Ross Douthat, “How I Became Extremely Open-Minded” (adapted from his book, “The Deep Places”):
“The experience of falling through the solid floor of establishment consensus and discovering something bizarre and surprising underneath — is extremely commonplace. And the interaction between the beliefs instilled by these experiences and the skepticism they generate (understandably) from people who haven’t had them, for whom the floor has been solid all their lives, is crucial to understanding cultural polarization in our time.
…
And when the next disaster or derailment comes along, in my own life or the life of our society, I hope that I will be ready to trust experts as far as it seems wise to trust them — while always being aware that there are more things under heaven than their philosophies encompass, and a lot of strange surprises lurking deep below the not-entirely-solid earth.”
So, remain cowardly mainstream (and keep hectoring others!), with hypocritical, unexamined exceptions for oneself.
Read the rest of the cognitive dissonance here (I left out the good parts)…
By the way, see this on the Rife machine mentioned here.
(Thanks to the reader who found this surprising gem!)