Who Needs Information?

I hate to sound like an old "fuddy duddy" since I am in my thirties, but I remember doing research papers in school. In high school we weren't allowed to use any internet resources because there just wasn't that many of them. In college, we were limited to the resources we could use on the internet because those stick in the mud academic types just didn't trust the internet. Encyclopedia Britannia was a more reliable resource than Wikipedia. Funny how that all works out huh. Considering that a fourth grader can edit any entry on Wikipedia without oversight, you would think we would know better. Allow me to make this a little entertaining by basing some observations on some music lyrics. Some might recognize the tune.

A variation of that quote reads "who needs information, when your this high off the ground....." Someone once told me people either have the view of the ant or the view of the eagle. The ants are the workers that only see what is in front of them. They are small picture kind of people. Others have the view of the eagle which means they see the big picture. In reality, I think most people have a governing story that motivates them and what facts they are willing to accept. As the lyric suggests, don't give me facts. Just keep reassuring me that there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow there for me.

For those that follow basketball, you remember the last couple of weeks when NBA free agency news seemed to change by the minute. Player A was going to Chicago, then to LA, then New York in the span of a day. Of course, he went to none of those places. As news travels faster and faster it becomes less objective." Anyone can open a twitter account and introduce their own news instantaneously. Of course, I'm on Twitter so I can't be too judgmental. Suddenly, people in the know can offer emotional reactions to events without the customary waiting period that television or print news had to offer.

With that emotionality comes subjectivity. There are more news sources, blogs, and other projectile gossip out there we can get our hands on. We don't have a national anchor like we did the old days that we could trust to just give us the facts. You have Fox News on the right and MSNBC on the left giving us facts that happen to jive with our conception of reality or the story we want to believe. We can either buy into the rugged individualism and picking yourself up by your bootstraps or you can believe that the government can play an active role in helping to protect us or nurture us when we need a little help.

Think back to the time when you were a child. When you were scared by the monster under the bed or the monster out of the window, did you want your mom or dad to give you a long winded explanation about how there possibly couldn't be anyone there? You wanted to be comforted and assuaged. Fear has a funny way of rendering us irrational. Rationally, we know that attacking this country or that country is a lot like stomping on an ant pile. Yes, we destroyed their homes, but ants have to go somewhere. That somewhere is usually are feet and legs.

In the same way, when someone has jarred our contentment with an attack, the primal response is usually to step on their ant pile. When our commander in chief gives into that primal need it makes us feel better. That is until we get our wits about us. The truth of the matter is that the world is a complex place. It is takes complex strategies and attention to detail to keep us safe. Just that knowledge can make us feel less safe. People don't trust details when they are afraid. Unfortunately, some people never leave that stupor. They remain the small child that is afraid of the monster under the bed. They barricade their homes, buy guns, and surround themselves with like-minded individuals. It makes them feel safe.

The chasm that exists between left and right grows wider because the facts we hold onto our attached to the stories we choose to support in our lives. With the changes in news, technologies, and even ourselves, it becomes increasingly difficult to agree on a set of facts. We distrust the source. Most of you reading this are progressives. If Sean Hannity came to you and said the sun rises in the east I'd bet you'd go to a secondary source to verify that. Folks feel the same about Thomas Friedman and Paul Krugman. The heck with facts, are you buying their story? That is the question on most people's mind today.