractured societies, deadlier pandemics, paralyzed politics, lack of extensive uncomfortable conversations both off and online. And yet they foreshadow something worse: a future where every disagreement is a battlefield, every election a crisis, every scientific breakthrough drowned in suspicion. If unchecked, the erosion of truth will not just cost lives, it will cost civilization their ability to live together.

The human race, in other words, is not waiting for consequences. We are living them now. The question is not whether they will come, but whether we will stop them before they consume us. (e.g. Climate change)

The question hangs heavy: can this spiral be stopped, or is humanity too far gone? The truth is uncomfortable, but not hopeless. I am certain the habits that led us here are learned, and anything learned can be unlearned. Change is always possible, if chosen.

So what can we do? Here are my thoughts:

First, we have to rebuild the muscle of critical thinking. It’s not glamorous. It’s not quick. But it works. Finland and Estonia have already made media literacy part of school curricula. Children are taught from an early age how to verify sources, question headlines, and recognize manipulation. It’s no coincidence that Finland is consistently ranked one of the most resilient countries against fake news in Europe. Imagine if this were the standard worldwide, entire generations armed not with slogans, but with healthy skepticism.

Second, we can inoculate ourselves against lies, literally. Psychologists like Sander van der Linden have shown that “prebunking”(exposing people to the techniques of misinformation before they encounter it) builds resistance. Much like a vaccine trains the immune system, prebunking trains the mind to spot manipulation. In practice, this means teaching people to recognize patterns like fearmongering, scapegoating, or false experts. Once you see the trick, the magic disappears.

Third, we must normalize humility. Admitting error cannot remain taboo. In fact, it should be celebrated. Research shows that intellectual humility, the ability to accept one’s limits, correlates strongly with openness to new evidence and resistance to conspiracies. Leaders, educators, and even influencers could set a tone by modeling what it looks like to say, “I was wrong.” The more we see it, the more it becomes a strength instead of a shame. The more we are open to let people make mistakes and learn from them, because we will see it happen more and more.

Fourth, platforms need to take responsibility. Right now, the internet rewards outrage because outrage keeps us scrolling. But algorithms can be designed differently. In 2023, Google tested prebunking ads in Eastern Europe to fight disinformation, and results showed users became more skeptical of fake news after just 90 seconds of exposure. Imagine if platforms invested seriously in this instead of fueling division.

But the biggest change has to come from us, as individuals. No law, no platform tweak, no curriculum can replace the choice to stay curious. Change begins when we resist the cheap satisfaction of certainty and dare to ask questions again. When we stop measuring conversations by who wins, and start measuring them by what we learn. When we value doubt not as weakness, but as wisdom.

Can we change this? Yes. Will we? That depends on whether we’re ALL willing to face a truth scarier than any conspiracy: that the enemy of peace is not only misinformation, but our own comfort with it.

Change is possible, but it won’t happen by accident or through the miracle of time. It takes education, it takes humility, it takes systems that reward reflection instead of ignorance. Countries like Finland show that resilience can be taught. Prebunking research shows that minds can be trained like muscles. Intellectual humility shows that admitting fault can be a superpower, not a weakness. The tools are on the table. What’s missing is the will to use them.

But what if we don’t? What if the spiral continues? Then the reality we face I fear is a bleak one. Imagine a future where every conversation is a battlefield, where every disagreement turns into public shaming, where every scientific discovery is smothered under suspicion. A future where democracy exists in name only because citizens no longer believe in the same reality. Where wars aren’t fought only with weapons, but with manipulated truths so powerful that societies tear themselves apart from within.

Peace would not collapse overnight. It would rot slowly, like wood eaten by termites. Families would drift further apart. Nations would harden against each other. Dialogue would shrink into shouting. In that world, curiosity would be mocked, compassion dismissed, doubt treated as betrayal. And once truth dies, peace follows.

And I don't know about you but that is not the world I want to live in.

I don’t want to walk through streets where people talk past each other, where truth is a matter of branding, where opinions are worth more than evidence. I don’t want to raise children who are taught that asking questions is dangerous or that being wrong is shameful. I don’t want to live in a society where people are so fragile in their pride that they’d rather double down on lies than admit they were wrong. Where conversations feel like combat instead of curiosity. Where peace is reduced to a slogan on a billboard while our everyday interactions are fueled by suspicion and resentment.

I don’t want to wake up each morning in a world where truth is optional, where reality itself is negotiable, where entire communities can vanish into echo chambers and never return. I don’t want to explain to future generations why we allowed social media companies to profit from our division, why we chose comfort over curiosity, why we were too proud to say three simple words: I don’t know. And then, even worse, not finish the sentence with a: ...but I want to know.

I want a world where curiosity is celebrated, where reasonable doubt is a sign of intelligence, where admitting error is not humiliation but growth.  Where a child asking “why” isn’t told to sit down and accept but is encouraged to keep digging. Where adults can change their minds without shame, because growth is more valuable than ego.

I want a culture where humility is strength, where admitting a mistake earns respect, and where peace is not just the absence of fighting but the presence of effort.

I want a world where peace is not an illusion, not a fragile truce, but a shared project. A world where we can disagree without destroying each other, where truth is still something worth seeking together.

Peaceful coexistence doesn’t mean we all think the same. It means we think enough of each other to disagree without hatred, to critique without canceling, to listen without loading every conversation with insults, to consider other opinions as just as valuable as your own, to take facts as truth until proven otherwise, to open your heart and mind to other ideas, views and opinions, to recognize when you are wrong. Remembering that humans are complex, contradictory, sometimes wrong, sometimes brilliant, but always worth more than a single opinion or moment of weakness.

I want to walk down streets where ideas are exchanged like gifts, not thrown like stones. Where words like “woke” are not insults but reminders that being awake to injustice is a virtue. Where bias is acknowledged, confronted, not denied or weaponized.

Because if we accept the opposite, if we keep feeding misinformation, inflating egos, mocking curiosity, then we are choosing a world of noise instead of dialogue, hostility instead of coexistence, and isolation instead of peace. We are choosing to let the human condition rot into a permanent civil war of bullshit.

And frankly I can’t accept that. I refuse to accept that. This is not the world I want to live in. I want a better one.

One where knowledge, empathy and communication is strong, not fragile.

Where truth is shared, not shredded.

Where we dare to look at each other, listen, think, realize and admit: 

I want to understand more than I want to be right.

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