Truth Vs Reality 8/11/23

In my humble opinion, as the onslaught of generative AI tools floods our lives, one of the most important skills we can try conveying to future generations is how to apply critical thinking to the array of disparate information that will be presented as facts. The human experience is in the process of untethering from the base reality my generation has known and soon, much of our previous decision-making processes may seem antiquated and obsolete, at least to those who are growing up in the technological renaissance currently exploding across every facet of contemporary life.

AI will enable a steady flow of propaganda and false narratives, voices, and images seamlessly flooding our senses and requiring an ongoing process of evaluation to discern just what’s true or real. These programs will also understand our preferences, biases, and needs, all based on our internet footprint and will use that information in an attempt to control our malleable subconsciouses.

In short, the ability to see through the bullshit will be more critical than ever before.

With that in mind, I started thinking about some of the previous events that reveal how people with similar backgrounds and levels of intelligence could draw diverse conclusions when presented with identical facts. Now I’m not talking about different political views or issues around morality and religion. I’m thinking more along the lines of conspiracy theories, a phenomenon that’s existed as long as humans; things like the government’s alleged involvement in the assassination of JFK, as well as 9/11. And more recently, the origins and subsequent handling of the Covid pandemic. Obviously, the list is long, existing on various levels; everything from the above-mentioned government-related suspicions to the lady on my block who’s convinced her cat was stolen by devil worshippers.

There are always intelligent people who will surprise you with beliefs that seem inconsistent with your perceived understanding of their core identity. I personally know a formerly high-ranking ex-Navy Seal who is convinced the attack on the World Trade Center was initiated by the US government as an excuse to go to war with Iraq. He tells me there are many military personnel in positions of authority who believe it too. Now I’ve never bought into that, but it’s an example of how competent people can land on different beliefs simply by drawing their own conclusions after sifting facts through their personal logic filter.

When I was fifteen years old, I traded my weekend job sacking groceries at the Piggly Wiggly Grocery Store for one pumping gas, changing oil, fixing flats, and washing cars at Gulley Harrel’s Texaco service station on Highway 51. From 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, I basically ran the station while the owner and his full-time staff (both of them) took the weekends off. During those days, my fellow co-worker and I were exposed to a steady array of colorful characters from different ethnicities and backgrounds. I think they liked coming around because the place was basically being run by a teenager (me) and they wouldn’t be kicked off the premises by Gulley for loitering.

And some of our customers were like stereotypes straight from movies. Highway 51 ran all the way from Chicago to New Orleans and was the only thoroughfare at the time prior to the construction of Interstate 55. Back then, everyone traveling that route was required to drive right through the middle our tiny town. It seemed to be a popular route with lower-level mafia figures and they were easy to spot. These guys drove newish Cadillacs and looked like Italian Elvis impersonators, complete with heavy gold chains.

There were several Saturday mornings when I’d arrive at 7 a.m. to open up and there’d be a shiny car parked next to one of the two gas pumps, waiting for the local yokel to open so they could continue toward real civilization. The tanks of their gas-guzzling, nine-miles-to-a-gallon Caddies were too depleted to chance making it to the next town. In an effort to kill time while marooned there in the boondocks, they drank Jack Daniels from plastic cups and listened to eight-track tapes of musicians like Frank Sinatra. Often, it was obvious they’d been at it for quite a while. Most were friendly. Some even tipped. I always made a point of spending an inordinate amount of time grinding down the insect guts on the dinged-up Caddy windshields and was often rewarded with a $20 tip which was $5 more than I made from my 24-hour weekend shift’s base pay.

The station also served as a regular stop on an informal list of weekend social destinations for locals. Some we knew from school, others were vagabond adults looking for any interaction, those living on the periphery of the town’s primary societal nucleus. Other locales on the tour included places like the Ritz Cafe, the town’s 24-hour hash slinger joint that also housed the only pinball and condom machines. The Ritz’s primary demographic target was the drivers of eighteen-wheelers doing long hauls who didn’t sleep much and planned their routes for a midnight meal at the Ritz.

There were several other locations on that rotating urban walk, something probably common to all small hamlets like ours in the deep south back then. During that time, usually after arguing the glories and miseries of Mississippi college football, a topic repeatedly came up that struck me as a genuine head-scratcher.

Two years prior, on July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the moon. I remember watching the grainy images live as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin climbed down the ladder and stood triumphantly, Walter Conkite’s authoritative, yet uncharacteristically emotional voice narrating each movement. It was electrifying, inspiring, and made me want to become an astronaut. However, I learned fairly early that most of my colleagues and customers who rolled in and out of Gulley’s Texaco didn’t believe for one minute that a person landed on the moon. In fact, they thought anyone who did was either a complete idiot, a Yankee insurgent, or both. This was the clear and indisputable majority consensus.

Since the whole Apollo 11 event had such an impact on me, I felt a responsibility to debate the rogue's gallery of tobacco-spitting, snuff-dipping, chain-smoking philosophers of life who could be fairly hot-tempered at times, not to mention hard-headed. Sometimes the arguments turned physical, a couple of specific memories that make me laugh out loud today as I write this.

The few who did believe the landing was real were convinced it had totally wreaked havoc on weather patterns, permanently dooming cotton and soybean crops there on the edge of the Mississippi Delta, home to some of the most fertile and richest farmland on Earth. Just a month after Apollo 11, Hurricane Camille had devastated the Mississippi Gulf coast—one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the US. According to our local climate scientists, this was clearly linked to the moon landing. Only a fool wouldn’t see the connection.

During that time, I learned an important lesson; you can’t change someone’s mind if they want or need to believe something, regardless of the facts. That’s simply human nature, the way most people are wired.

Fast forward to today and not only has moon landing conspiracy theory survived, it’s blossomed into a cottage industry. Books, videos, papers—arguments for why the Apollo 11 mission was faked are all over the internet. There’s even a guy who was recently filmed chasing Buzz Aldrin around, calling him a liar and demanding he put his hand on the Bible and swear that he went to the moon before the feisty 90-year-old Buzz had enough and cold-cocked him. Interview over…

There’s a list of facts conspiracy theorists point to with the landing, things like shadows not aligning in the video footage, problems traveling through the Van Allan Radiation Belts, who was doing the actual filming when the two astronauts left the moon, and strange motion characteristics with how both men moved in the moon’s reduced gravity. All are pretty easily debunked so I won’t get into the weeds here. But as I wasted more time than I care to admit chasing all this further down the rabbit hole, I did come across a couple of curious twists. Luckily I stopped before diving into the part where the Apollo 11 astronauts found alien buildings.

So, in honor of the cast of characters from that long-gone era and in light of the 54th anniversary of Apollo 11, here's a look at some of the seeds that have contributed to the No-Mooners’ conspiracy theories—things my Texaco gang from back in the day could never have imagined:

In 1968, the year prior to Apollo 11, Stanley Kubrick premiered what many consider to be the greatest science fiction movie ever made, 2001; A Space Odyssey. There is no doubt that this film is a masterpiece on every level and its special effects are not only astonishing for the time, they still seem flawless today decades later. Based on the Arthur C. Clark novel of the same name, this film is a technical and artistic tour de force, full of prescient, realistic portrayals of future technology; everything from commercial space flight to the iPad. As with all great Sci-Fi, it deals with giant themes of what it means to be human, where we came from, and where we might be going.

And, there are two things about that movie that I can say with 100% certainty. One, it was never shown at our lone movie theater, the one I grew up watching and my primary connection with the rest of the universe during those years. And two, had the movie somehow miraculously appeared at our local theater, I would have been the only one in the audience. On the tiny chance that someone would have wandered in, I’m confident that screen would have been thoroughly pelted with flying projectiles. I eventually saw 2001 in New Orleans by myself in a mall theater during a stay at my father’s house when I was 12 or 13 years old. I honestly didn’t know what to think about it.

But I’m losing the thread here…

About a decade after the moon landing occurred, some observers of the grainy black-and-white footage became convinced the whole thing had been staged and that the only man who could’ve pulled it off was Stanley Kubrick himself. It didn’t help when a movie starring none other than O. J. Simpson called ‘Capricorn One’ premiered in 1977, the premise of which was that the moon landing had been faked, created on a sound stage. For years rumors lingered that the Apollo 11 crew had been taken to the desert shortly before take-off where the whole thing was staged. And, there was no shortage of supposed eye-witnesses who’d claimed to have seen the crew arm-in-arm with showgirls and feeding the slot machines in casinos, all while they were supposedly hurtling through space.

Prior to our country’s visit to the moon, the Soviet Union was well ahead of the US in the space race. And, beating the Russians there was viewed as a high priority, mainly to prove our technological superiority, as well as the threatening hypothetical scenario that whoever got there first might establish a base for nuclear weapons. One theory for faking the landing is that NASA was helplessly behind and the only way to win the race was to create an elaborate facade. And, the only man with the technical proficiency to hoodwink the world was the magician who’d created the most realistic and convincing space movie ever.

It’s a well-known fact that Kubrick had a relationship with NASA and that the agency cooperated with the development of ‘2001’. The theory is the whole thing was created in a combination of sound stages and the actual Mojave Desert. The story lingered for a while but this was way before the internet and probably would have faded away. But another Kubrick movie would reignite the conspiracy flame.

In 1980 Kubrick released ‘The Shining,’ a horror movie based on the Stephen King novel (originally called ‘The Shine’). And here’s where some believe Kubrick was subtly winking at his fan base, confessing his involvement in what might have been the greatest hoax ever perpetrated if true. Those who buy into this believe the whole movie is packed with symbolism that directly reflects not only Kubrick’s involvement in the Apollo 11 ruse but also his and his wife’s state of mind back then; the movie’s hotel, the maze, the carpet, and even the fact that it takes place in winter which is supposed to represent the cold war. I won’t go into all that but there’s a pretty interesting article in the Paris Review that talks about it in detail.

Here are a few of the hard facts about ‘The Shining’ that believers latched onto:

Behind the hotel desk is an American flag and an eagle—as in the eagle has landed.

In the movie, Jack Nicholson’s character is a writer, feverishly working on his novel while slowly descending into madness. Later, it’s revealed he’s typing the same sentence repeatedly: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. However, instead of ALL, he is typing A11, or A, eleven.

• The young son Danny wears a sweater with a rocket embroidered on the front and Apollo 11 stenciled on its surface.

• Danny goes to room 237, a different number from the book, and something changed by Kubrick—the moon is approximately 237,000 miles from Earth.

• The creepy twins in the film (they were sisters in the book but not twins) supposedly represent the Gemini program, the precursor to Apollo. It’s believed that this was another change made by Kubrick specifically to reference his involvement, one more wink to his conspiracy club.

There’s more. But as I said earlier, I see all this as nothing more than a curious set of oddities, perhaps a deliberate attempt by Kubrick to nurture the urban legend that he certainly had to be aware of. And, if he had really been responsible for perpetrating a hoax on such a grand scale, it would have been his greatest accomplishment. Surely he’d have to tell someone before he died. Maybe he did.

Rumors have swirled for years that he confessed all this to a relatively unknown filmmaker just prior to his death. Apparently, the video was online for a while and then removed, probably debunked. His family has vehemently denied that he participated in either a coverup or the purported video and the fact that it’s no longer available to view pretty much says it all. But still, all this only adds to the level of intrigue for those who want it to be true. For them, this will never disappear.

Whatever you believe, anything that surfaces now would almost have to be instantly discounted. In a few months, maybe even now, several AI programs will be capable of reproducing Kubrick’s image and voice flawlessly, reciting whatever script its creator desires.

In my mind, this is the end of the road for that one.

Bear-Gate

AI, aliens, indicted former presidents?

Forget all that. Let’s talk about the important stuff. There is a recurring story from a Chinese zoo about one of their Malaysian Sun Bears. Named Angela, the bear likes to stand upright and wave to her audience. But there’s a problem. Angela doesn’t always look like a real bear. Not only does she move in ways that seem uncannily human, but her fur also seems like someone wrapped a droopy, wrinkled blanket around its hind quarters. Her rear paws look a lot like my grandfather’s old slippers, about as far from an apex predator as an animal could be. This has led to a chorus of complaints from outraged zoo patrons and internet sleuths alike, proclaiming that these bears are in fact (gasp!) humans wearing costumes—poorly fitting costumes at that.

Zoo officials are adamant that Angela and her fellow expatriate Yogis are legitimate bears and that no humans were used or abused in the making of the exhibit—that it’s just their nature to seem human-like and part of their appeal. According to a Chinese government official who oversees the facility’s activity, these bears are being unjustly attacked for doing their jobs too well. He goes on to state that since all Chinese zoos are controlled by the government, something untruthful would be impossible…

But…I do have to admit, if you were going to create a phony bear costume, you’d probably try to find one that actually fit. These animals look so fake, they almost have to be real.

I’ll update this important story as it develops.

Houston Zoo Bear Exhibit

Aliens and Russian Nukes?

There was a wild story in the Jerusalem Post on August 1 about an event that took place over a Russian military base in the Ukraine. No date is given and it’s part of a summary of UFO events in Russia. But it had to have occurred years ago because the article states the facility housed inter-continental ballistic missiles. Given the current state of relations between Russia and Ukraine, one would have to assume that base and any others were relocated quite some time ago.

Apparently, UFOs were spotted hovering over the base and Russian jet fighters were deployed to engage them. Suddenly, control of the base’s ICBMs was lost and they were activated, aimed at the US.

The stunned Russians were ordered to disengage and the UFOs vanished, at which time control of the missiles was regained and WWIII was avoided.

Crikey! Just looked at the word count and I’m way over again. I have to start setting a timer.