
I have a joke in my pilot that got passed on that I have to leave here because it’s as close to a quote unquote political joke as I’ll probably ever get. A Seattle based Dad is talking to his neighbor about his family’s upcoming move back to his home state of North Carolina. The neighbor, Pacific Northwest born and bred, feels a certain type of way about the Southeast part of the country, but The Dad asserts that Durham, where they’re moving, was actually recently named the most liberal city in North Carolina, by a website –to which the friend responds, uh huh, what website? Was it confirmation bias? Dot com? I think about this joke a lot not because it’s necessarily that sharp, or hilarious, but because it’s so true. The internet is a self-serving, CONFIRMATION BIAS MACHINE, which would be fine if we only used it to find pants and read about weather, not also FORM OUR VALUES AND BELIEF SYSTEMS. Truth is powerful and now we’ve all got our own version of it, shaped by our own words typed into a search engine. It’s relative and we select what fits, like pants, sending back whatever doesn’t feel or look right. I don’t know how I got to here, but these days, to me, assertion of truth feels like arrogance and self-righteousness. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism, maybe I’m just insecure about everything I don’t know. Which leads me to the OTHER few words I keep thinking about, Plato by way of Socrates: the only thing I know is that I know nothing. This feels infinitely true to me, too. We are just people. How could we ever, truly, fully Know? Instead, shouldn’t we be continually asking questions? Shirtless, thinking, wondering?