Society has evolved but human nature remains the same

As kids, we learned about primitive cultures and laughed at how stupid people were back then. Virgins were sacrificed by the Celts to appease their gods and bring about good fortune. The Aztecs sacrificed their best warriors, which at least in part accounts for how the Spanish defeated them so easily.

We learned about ancient civilizations and laughed at how stupid people were back then. The Egyptians, Romans, and Greeks who, despite their great accomplishments in philosophy and science, believed that gods who created the heavens and earth were as petty as contestants on a reality show, gossiping, threatening, cheating, wrestling with, and killing each other.

We learned about ancient China and laughed at how stupid people were back then. Despite their scientific and cultural accomplishments, Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang died in 210 BCE after consuming mercury when his advisers assured him it would make him immortal.

We learned about the Dark Ages and laughed at how stupid people were back then. Medieval Europeans believed witches lived among us and could be determined by throwing one into a river. If she floated, she was a witch to be burned at the stake. If she drowned, well she had died but we at least knew she wasn’t a witch.

We learned about the European Renaissance and laughed at how stupid people were back then. Despite all the advances in art and science, the Catholic Church forced Galileo to recant his findings that the earthed revolved around the sun and sentenced him to house arrest for the rest of his life.

We learned about Nineteenth Century America in the South where black people were kept as slaves because white Americans believed them to be inferior. We learned about the Twentieth Century when one of the great civilizations on the planet decided to wipe out the Jews that they believed were the root of all evil.

We laughed because we had come so far.

But we actually haven’t come far at all.

In the Twenty-first Century, a great number of people believe that men can become women by wishing it so. They believe that a deadly virus originating in the one city in the world hosting the one research institute in the world where people study deadly viruses came from bats kissing pangolins being eaten by humans. They believe that having survived every point in decades when climate change was predicted to destroy humanity, that it is still the greatest threat to humanity. And just recently, the most widely read newspaper in America claims that Israel has trained dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners.

Several writers have already explained the ridiculousness of the latter claim including Eli Lake at the Free Press, Rachel O’Donoghue in the Wall Street Journal, and my good friend Daniel Pomerantz for RealityCheck. These are all good articles. I also started out to write an article fully debunking this claim and just couldn’t find the words. At first, I didn’t know why. After a few days, it occurred to me. If someone wrote about how witches float and mortal woman sink in a body of water, that wouldn’t get published in anything but a tabloid newspaper full of stories about alien abductions, secret miracle cures for cancer, and celebrity gossip. If I wrote an article to debunk such a claim, no one would read it. The claim is so far-fetched that most people would shrug it off. Yet when such an absurd claim is made about Israel, a large part of the population becomes psychotic, defined by the medical establishment as “disconnected from reality,” where a person has trouble telling what is real and what is not, based on either hallucinations (defined as seeing or hearing things that aren’t there) or delusions (defined as fixed false beliefs).

In this case, the fixed false belief is the inherent evil of Jews and, by association, Israel. Today’s society is not far removed from that of primitive societies. We have advanced technology. In fact, more knowledge is at our fingertips than ever before in history. More analytical tools are available to us than ever before in history. And yet, many still choose to believe in obvious falsehoods that enforce their biases and make them feel superior to others. Especially if it condemns Jews.

Society has evolved but human nature remains the same.

Bob Zeidman is the creator of the field of software forensics and the founder of several successful high-tech Silicon Valley firms including Zeidman Consulting and Software Analysis and Forensic Engineering. He is the author of textbooks on engineering and intellectual property as well as award-winning screenplays and novels. His latest book is Election Hacks, the true story of how he challenged his own beliefs about voting machine hacking in the 2020 presidential election and made international news.