And even as things begin to return to normal in some parts of my life, others remain somewhat weird. While conspiracy theories and their ilk do not touch upon me personally, they continue to proliferate and mutate.

At first, I thought the originators of these fictions must be pranking, using social media as a conduit for outlandish tales and speculations. Some folks like to test the credulity of their peers. Teenagers are prone to consuming nonsense, but they can be forgiven because they are kids, after all. 

But increasingly I realise it is adults who are creating and believing this evidence-free blether and no amount of fact-based refutation can shift them. Often, they deny the facts, claiming these are part of the said conspiracy. It is a circular argument that brooks no logical intervention. And yet all of these people once sat in classrooms in which they learnt, presumably, to think and argue rationally.

What's the harm, you might ask? Why not let folks entertain such fantasies? The problem is, as I see it, that the withering away of the real and the rational will inevitably lead to a greater ebbing of faith in things like government and allied institutions. In a world in which the most bizarre things can be believed, anything can be believed. And that is a dangerous world to live in.

I encourage critical thinking and asking questions about the socio-economic and political order. I am all for crap-detecting. I built a teaching career upon it, amongst other things. But planting a flag in a dung heap and saying you have found gold is quite another matter.