“My Addiction” By Dr. Lester Simon

My Addiction

1. I am sitting in my car in the rain listening to Observer Radio. Some callers to the radio program are raining blows on Covid and vaccines. Should I call in and try to rein them in, or should I turn off the radio and enjoy the sound and sight of the rain?

2. Change the station. No. I cannot do that. I am an addict. I have an addiction to hearing nonsense so I can turn it into sense. I have this addiction because the scientific truth, as much as it can be determined to be the truth, sets off an evaporating freedom inside me. This freedom rescued me as a schoolchild when my entire world of family and friends was falling apart.

3. We are living in very interesting times. We say this all the time in all eras. The rise of social media and our addicted engagement with them have magnified deep-seated pathologies that we have to understand or at least admit, lest we get lost in a world of nonsense.

4. Misinformation: “false information that is spread, regardless of whether there is intent to mislead.”

5. Disinformation: “deliberately misleading or biased information; manipulated narrative or facts; propaganda.”

6. Misinformation is relatively easy to counter. The light of truth from scientific evidence, empathy for the misinformed, and reasoning can often sort this out.

7. Disinformation has been with us for ages but it has grown exponentially with the rise of social media. Many and probably all dis-informers of Covid and vaccines are addicts. Many of them are high-ranking doctors and scientists. Yes, many of them are high-ranking doctors and scientists.

8. To get a glimpse into the world of disinformation and its practitioners we have to understand addiction.

9. When we regard someone with a drug addiction, we have to understand that the drug is not the problem. To the addict, the drug is the perceived solution to an underlying problem. If the underlying problem is not regarded and handled, there will be no cure.

The underlying pathology is often a matter of self-worth or some issue with the self.

10. It might be surprising to many, as it was to me initially, that many of the purveyors of disinformation about Covid and vaccines are doctors and scientists.

11. The bedrock of science is doubt. Where there is no doubt there is no science. There is a scientific process to investigate doubt. We live in an age where the market of disinformation is occupied by some who have forsaken or skewed the scientific process of investigation.

12. Some of them have a plethora of degrees behind their names. They remind me of a verse in an extempore calypso I attempted on campus by referencing a student who was at the university for many, many, too many years.

13. It went something like this ( name of the student withheld): I hear so and so on campus for so long; he force me to compose this song; by now he has so much degree; Fahrenheit and Centigrade have to hide from he!

14. It’s not my job, or maybe not your job either, to discover the underlying personal pathology that drives these dis-informers to do what they do. They probably get immense joy from seeing you sweat from trying to sort them out.

15. My humble task is to tell you that they exist and that they come in all shapes and sizes and guises and disguises. The solution is not to shut them out or to weed them out. Let them “talk as you like” until the dazzling light of truth shines through.

16. In the while please be aware and cautious of what you read, see, hear, and say, regardless of its origin; including “this information”.

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