By this point, everyone should be aware of one of my core philosophies: Lies are fun.
There’s a reason why these Sparrow stories are shelved in the fiction section and not published in medical journals. Medical journals are not fun.
But here’s what we probably need to acknowledge: I’m not the only one who loves telling lies. Lies make great headlines. Lies get clicks. Lies sell advertising space (and let’s be honest, advertisements are just another barrel of lies).
Once upon a time, I had great respect for the media. But along came social media, which was inherently more addictive and enticing, and regular media had to lower its standards in order to compete with the torrent of misinformation that the regular public was drowning each other with.
The great Mark Twain once said, “A lie can travel around the world and back again before the truth is lacing up its boots.” Science refuses to be rushed. And frankly, the vast majority of science simply isn’t fun. For every experiment that confirms our theories, there are hundreds of experiments that refute our theories.
The universe is a big place. And it’s full of a lot of very tiny things. It’s such a grand mystery, that it’s unreasonable to expect the truth to arrive according to our schedule. But we still need to behave and get along while we’re waiting.
One of the worst symptoms of the COVID-19 pandemic was not even medical, but social. Everyone assumed that they knew the truth about this disease. Everyone was mostly wrong. And the worst part is, everyone felt justified in being a jerk about it.
The core theme that I wanted to express in Carried Away is that nature is always going to throw surprises at us. Although we have made many amazing scientific discoveries, what we donβt know will always vastly outweigh what we do know.
We like to think that we can master nature. As I said earlier, lies are fun. But the truth is, even when we think we are prepared for every possible disaster, we will always find a bigger disaster.
Or a smaller disaster. Microbial diseases are slowly and inexorably winning a war against our most advanced medical knowledge and technology. The truth is we (as in mankind) donβt know how to handle pandemics any more than we know how to prevent earthquakes.
Sure, we have some ideas. But none of them are thoroughly tested. Science refuses to be rushed. And all of those ideas are disputed among the scientific community; anyone who claims that there is βconsensusβ is fooling themselves and trying to fool us. Lies are fun.
Because more often than not, our premature attempts to master nature have shown us that nature refuses to be dominated. In many cases, our ill-advised measures have made situations much worse.
If you take anything away from my book, I hope that you maintain a healthy respect for the universe and our very minor influence on it. I hope that you will be patient with the scientific community that is trying to understand it rather than demanding immediate solutions.
Let’s patiently seek the truth. Let’s laugh about the lies. And let’s try to get along.
Let’s try not to get carried away.
Unless, of course, you still need to get Carried Away.
E.L. Haines website: theshortstoryteller.com
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Amazon Link: Carried Away
Hey Lisa! Now that this guest post is ~18 months old, would you mind if I reposted this article on my blog? I would mention that it was originally published on your site (with a link to your homepage) and that it is re-posted with your permission.