What Has Become the Quintessential Question of Our Time?

By Carolyn Chatham - Wise Woman Press.net September 11, 2018

WHY I WRITE, PURPOSE, ACTIVISM
How to make sense of the tsunami of information that bombards us daily, hourly, minute by minute. The serfs knew only what they were told by their masters. The ordinary person of the middle ages knew only what the church told him. The renaissance and then the age of reason opened the valve of knowledge to many more people. Knowledge had value. It was something not everyone could have. It gave a person status and power.

Now technology has far outstripped our ability to create meaning from information. Unless we have a matrix by which to decipher, organize, and evaluate information, it is not only useless, it is crippling. If a little information is, as the saying goes, a dangerous thing, too much information is a debilitating thing. Knowing a little, but not enough can lead to the wrong conclusions and actions. Being inundated with too much information can lead to paralysis, or to feeding any belief we need to feed, or to wrong action.We can easily find the stories that nurture our paradigms, that "prove" our points, regardless of the validity of our paradigms.

How do we learn to filter,evaluate,accept, or reject information based on reliability and accuracy rather than emotion? Are we able or willing to learn that way, or is the average person incapable of rejecting emotion and comfort over logic and fact?

Some people find their filters by choosing Fox News. Some listen to Alex Jones. Some listen to their church leaders or preachers. Some search out sources that are more reliable, that attempt to be fact based.

Recently Tom Heger and I were discussing politics. He told me the story of two men, one a farmer, the other a "progressive." The progressive was trying to convince the farmer we meed more regulations. The progressive laid out his reasoning layer after layer, but the farmer maintained that regulations are bad. Finally the progressive said,"And it killed the cows." Then the farmer agreed. 

We have to get to the cows in our political conversations. Everybody has a cow. We have to know what it is to move the argument past the road block.

Also, everybody has a paradigm. Sometimes it's just about having a paradigm that is so different from our own that discussion is fruitless. We don't have to love the fascists, but it's good to understand them and know one when we meet one.

When selecting our reading materials, choosing the channel on our TV, clicking on stories, we need to be aware of our own cows and paradigms and choose fact over emotion. Thought, then speech, then action. 

I will be the arrow straight and true

that pierces your enemy

through and through

So long as you know the arrow flies

only as true 

as the archer's eyes

I will be your arrow straight and sure

so notch me now 

and let me soar

            Published in Those Bones that Float About, 2018

Carolyn publishes political and social commentary,  literary reviews and poetry on WISE WOMAN PRESS.net

Her book,THOSE BONES THAT FLOAT ABOUT, is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble