Equus Asinus

Note for new readers:
Rubí donkey writes an occasional Tuesday piece on Equusasinus.net, helped by Morris donkey when background reading is required.

Today I am going to write about portant and weighty matters: false facts and conspicaries.  They are all around us.

Morris looks around him and snorts aggressively at the false facts and conspicaries. Then he asks me, “What are false facts and conspicaries?”  

It’s a good question, Morris, and I am glad you asked me. I’ll try to answer, starting with false facts.  A false fact is some thing that you think is a true fact because a donkey you trust has been saying it, or because a number of donkeys who you either trust, don’t trust, or don’t know if you trust, have been saying for so long that it seems like you never heard any thing else on the subject except that thing.  So, for example, when I say to you Morris: straw grows on pine trees, how do we know that thing?  We know that thing because where do we find all our straw?  It’s under our pine trees.  Because you think I, Rubí, as your donkey mother am or is a reliable source, you accept that thing, and you think straw grows on pine trees.  It is a fact thing.  Or in fact a false fact thing.

No, but it was just an example of how false facts can convince loads of donkeys because they don’t stop to examine the matter with discerniment and analysing.

Morris just repeats he wasn’t convinced about straw in pine trees in the first place.  I glare at Morris and continue.

So if you say some thing that is a notfact and you present it as a fact, other donkeys will see that thing as a fact because you are reliable or they’ll see it as a notfact if you are unreliable. So, here’s another example: I’m just walking back to the pine trees after going to the drinking fountain and I tell you there is a whale in the drinking fountain.  Aitana goes braying down the slope to level two, screaming “Eeeeeewhale! There’s a whale in the drinking fountain!”

I think I will ignore Morris, and just concentrate on my Tuesday blog audience, who is more intelligenter and can understand parallelisms.  So global warming for example is a thing which everyone knows is a fact because every single scientist on the planet has said they all of them did measuring and the earth is hotter now than it was ever since the 1970s when all the world’s scientists were saying, after they did all their measuring, that there was going to be a New Ice Age and the glaciers were going to come down from the place where polar bears are and kill off all the plants and animals and the sea level would drop so nobody could find any fish, and nobody could find any straw either because the fields would be under snow and ice.

I think I’ve made my point, even if Morris is being awkward as usual.  So let’s have a look at conspicaries.  Conspicaries are when people deliberately get together to say some thing that is a false thing is actually a true thing because they has a special reason for wanting people to believe in false things.  So, you Morris, get together with Matilde and Aitana and decide to make me Rubí believe in a false thing.  That is a conspicary. Go on, Morris, you think of an example.

Yes, that’s a good example of a false thing, Morris.  Now you and Matilde and Aitana get together and hatch a conspicary to make me believe it is a true thing that Jesus was a lemon.

Meanwhile in the very strange world of men…