"They (scientists) feel a lot of pressure not to contradict each other," "There's a lot of evidence that if you do that, it'll be negative for your career." -Elizabeth Iorns, the CEO of Science Exchange
In sociology of scientific knowledge, Planck's principle is the view that scientific change does not occur because individual scientists change their mind, but rather that successive generations of scientists have different views.
Informally, this is often paraphrased as "Science progresses one funeral at a time".
Throughout history, you will find millions upon millions of regular people putting their trust in politicians, future dictators, and other experts.
And what is a byproduct of this trust? Millions dead. Millions starved. Rights obliterated. Hyperinflation. Government collapse. Wars. Ethnic cleansing. Nuclear fallout. Just to name a few.
And I'm sure each generation thought it couldn't happen to them. They probably thought that these things only happened in "the old days."
So they went about their lives, and then it happened.
Many German citizens were caught entirely off guard by the rise of Hitler. Before they could do anything about it, it was too late, and to even speak out was a death sentence. So they were carried along by a madman. German Jews suffered the same fate: few resisted, hoping things would get better... but then it was too late.
History repeats itself because human nature is constant.
Ignoring our evolutionary past is why we have corporations that make billions off sick care, pharmaceuticals, vaccines (yes this is big business), processed food, sugar-filled drinks, subsidized monocrops foods that strip-mine our environment and destroy human health, addictive technology that profits the more addicted one remains, and more.
I call these "accidental conspiracies;" they are a response to new environments and technology and not something any evil genius could have planned.
Now that the media, big medical, big pharma, big Food and Big Government all have their hands in each other's pocket, things that damage the health of millions have become "normal" even though they are not natural in any sense of the word.
And it is all propped up by a manipulated public.
Because these things have become widely accepted by the masses through years of indoctrination through TV, advertising, pop culture, even Hollywood, we now have a beast that gobbles up profit and power and uses both to protect the broken status quo.
"It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled."
― Mark Twain
It is your job, as an individual, to challenge the status quo. You must be a skeptic. Do not accept anything you are told. Investigate it yourself. Read the research. Understand the counterpoints and if you decide of a way to think, be able to argue both sides.
A startling heuristic I've been thinking about is this: nearly everything you are told by the media, the government, or big corporations is the opposite of the truth.
Mark Twain knew this in the early 1900s. Here he is again:
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
If you go back through history and document every commonly held belief by the masses, most of which perpetuated by those in power, (governments, Catholic church, ruling class) you see a correlation that goes like this: the more people believe something the more likely it is to be wrong.
This is not something most people can fathom. It creates too much dissonance in their mind, and so they don't even broach the subject.
This is why it is always up to a select few that are willing to challenge the status quo and are willing to be ridiculed and ostracized for speaking the truth.
It is always the few that grant the freedoms to the masses.
Be one of the few.