“If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it, too?” Many of us, as children, would hear this refrain whenever we made a decision that our parents knew was foolish. Every time you left the house:
underdressed for the cold winter weather,
with your jeans below your buttocks instead of above them,
or with holes or rips deliberately put into your clothes,
you were likely to hear about it, and for good reasons. Your parents knew that the reason these were fashionable, compelling decisions you thought you were making was merely the product of social pressure. Everyone else — or, at least, everyone else whose opinions mattered to you — was doing it, and the concern is that you wouldn’t just cave to these benign pressures, but to ones that would arise later with far more serious consequences, potentially even dangerous or life-threatening ones.
We are now midway through 2021, about a year-and-a-half into the most deadly pandemic of our lifetimes. Record-breaking temperatures, sea level rise, glacial melts, habitat loss, and ocean acidification have become global problems worldwide, all stemming from the same root cause. And, in many places, if you speak the truth about Covid-19, vaccines, climate change, or any number of other highly politicized issues that should be clear cut based on the science alone, you’ll be ostracized from the people and groups whose opinions matter most to you. By ignoring the scientific realities of both the problems we’re facing and their solutions, millions of people, vocally and across the world, are declaring their willingness to “jump off that bridge” too, even if death is the consequence, just to fit in. Here’s why you mustn’t join them.
Read More at https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2021/07/15/do-you-hold-your-life-so-cheaply-that-youd-rather-die-than-accept-science/
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