Why do Russians believe in every fool?

Well, I seem to have the answer to this question and ready to share it with you. But for that, I will first ask you to answer one delicate question: "Tell me, why do you believe in every fool?" My question offended you? Are you not at all? I disappoint you a little - most of us are like . . . just nonsense that we believe in, they are different - they are quite primitive and cause people with good sense except laughing.

Instead, others are much more serious and laughter cause except in a narrow circle of experts who are well aware of the issue. For example, I am convinced that a part of our ideas about proper nutrition and diet laugh professional biologists and nutritionists, over the methods of treatment we trust - professional doctors, over the ideas of the past - historians, etc. Therefore, if the truth is always alone, then the nonsense we believe in everyone.

However, although nonsense is different, there are some universal mechanisms that are laid in the work of the human mind. The cognitive sciences have collected a large amount of material that explains why we sometimes believe in all kinds of nonsense.

For example, this is often the case because we are intellectual skills, and mostly spent on solving problems a minimal amount of mental effort; We do not strive to get to the causes of some phenomenon, but we are satisfied with a plausible explanation that we are calming us and gives the illusion of understanding; Often, they tend to accept explanations that most and, especially, our environment; We often accept what is true, etc.

I will not continue this list and give an explanation, since this article is not a scientific work. If desired, you can find in the relevant literature. I just want to repeat the key thesis - we all have in our heads innate mechanisms that push us to believe in nonsense. In this, all people are the same. Therefore, the Russians have no unique inclinations to belief in the beacon.

If we were in their place, then I think that much of our society would also believe in the nonsense that Russian propaganda invents. If you have doubt, remember what quantities of nonsense about coronavirus and vaccination believed a huge number of our fellow citizens at a time when the pandemic was still our greatest problem. I hope that the previous paragraph still did not offend you so much to stop reading this article.

Since I want to talk about one thing that fundamentally distinguishes the inhabitants of Western civilization from Russia and largely guarantees that in these countries the festival that is happening in Russia today will not happen in these countries. This fuse is the devotion of the ideal of the human mind and, accordingly, the desire to build your life on a reasonable basis.

Starting from the Enlightenment, the Western World Community has decided to build their lives not on myths, but on proven and proven ideas, and since then stubbornly, with stops, and sometimes "two steps back", but still move the chosen way. Of course, this does not mean that all the knowledge on which the life of these communities is based is that corresponds to the ideals of rationalism. Of course, the fools and people who believe in them are also enough in Western countries.

However, the key difference is that these communities, at least, seek this ideal and have a public organization that protects them from being put into practice. Therefore, it is difficult to imagine today that an official of any of these countries spoke the nonsense that we regularly hear from Russian officials, and society reacted normally.

So, when the leaders of some countries in the Western world still allow themselves to hammer a frank fool, it is, first, to outrage in a large part of the population and, secondly, the existing social mechanism in most cases does not allow them to be realized. Thus, the key difference between Russians and the inhabitants of civilized countries is not that their intellectual abilities do not allow them to distinguish the truth from lies.

The difference is that their ideals and based on these ideals, the social organization allow one to lie and carry all sorts of nonsense, the other - to believe in them, and the third, who still understand what is happening, cannot be able to influence anything. So, when the first (power leadership) says that Ukraine is full of Nazis, so it is necessary to start war against it, the second (population) agrees with it, and others (conscious citizens, experts) are "not in delalas".

The conclusion I want to make will not be about Russians, but about us, Ukrainians, and other inhabitants of the civilized world. In fact, it is quite easy to go down to the state in which Russian society is in. We all have a very serious innate potential to believe in nonsense.

It is necessary to combat this both individually (the development of one's own critical thinking, scientific literacy), and collectively, creating and supporting such a social organization that protects society from the implementation of nonsense into life. In such communities, when someone proposes to realize a certain idea, it lies the burden of justification of its need. The expert environment is able to check these proposals freely and critically.