Lying liars and their lies

[degringolade]

 

Cubism / Karl Knaths/ Harvest

One of the consistent themes of the internet age is the bemoaning of the fact that there are too many people talking out there.  My favorite symptom of this phenomenon is the nostalgia of folk my age for the simpler days of Walter Cronkite and the ubiquitous local newspapers printing Reuters and Associated press along with the antics of the local politicians.

In a way, they are right.  Today’s highly democratic internet has allowed just about anyone with a beat up laptop and a modem to publish on the ‘net to their heart's content.  So in this democracy of information, people have to read things that they aren’t really sure about, written by people that they don’t know, and are required to distill the information and put it into a worldview that makes sense (to them).

We are talking about a difficult process here.  In the old days (we will refer to this as the age of Cronkite) the process was easy.  Granted, you could go over to NBC and watch Huntley and Brinkley, but they sold the same bill of goods.  So the country was built upon a consensus created by the media of the time.

We don’t have such a luxury here and now.  The problem is not with the information we have available to us, the problem we have is that most folks (and I count myself in the most folks category) simply do not have the intellectual tools to objectively assess and categorize the flood of data/opinion/news that presents itself on our screen the first thing every morning.

So we pick and choose from an overlarge menu a set of “sources” to provide us a glimpse of what the world has on offer that day.  Now, this is a pretty sensible way of approaching the issue.  But in a sense it is a regression to the old days by consciously limiting the data available.

But what I find interesting is how folks handle the data from outside their “trusted” news sources.  If the news given doesn’t comply with their selected data sources, the news and the source providing it are now labelled “LIES”.  

Now, I could call people to task for this effrontery, but I don’t think that I will.  I think what people are doing with the “news” is crafting a synthetic world where they will be OK.  Now, you may well think that I am looking down on folks for doing such a thing, but nothing could be farther from the truth.

Folks need to have the world make sense to them, they need to feel that they are listened to and that things are being done for their benefit.  The construction of a belief system to organize and judge the vagaries of a complex planet is probably necessary for personal mental health.  

I tend to disparage folks who count the number of “LIES” and use that to judge the world.  I have to stop doing that.   

Comments

trust no one

[chefxh]

That's where it end up: each against all. 350 million news sources that all claim sole legitimacy.

Nice painting.