News vs. Facts

If a tree fell with a thud, but no one heard it, 

has it really fallen? 

If words of truth were written but no one read it,

are they still legit? 

If one was loved by another but he/she alone was utterly blind to it,

has it really happened? Does it still count?

Humans. Most of the time we seek evidence, trust only our senses and what we can concretely grasp, especially when it's in our favour or when it's convenient to us. When it's not, or when it's too complicated/overwhelming, we either a) choose to believe whatever we were taught when we were little (fall back to the primitive model instilled in us in our early years), b) jump to the next most convenient explanation (even if it's absurd), or c) simply walk away and ignore the problem.

Sure, these choices are tempting- they're easy solutions. They don't require much thinking.  Believing what we were told when we were kids is probably the easiest, most convenient, and natural thing to do- because it felt 'right'- when 'right' and 'wrong' were as clear as 'black' and 'white' as a child. It gives us and easy way out.  But that's why we educate ourselves. We go to school not just to get a piece of paper that helps us secure a job, but to learn to think for ourselves. To think through the information we're fed, to parse out the right and wrong (subject to individual moral codes, but that's a different matter altogether), the truth from lies.

These days though, it's increasingly hard to do so. A large part of it is because of the technology that is a double-edged sword- it provides us an abundance of information all just a few clicks away,  but it doesn't separate truths from un-truths/lies/propaganda. There's hardly any information police or regulatory body that fact-check everything, because it's just an impossible task. The onus then is on us to do the hard work ourselves, to check the sources, to analyze what we've read and make up our mind about it. Yet too often we fall into complacency and just reinforce what we already believed in by reading the opinions of those whose ideas align with ours, which makes it easy to skip the thinking part and just drink in what we've been fed. The danger of overly accessible information is like the sexy, seductive mistress who keeps flirting with you, completely intoxicating, irresistible, and- costly.

Too much has been said and written on the election results, and I don't think my two-cents on the postmortem of the event is worth mentioning. Everybody has an opinion, everyone has something to say. Most of them are unhelpful, and are noise. I'm more interested in how things move forward from now on, especially on the healthcare front and the environmental issues / climate change. One example- Standing Rock's fight on the Dakota Access Pipeline is something worth keeping close tabs on, and take action if feasible. Whatever it is, I think it's high time we all start caring about something and work to protect what's important to us and to those we care. Because if we don't, we might find ourselves losing it sooner than we realize. If there's a lesson to learn from recent events, it's to take nothing for granted. Nothing.

Peace,
J