Our Information Overload Has Made Humanity More Easily Manipulated

 

Have you ever noticed how much you look at your phone, or your computer, or your TV, just to get the latest news on whatever it is that catches your interest? We can literally watch the news 24 hours a day now, and that's not to say that we can access news media at all times, but what I am saying is that there is news actively being disseminated literally 24 hours a day. Things didn't used to be this way.

When I was growing up, and really for most of my life, news was available on a scheduled basis. Your newspaper would get delivered in the morning. The radio station would deliver news twice an hour during the morning show, then give an updated news broadcast during the lunch hour and another updated news broadcast while you were going home from work. The rest of the day was mostly entertainment. On TV, there was the morning show which included news updates or you could watch a dedicated morning news show, noon would deliver another news show, the supper hour would deliver yet another news show and there would be a final news broadcast around 10 or 11 o'clock.

The rest of the day, you just lived your life. You worked at your job, you ran errands, you cared for your kids. The news of the world took a backseat to what your own world revolved around. That is no longer the case.

There are people whose lives have nothing to do with the world news who have set up updates on their computers or phones to tell them every time a new story breaks, or, as I said to start, people look at their devices to make sure that they are up to date on everything that is happening, even if what is happening has absolutely no bearing on their own lives. We have become obsessed with knowing what is going on; it even has a moniker given to it: FOMO - Fear of Missing Out.

I'm not sure that this constant information is a good thing. Are things getting better in the world now that everybody can know what is happening almost everywhere almost all the time? I sure don't think so. There are more people on more medications now than ever before, at least in the western world. More people are dealing with anxiety disorders now than at any point in history. This anxiety is likely the cause of our obesity epidemic due to stress eating. Or, if it isn't anxiety that plagues us, it may be a perceived need to battle for this or the other cause, which may or may not actually benefit civilization.

We are the most informed people in the history of the world, but I would argue that, as a whole, we are by far the dumbest people in the history of the world. How can those two things exist beside each other? Let me lay out my thinking on that.

When we lived in a world wherein the news of the day came at us in snippets delivered at scheduled times, and the time frame available to deliver that news was too short to do more than report the basic facts, we were better able to focus on the things that were right in front of us and to excel in the things that we did on a daily basis. We were not distracted by fringe concerns. We were far more productive as a society than we are right now. In fact, I would argue that the actual beneficial production of humanity in the western world has been on a steady decrease for at least two decades, maybe as long as three decades. I have come to understand this in my search for a job as of late.

Do you have any idea how many jobs exist out there that actually produce nothing of any value at all? There are so many administrative roles that supposedly support the production of goods and services, but they are really just a drain on costs of real production. I could expand on this significantly, but I will try not to digress from my real purpose for this article. The point is that there is a huge portion of society whose productivity is focused on things that are of no value, in order to entertain or "inform" or "support" people, which only serves to reduce the productivity of those who would otherwise actually produce necessary goods and services.

I live in Canada, and I have been considering the usefulness of the CBC, which is the government run television and radio broadcaster. Now over the last ten years, the CBC in particular, has become the propaganda arm of the ruling Liberal government, placing itself as the unofficial opposition to the Official Opposition of the political sphere. This should never happen in any country, but it has happened here in large part to ever increasing government payouts to the media machines that exist, supposedly to inform the masses. While CBC is the most blatant of the propaganda machines, all of the legacy media sources in Canada have been captured; but this is again verging on digressing from the topic at hand.

What I have been watching with the CBC in particular, is an erosion of the consumption of their productions while the costs to operate the CBC continue to spiral up out of control. This has caused me to wonder if, perhaps, the best way to curb not only the ability of the CBC to propagandize the population, but also to curb the operating costs of the state broadcaster, is to reduce their visibility. By this I mean that they should return to the model of informing the populace of the news on a scheduled basis instead of all day long. I mean think about it, if your business model is to keep pommelling your viewers with "news" all day long, how much effort does it take to make sure that you actually have content to fill the entire 24 hours with supposedly relevant news? Besides the wages for the reporters on the ground and their own support crews, you have the on-air anchors, the producers, the technicians, the camera operators, the mike operators, the writers - even the custodial staff. And what about the capital expenses of simply running these electricity sucking machines and buildings all day everyday at full capacity? The expenses are enormous! And what do we get from this? Very little of true value.

All of this effort, all of this expense provides the viewer with an at-the-moment snapshot of what a few people at the top think should be important to you. You don't get to choose what they are informing you about or even what angle they are reporting it from; and every news broadcast has an angle. They will always claim to be unbiased, but they aren't. We all have our own biases, and when your finances are coming mostly from the government, you can be sure that the government will not get very much push back from those whose jobs it is to provide that push back. But again, I am in danger of digressing from my topic for this article.

The point is, when information is expected constantly, when faces and voices are vying for the same eyes and ears, there is a necessity to always have "the latest" news. It doesn't matter what this news is, it just has to get delivered to you faster than anybody else can. This creates a system in which speed is more important than accuracy and wherein biases are more easily ignored by the producers of the news as well as the consumers of the news. Quite simply, we are getting bombarded with information, and it is coming at us so fast that we can have a really hard time determining what is fact and what is spin.

I would argue that this is by design. One could state that, particularly in the instance of the cozy relationship between the governing Liberals and the CBC, this is in order to sway the thinking of the electorate towards the Liberal ruling regime, and there is plenty of evidence for this if one is willing to open their eyes to see it. But more importantly, I believe that this is the design of the Deceiver, Satan himself.

The best way to cause division in people is to feed them conflicting information. Everyone has their preferred source for their information, and their bias will dictate their understanding of the world. We see this in action in Canada in the political sphere. Those who are in eastern Canada tend to support the socialist directions of the Liberal party and these people largely get their information from the legacy media. However, those in western Canada have significantly rejected the ideology of the Liberal party, and seeing how the legacy media have aligned themselves with the governing Liberals, the western Canadians have also largely rejected the legacy media as well, instead choosing to get their information from independent sources, the way the media was intended to operate in the first place. It has been long recognized that media dependency on the government undermines the ability of the media to challenge the government; this has been seen over and over again in dictatorial countries, yet the left seems to forget this fact and seems to have no problem with a cozy relationship between the government and the media; or they simply choose not to recognize the nature of the beast that is in front of them. But yet again, I risk digression.

When everybody is being overwhelmed with information, we do not have the ability to discern what is true and what is not true, and when our "truth" is in conflict with someone else's "truth", conflict is sure to arise. But we can't all cling to our own "truths". What I believe cannot be objectively true if what you believe is also true but is in direct conflict with what I believe. Truth is not subjective! One cannot decide for oneself what is true and what is not. Western society has forgotten this, which is why men can supposedly be women and gender fluidity is a thing.

The simplest solution that I can come up with to the problem of media overload is to reduce the amount of information that you consume and to be very particular about where that information is coming from. This also means that you need to choose what is important to you and what isn't. If your interest is in finances, then find reliable sources of real truth, not subjective "truth", in the field of finance. Become truly knowledgeable in this field and do not allow yourself to get sidetracked into other fields. Finance is an excellent example of the value of focusing your energies since it affects and is affected by so many things.

For example, today the governing Liberal party is unveiling what is expected to be the most deficit heavy budget in the history of this country. Politics is influencing and being influenced by finance in this situation, and this is not just national politics, but even international politics. This should even inform election choices, particularly since there is a slight possibility that this budget proposal could fail which would lead Canada into another federal election. There is even speculation that this is Mark Carney's desire as he would like to lead a majority government instead of the minority that he was given by Canadians. 

But I believe that people are just being manipulated by the media in the manner in which they keep hitting us with information. I will state here that I recognize that this article is also a form of media, and I am trying to influence my readers, but I am trying to do so with reason and logic, not by using tactics to elicit an emotional response. You, as the reader, are also searching out this information. I am delivering it to your door via the internet, but you have to choose to let it in. Start doing the same with all your media consumption.

Protect yourself. Set up barriers to the notifications from your devices; this includes messages from friends as well. Break the chains that your devices have placed on your mind and your heart and reduce your dependency on the need to be "in the know" about everything.

Most important, and I cannot stress this enough, make time for God. Be quiet in His presence and let the peace of His wisdom come over you. Seek Him in all things; personal, professional and national. His peace can only be found in the quiet. This is another reason why I believe that it is Satan's design to harangue us with constant information. If our senses are always engaged with media, then our heart is always disengaged from God. God speaks in the whispers that can only be heard when we force everything else to the edges. Just as Elijah was seeking to hear from God when he was in the cave after his victory over the priests of Baal, God was not heard in the strong wind, the earthquake or the fire, but in the gentle blowing (1 Kings 19:11-18). This is how God communicates with us, and this is where relationship with God is cultivated.

Limiting ourselves in the access that we give to the media's voices with their constant rantings of the problems of the world and finding the quiet peace of being in God's presence will allow you to find the truth in what the media has been saying; and I would go so far as to state that there is very little truth in what the media is telling us, regardless of the source. God will lead you in knowledge and truth as you navigate this world, and following His leading will lead you to a place wherein the pressures and the tragedies of this world will have little affect on your life and your family, because we are not of this world, but we are only passing through.