There is an old saying about people believing what they read in print. With so many people blogging on the Internet and selling self-published books and periodicals, there is a surfeit of information. But the fact that there is a lot of information doesn’t make most of it particularly accurate or authentic. Websites like Snopes.com is forever confirming of invalidating alleged articles, facts, studies, whatever. Nevertheless, specious information still gets out there, and people take it as truth.
For instance, Martin Eisenstadt, a self-proclaimed senior fellow at the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy declared that former Vice Presidential Candidate and current Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, did not know Africa was a continent. People believed it. News outlets carried the story. It came from an authority, after all, an expert source. The only problem was there is no actual Martin Eisenstadt, and the Harding Institute only exists as a website domain. In short, it was a hoax. But people still believe that Sarah Palin does not know that Alaska is a continent.
Now Sarah Palin may believe a lot of things we may view with concern. Believingshe has valid foreign policy expertise because she can see Russia from her window or wherever, does not make for credibility. And her alleged adherence to the theory that humans co-existted with dinosaurs some 6,500 years ago, makes here more of a candidate for Alley Oop than a Vice President of the United States.
But she is not the only spurious story. There is the Obama missive about his being raised a Muslim. There is the story that Bill Gates is giving away money for passing along a chain letter. There is no end to the nonsense people will buy. There is no end to the rumors people will spread.
In a democracy everyone is entitlted to their opinion. What becomes quesitonable is the steadfast belief in far too many that every opinion should carry equal weight. This I’m afraid is more of a product of a dumbed down culture than it is a model of democracy. It is far better that those who have actual background experience, knowledge of the subject, be accorded greater credibility than those who don’t. Even then there is a chance the experts will get it wrong, but they will be less apt to float out some crackpot theory on the Internet in hopes that by virtue of spreading it will carry some authenticity.
Inexpensive, http://www.jealt.mx/construccion.html levitra 10 mg drug can be bought from any internet or local pharmacy at discounted prices. But about 400 men in every 100,000 suffer from the most common viagra online mastercard sexual disease known as erectile dysfunction. So don’t waste any more time and cheap brand levitra start to work faster than Kamagra tablets would. One important thing is don’t use this medicine more than once per day. buy cialis canadian can help you have an erection when there is a foreplay. The fact is we have so diluted our pool of experts we can’t tell the real ones from the phonies. Worse, perhaps, we can’t distinguish the real experts from the pundits who parrot a lot of garbage under the guise their mediocre thinking has substance. In all, there is so much information, the chronically uninformed do not become informed. Instead they become confused as they are unable to discern truth from fiction, or at least intelligent conjecture from abject idiocy.
If you are looking for proof, look to the news media. Every now and then you get someone who actually knows what he is talking about. The rest of the time we get pundits who are posing as experts in order to make a living. Most of the time they will write a book, which is really a few paragraphs expanded into a volume. This is called expertise. And you wonder why the literacy rate is somewhere near a third world country. You wonder why the economy has been run into the ground. Well, surely, there are legions on the media who will wax considrably as to why it all happened. But they will never get to the point.
For one thing they are incapable of getting to the point. Reference points are limited and insight is myopic. It is like finding the cure for a disease rather than developing drugs that will just pay for the maintenance of a disease. Once you get to the point you really have nothing more to say. Your story is over. You can no longer milk it. You have killed the proverbial goose that is laying those golden eggs.
So rather than reach a conclusion or make a solid point, we manufacture new experts. We don’t manufacture much anymore in this country, but we produce our experts by the dozen. And what do they have to say? Too often they have as much to say as the mythical Martin Eisenstadt. Eisenstadt at least knew he was a joke. Can’t say the same for the majority.
Between the rumors, the legends, the emails and the expert insights we find on the media, we can surmise that there is not that much to learn from them. At the end of the day it is up to you to educate yourself and go by your gut. Bear in mind that educated gut is a lot more rewarding in its results than just gut without education.
It is a tough economy in a hard world. To be armed is to keep learning. Learning means reading source material as well as the opinions. It is difficult to find the time. But spending this life and all eternity in confusion is not an attractive alternative. Unless you don’t care where your information comes from and how accurate it is. Just keep your chain mail to yourself.
