In a world where narratives reign supreme, the immense power of storytelling cannot be overstated. Stories possess the remarkable capacity to shape imaginations, mold beliefs, and guide believers’ understanding of the cosmos. This influence becomes all the more potent when individuals, deprived of critical intellectual tools, readily accept and internalize the cosmic tales that agents in positions of authority weave, despite the obvious shortcomings, leaps of faith and and logic those tales possess.
We examine how the Osiris-Rex mission managers present it to the general public. Unsurprisingly, platitudes, non-sequiturs, and predictable clichês appear again and again in their presentation. Moreover, the alleged evidence they present is both not verifiable nor convincing by any stretch of the imagination. Ultimately, we observe that cosmic tales can cut corners, break basic logical principles, be utterly uninformative, overhyped, repetitive, and still somehow manage to be considered legitimate among audiences captured by the colonial cosmology.
