When insane beliefs become personal....

I have been having an ongoing "discussion" that could accurately called "a feud" with my younger brother who is, gotta say, a huge conspiracy theorist.  He believes that our own government was either behind or at least aided and abetted the attacks on 9/11 and he is listening to nothing I am saying.  Last night, I posted what I thought was a relatively harmless quote on Facebook from Neil deGrasse Tyson that essentially said that we should not be running our government by someone's belief system.  My nephew went bonkers apparently and tried to engage me on this. I think his main point is that belief in science and belief in religion are exactly the same.  Facebook is a horrible forum to try to debate something like that, but it's pretty much hopeless for me to try to convince either of these two relatives about anything.  They have made their mind up and it is me who is "out there" and has a closed mind.

I am just at a total loss about how to interacting with society anymore.  I feel I must first figure out what a person's "view of reality" is before I actually say anything meaningful.  I am just so alienated right now.  I have reduced myself to the role of disengaged audience.  It's all some sort of super strange performance art where I have no idea what is going on but am just watching and trying to take it all in with some sort of morbid fascination waiting on the next bit of strangeness that the performance artist is going to throw at me next. I have no interaction with the people on the stage and what they say and do has no relationship to me.  If our society is going to drown itself in a sea of ignorance and hatred, at least I have been witness.  It isn't like I am going to get a chance to testify in front of anyone, of course.  But it matters to me, apparently, that I watch this occur.

I have degrees in both engineering and science and have been in a several technical jobs over the last 35 years that require disciplined thinking, logic and problem solving.  None of that seems to matter anymore in today's society and I am frankly appalled.  This really hits home when it is coming from my immediate family.  I don't even really want to talk to these people anymore who I once thought I knew.

I should really drop Facebook.  It's making me really unhappy and upset.