How To Spot Bad Ideas and Why We Need To Prevent Them From Spreading

Welcome back, dear listeners! It’s been a while, and I’m thrilled to bring you another enlightening episode of our Spiritual Sundays podcast. Today, we delve into the fascinating world of ideas - their power, their transformation into tangible realities, and the crucial need for us to be aware of them.

This episode promises to be a journey of discovery and insight, and I’m excited to have you on board. Please note that while the first seven minutes of the podcast, along with the first half of the transcript, are available for free, full access requires a paid membership.

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“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” - Ephesians 6:12

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Spiritual Sundays. I’m your host, Franklin O’Kanu, and even though it’s been a while, I’m glad to be here with you all today. Today, we’re going to delve into a topic that may seem straightforward but is, in fact, one of the most profound subjects we could discuss: how to spot bad ideas and prevent them from spreading.

Our conversation begins with a verse from Paul stating, “Our enemies are not flesh and blood but against principalities.” This is a crucial point to understand because we often fail to recognize what these principalities look like in our contemporary world.

In my recent series, The Seven Pillars of Life, I discussed how distractions divert us from life’s primary areas. As we approach the end of this series, it’s vital to recognize what an attack on life looks like. This is why we’re discussing the principalities, the true rulers of this world. The principalities move in this world in the form of ideas. Therefore, it’s of utmost importance that we learn to recognize a bad idea and stop it from spreading. This is the crux of our discussion today.

Staying with the second part of my series on the Pillars of Life, I explored how distractions, particularly politics, divert our focus from what life is truly about. There are plenty of distractions—like social media and sports, phenomena that have no meaning on our seven pillars — but politics is a potent distractor because it provides an illusion of participation. It makes us believe that we can bring about change, yet, as we all know, changing politics is a Herculean task.

However, it is essential to fully understand that politics, specifically nationwide politics, serves as a distraction, and I call out politics because we have to start looking at politics from a different perspective. What I’m trying to drive home here and allude to, via a small preview, is that our politics are used to attack us.

Now, this might sound like a radical idea, but if we observe closely, we’ll see that in today’s world, these attacks on individuals are not flesh and blood per se, but they’re principalities. If principalities move in the form of ideas, what we’re witnessing here is that our politicians have some terrible ideas that are affecting us.

These attacks don’t come out in the open. They’re deceptive. They’re hidden under the rug. There’s a disguise to them. And so, we often miss what an attack looks like.

In today’s podcast, we’ll discuss how to recognize these bad ideas, identify these principalities and the ideas they bring, and stop them from spreading. 

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Unmasking Bad Ideas: A Deeper Dive

To start, we must ask ourselves: How do we stop a bad idea? First, let’s take a step back to understand our reality regarding politics. The answer lies in understanding the illusion of politics. We often hope that the politicians we elect will reflect our desires. However, the reality is different. Politicians at the top tell us what they want—for our best interest, of course—and this is what happens to us. Our misconstrued idea of politics is why it never works.

Often, our politicians pass laws on to us in the form of ideas that impact our lives. These laws are presented to us not for what they are but for the ideas they represent. Let’s take climate change as an example. Laws are being passed under the guise of being better for the world. But is that the reality? Or is it just the idea we are sold?

We saw a similar pattern during the pandemic. The idea was to stop the spread, so the law was that everyone must be vaccinated. But when we see these laws for what they are - bad ideas - we can start to stop them.

How Do We See These Laws as Bad Ideas?

The first step is to talk about them. We need to discuss the policies that have been passed on to us. Since politics is the number one distraction, it’s crucial to delve into these ideas being pushed through.

Many of these ideas, like climate change or the pandemic, sound very good on the surface. But there’s always a “what about this” or a “what about that.” For example, with the pandemic, everyone must take the shot, but what about people who have a side effect or don’t want to take it?

We need to highlight the pros and cons of these ideas. If we cannot see both sides of an idea, then we have yet to do any analysis of it. There are always two sides to a story, and by examining the pros and cons of any policy, we can determine whether it’s a good idea or not.

The second step is to measure the impacts. This is where it gets challenging. We need to participate if we want to understand the idea being presented. If we have yet to crunch the numbers for ourselves and are taking the numbers that these individuals give us, who are we to make any decision?

For instance, the common narrative during the pandemic was that everyone needed to take a shot. However, if we know that this virus has a 99% survivability rate, we can take an active role in understanding the situation. We can push back against the idea of a shot by saying, “I get what you’re saying, but this is a disease that 99% of people will survive.”

Author’s Note: When you understand the metaphysical aspect of this whole virus phenomenon, you see the ritualistic aspect to things, e.g., such as wearing masks. 

The same goes for climate change. How can we say carbon is harmful if it is the very substance of life? The idea of stopping carbon emissions because it stops climate change sounds beneficial, but what does that do to carbon, as carbon is a breathing principle of life?

We need to measure these ideas for what they are and see if they are something that we actually want to implement. We need to talk through these ideas and measure them because we are often told that they are being done for the best, for the benefit of the good, or for the majority of individuals.

This is the number one tall tale sign that this is a bad idea. If the majority benefits but a minority suffers, that is a bad idea. Anyone can find themselves in the minority or the majority at any given time. We must not use decisions like that.

When we consider humanity as a whole, no one group is better than another; all of humanity must thrive. Any idea that sacrifices one human race for another human race is always a bad idea. It is always anti-life and anti-human.

So, we should never accept an idea where one benefits and the other suffers because this is a collective journey and cannot be one human versus another human. There is no more significant population here. By knowing these three areas—talking about the idea, measuring the concept’s impact, and seeing if it harms someone else—we can start to evaluate these policies that our politicians are giving us as if they are good ideas or not.

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