Kyrie’s Flat Earth Comments Provide Social Commentary

Kyrie Irving made headlines on Friday when he stated on Richard Jefferson and Channing Frye’s Roadtrippin Podcast that he believed that the earth was flat.

Irving flat out stated:

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"This is not even a conspiracy theory. The Earth is flat. The Earth is flat. … It’s right in front of our faces. I’m telling you, it’s right in front of our faces. They lie to us.”"

These comments were the story of All-Star weekend. People from all walks of life, who don’t even like basketball know about this story. Irving and his comments were trending on Twitter all throughout this past weekend.

We’ve seen some good jokes coming at Irving’s expense as well.

https://twitter.com/David_C_Steele/status/833129480545779712

While jokes like this are pretty great, not all the jokes are made in jest. Many people are using this as an avenue to undermine the educational system and portray Irving as a dumb athlete who doesn’t know anything outside of basketball.

The reaction to Kyrie’s comments show the problem with our society. We react without finding the complete story.

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There are many articles out there including this one from Forbes that states that Kyrie’s comments are hurting society and even damaging our health. Just search Irving’s name on Twitter or Google and you will find many articles and opinions like this.

The backlash on Kyrie show just how quick we are as a culture are to react without knowing the entirety of the situation. So often people react to something without even knowing what it is that they’re reacting too. They’ll post an article on social media with a comment without even reading the article and seeing what it says.

As a society, we have seemingly lost the ability to come up with our own thoughts and opinions. The most popular political websites and shows don’t simply portray the facts of what is going on in the political world. Instead they often times try to tell people how they should react to current events. Expert opinions are the current form of news.

Newspapers and news outlets don’t report the news. They try to persuade others how to view the world. The whole “embrace debate” culture that is permeating today pushes the idea of having an opinion quickly without knowing all of the facts.

The big takeaway from listening to Irving on the podcast was that people should do more critical thinking. He challenged the audience to not accept things for what they seem to be at face value. Kyrie encouraged people to do research on their own.

Irving isn’t someone that has never taken a science class. He knows what the research says. I believe this was his way of encouraging people to think on their own.

I don’t believe that he picked the right topic to challenge. Challenging an observable scientific fact was foolish. It isn’t healthy to challenge things that are clearly true. However, it is healthy to be able to form your own opinions and do critical thinking of your own.

The world is not flat, and Kyrie knows that.

What Kyrie is encouraging is critical thinking. He is trying to prove that we need the ability to form opinions of our own. We all can take the initiative to research and make ourselves more educated and well-rounded individuals.

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Critical thinking and the ability to form educated opinions is something that we all could use more of. Maybe we should all take Kyrie’s advice. Just as long as you are ready to accept the fact that the world is actually round.