Bear with me here, this is just a half-formed idea and I want to try and think it through.
The character Don Quixote is a good example of how irrationality is portrayed as virtue. Everything he believed was wrong and yet he still gets to be the hero - the good guy. Thus, he is a symbol of the kind of view that is embraced by conspiracists, pseudo-scientists,various crackpots and the bloggers who love them.
What if we were to somehow attack the idea, the symbol of Don Quixote. Show him for a scoundrel, one who inflicts misery, destruction, poverty, disease and death wherever he goes. I'm basically thinking something in the spirit of www.whatstheharm.net but in a more literary form.
I imagine, for starters, a scene something like this:
A man sits in the back table in a back room at a local tavern, nursing a bleeding and swollen hand. He listens to the cheering crowd in the front room of the tavern. They are celebrating a man, a hero. As told, this hero had just completed a grand battle with evil giants and had walked away victorious. The patrons at the bar were cheering him on as he told his amazing story. He had charged into the midst of the giants and was getting the best of all of them. Just as he was about to achieve victory over their chief, a dark sorceror wisked them away and replaced them with windmills.
While it was quite a tale to hear, the man had neither the energy nor time to join in the celebrations. He had spent all day working to repair a poor farmer's windmill. The farmer had one windmill to support himself and his child with. That morning the farmer had awoke to see that the sails had been slashed and the arms broken. The man sitting at the back table of the back room at the tavern had spent the entirety of his day repairing that windmill so it's owner would not starve. He had little time, therefore, to celebrate this victory over the giants. So, he finished his drink, left his payment on the table and left out the back door, leaving the self-appointed hero to his admirers.
The character Don Quixote is a good example of how irrationality is portrayed as virtue. Everything he believed was wrong and yet he still gets to be the hero - the good guy. Thus, he is a symbol of the kind of view that is embraced by conspiracists, pseudo-scientists,various crackpots and the bloggers who love them.
What if we were to somehow attack the idea, the symbol of Don Quixote. Show him for a scoundrel, one who inflicts misery, destruction, poverty, disease and death wherever he goes. I'm basically thinking something in the spirit of www.whatstheharm.net but in a more literary form.
I imagine, for starters, a scene something like this:
A man sits in the back table in a back room at a local tavern, nursing a bleeding and swollen hand. He listens to the cheering crowd in the front room of the tavern. They are celebrating a man, a hero. As told, this hero had just completed a grand battle with evil giants and had walked away victorious. The patrons at the bar were cheering him on as he told his amazing story. He had charged into the midst of the giants and was getting the best of all of them. Just as he was about to achieve victory over their chief, a dark sorceror wisked them away and replaced them with windmills.
While it was quite a tale to hear, the man had neither the energy nor time to join in the celebrations. He had spent all day working to repair a poor farmer's windmill. The farmer had one windmill to support himself and his child with. That morning the farmer had awoke to see that the sails had been slashed and the arms broken. The man sitting at the back table of the back room at the tavern had spent the entirety of his day repairing that windmill so it's owner would not starve. He had little time, therefore, to celebrate this victory over the giants. So, he finished his drink, left his payment on the table and left out the back door, leaving the self-appointed hero to his admirers.
via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1EIe8jh
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