Waiting to be told

Waiting to be told-

Information overload has political consequences.

People in democracies are subjected to information saturation; the political reality of this is that the majority of voters have stopped being sceptical, they have stopped asking questions. Even the most necessary questions. Opinions which are repeated and “loudly” proclaimed, are often generally accepted as truth, until some one else makes equally loud and repeated denials.

One of the most common of excuses for anything is – No one told me! Probably the second most used excuse is-I was told that such a thing is true. These are very lame excuses for laziness but they are increasingly the basic attitude that is adopted by so very many people. It is almost as if any lie, even the most outrageous, will be accepted unless there is equal and opposite media attention to a denial.

Unscrupulous political managers and spin doctors use this to sway opinions. Democracy is being endangered by the practice of using lies, misinformation and distortion, knowing that many voters will not question the validity of any statement while others, even those who realise the statements are false, will consider the possibility that there is “no smoke without fire.”

One of the fundamental problems for modern humans is a by product of the information technology abundance, available in modern times. Everyone expects to be TOLD. They do not go out and seek. They do not spend hour after hour of great effort to find out anything for themselves. They expect to be told.

If you are reading a book and come across something that raises a question in your mind, you can mark the page, put the book aside and seek other sources of information to check on what has been stated in the book. If you are watching TV or even if you are in a lecture hall; you can not do this. You have to wait an hour or so then try to recall the statement that raised a question, it is unlikely you will remember every question or bother to try and research further. Without an effort to struggle and find truth, all you get is other peoples opinions and usually these are ones which have a price tag. A hidden cost, an agenda that slants the views they have provided while claiming they are unbiased facts.

What we are told is what someone else wants us to hear. This is why the left of centre have taken over the education system, they can not win arguments, they can not win rational examinations of political policy, they can not withstand factual reporting of the history of far left governance; and so they teach, they teach a dogma to those who are too lazy, so conditioned to receive without effort that they do not go and seek other opinions and so they do not reach truth. It is the same as the difference between going out with a deliberate intention of buying a particular item and going into a supermarket and being “sold” something you did not intend to purchase. Huge notices of “special offers”, “this is too good to miss”, overwhelm the thought that we do not actually want this item. TV “celebrities” paid to promote an ideal or an object, can sell that ideal or object to tens of thousands of people who did not intend to even consider it. Political policies can be “marketed” the same way. Never examine the cost, look at what you get; but do not look too closely at how badly this is made or put together. Never mind if you can afford it or not, vote now regret later.

We will all get poor governments until change is made. Change must start with the voters, changes to the amount of effort they put into deciding who to vote for. Once this change is made and the power of the party system is curtailed, then we will see improvements in the governance of democracies.