The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily 1474: Epistemic Distance by Emma Bolden
Mar 11, 2026
A meditation on epistemology and why knowing matters now. Brief reflections on justified belief, contested facts, and how media fractures shared reality. A warning about denial of clear evidence and the danger of gaslighting. A poem reading that explores faith, absence, and distance between earth and the divine.
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Why Epistemology Matters Today
- Epistemology asks how we know things, distinguishing knowledge from belief and faith.
- Maggie Smith traces this from Plato's 'justified true belief' to today's question of what counts as proof amid competing news sources.
Family Newsfeeds Create Different Worlds
- Maggie Smith describes personal family division where different members get news from very different sources.
- She notes that coverage, message, and even which stories people see can diverge, fracturing shared facts within families.
Facts No Longer Provide A Reliable Baseline
- Shared agreement on facts used to anchor interpretation, but that baseline is eroding in public life.
- Maggie points to video evidence denied publicly, calling it a form of collective gaslighting that severs common reality.