The information about our world is provided to us by companies who must profit financially to survive.
If you are not paying for a product, you are the product. In the information industry, our attention is the product.
The competition for our attention has never been fiercer.
Multiple messengers battle for our attention by “screaming” their message. This creates noise that drowns all signals. The easiest and quickest way to elevate a signal above this noise is to shout something extreme. “The President is a Muslim terrorist!” (wait, what?! . . heads turn, attention is gained, and the battle is won.)
“Extreme” garners attention, ratings, and money. Measured messages are lost in the noise.
There are more consequences of this phenomena than I care to write about, or you care to read about. Consider, for today, just one:
“Who has the microphone?”
Extreme messengers delivering extreme messages are given the microphone. This is a devious ploy to lure us into an abyss of drama and conflict from which there is no escape. Less dramatically, we are “tricked” into assuming that the message from the microphone represents a larger group of people. It rarely does.
How often do you hear?
“Liberals want . . ”
“Christians think . . . ”
“The black community is . . “
“Veterans are . . . “
There is value in pausing before taking this bait. Let’s take a step back and a deep breath, and ask “Who has the microphone?” before embracing assumptions that influence our perception of and interaction with the world and our fellow inhabitants.
