MARS HILL
Susie wanted to meet in Mars Hill, which is about a half hour north of Asheville. We met there and had lunch in a very authentic Mexican restaurant with Mexican diners and Mexican staff and were given enough food for two meals so I‘ll eat Mexican again tonight. And then we looked in at at new Gallery in Mars Hill, Mars Landing Galleries, in an old skating rink with beautiful arched with wooden joists ceiling. A number of artists were featured there but also, brand new to us, were several NFT paintings for $400 apiece. What I didn’t realize was that these NFT digital paintings, made entirely on a computer, are not still paintings, they are movies with a painting as the basis. When the painting was scanned into an iPhone we could zoom right into the painting and float around in it. For $400 you could buy both the framed copy of the painting and this original movie, the combination was the NFT which has some kind of watermark marking is as original so no one else can own it. It was all a little surreal. And I didn‘t much care for the paintings, either in printed form or in the zoomed into and floating around in form.
At one of end of the gallery Meadowsweet Creame sold delicious, expensive ice cream. I had a root beer float. And then we drove back to Swannanoa.
Several things that Susie said today struck me. One was that in the gallery we met a mother and daughter who had three very sweet children. Susie remarked that both mother and daughter in spite of being well educated and sensible people were anti vaxxers. We later wondered why and the only thing that I could think of was that the woman must have some very rational credentialed person who knew the hidden truth about the dangers in vaccinations whom she trusted and believed, just as I trust my rational credentialed doctor Baumgarten. In this case the question would be why the doctor, who it seemed should know better, would be an anti vaxxer.
Then later Susie mentioned a friend who was a very intelligent and pleasant person and who believed in all kinds of conspiracy theories including Q Anon. In this case I guessed that maybe the people he listened to on social media were convincing him that they knew a horrifying truth that the ordinary public didn‘t know. They were letting him in on a secret and he was pleased to know something that everyone else was fooled into thinking was a fact was really untrue. But then Susie mentioned that when he retold these conspiracies he did it in such a bright eyed, excited way that it was as if he had found Jesus. It was almost as if, in evangelical terms, he had been saved, born again, transformed.
And that struck me as a far better explanation for believing in things that you are sure are right without being able to prove they exist. They just feel true.
When I went home that night I couldn‘t get it out of my head that believers in Q Anon conspiracy theories and people who believe that Jesus has transformed their lives seem to have a great deal in common. And yet I think of Q Anon people as been nuts and born again Christians as being sane, good people. What was going on?
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 