Whither goest Truth or Sorry I can't hear you with my head in the sand!

Zat you Sam?

    (Aside the first: And before we even start this romp, please let me assure you that I do indeed know that the old Ostrich with its head in the sand thing is pure hokum!  I just happen to like the analogy of it and this particular image.)
     (Aside the second:  Does it amaze anyone else just how vast and amazing the Interwebz is?  No matter what the topic no matter how esoteric and obscure, if you type it into the right search engine, you will find some article or picture on the subject.  I won't even begin to go into how many Ostrich images I found.)

     Anyho, onwards and spiraling ever downwards to the depths of Heck.  So a bunch of different articles were posted by various friends on FB today that kind of got me thinking.  The topics ranged from sheep innards to gas prices to hams made in China.  (Well to be fair, they aren't being made in China now, but they might be soon enough.)  Like I said the topics were extremely varied, but they all made me ponder how elusive Truth is and how so many people would much rather avoid it all together to keep it from conflicting with what they believe.
     Many moons ago, I read an article in an actual honest to gosh paper magazine that interviewed 250 people who were suffering from some form of terminal, very nasty disease.  Many of the illnesses could have been either cured or greatly eased if the illness had been caught early enough, but the majority of these sufferers admitted that they had postponed going to a Doctor to see what was wrong with them because they were terrified of finding out the truth.  So even though there were multiple indications something was seriously wrong (Coughing up blood, strange rashes etc.) they refused to find out what because they were afraid of knowing.
     Someone said recently (Can't remember who and can't find citation of the quote.  Hell it might have been one of my many personalities for all I know.) that it is a shame that we live in an era where information and facts are freely available to a huge number of people, but we still choose to live in our own ignorance.  I'd like to modify that slightly by stating that people choose to live in their own ignorance or the ignorance of others as long as it supports what they believe.

I tell you they are out there!  I saw it on the Interwebz!

     People KNOW what they KNOW and anything that doesn't fit into that knowledge is a lie or part of some grand conspiracy to keep the TRUTH from coming out.  Prime examples of the are:  The Moon Landing was faked, 911 was a inside job, Sandy Hook was some secret government plot to take away our guns.  However, these are the extreme examples.   Even most doubters laugh at these.  (Or at least snicker quietly to themselves.) 
     Less extreme examples which are supported by an astonishingly large number of people are:  Aspertame causes everything from male pattern baldness to whooping cough, Inoculations cause Autism and Coffee causes cancer.  They support these ideas because they KNOW that they are facts because a bunch of people posted it on the Interwebz.  Never mind the Doctor who supposedly started the Aspertame Scare doesn't exist and the so called researcher who created the Autism scare has been thoroughly condemned by all of his peers for sloppy oftentimes dangerous research on children and has even admitted that he used improper techniques himself.  We won't even go into the ridiculous idea of coffee being bad.
     No matter how much data comes out.  No matter how much truth is revealed, people refuse to listen to it or to even consider it because it contradicts what they know to be true.  Course, in all fairness this is not a new phenomenon.  Long before the Interwebz, people always clung to their own truths even when facts attacked.  Guess it shows that we have not come all that far after all.

No no no!  I said Facts not Fax!

End of rant