Truth and gossip

Every person is guilty of gossiping or at least entertaining gossip at least once, if not 100 times. The old, “he said, she said” saying will always be relevant. Life can be like a game of telephone – you start out with a statement and end with something contrary, if not on an entirely different topic altogether.

However, slow your mind and think about information and how you find out if it is false or true – if you even do that instead of accepting it right away.

You could have 100 people witness a situation, and have 100 different opinions and reactions. The mind is influenced by so much, including past experiences – whether you remember them or not -- values, morals, current environment and emotions, and prejudices -- whether people acknowledge them or not. The mind is also going full speed ahead captain! without much time to pause before you're late for work, a meeting, a social engagement, trying to get 7-8 hours of sleep or 30 minutes of exercise ... Then if you don't get enough sleep, your mind is muddled. No one said life was easy – if they did, they're selling something.

Also, people are quick to believe, whether it be speech or written information. There are many portals to information (too many) – newspapers, magazines, TV, the Internet, DVDs, CDs -- that leave the author removed, if not totally absent, and able to say or write whatever they want, however they want. Then there is always word-of-mouth, the most potent, where people take friends and acquaintances for being ultimate holders of total truth.

It reminds me of learning how to do “research” in high school. My teacher said that we needed to gather information from various sources that are “reputable.” I.e., you're writing about World War II and want to use information from a recognized encyclopedia instead of a homemade website that Joe Smith put together in his basement during commercial breaks from a marathon of “The Young & The Restless.”

What is reputable these days? So many people rely on specific sources for information – not because they believe it's necessarily reputable but because they are given “what they want to hear” and are allowed to exist in their narrow-minded world – mostly done subliminally.

Did you hear that commercials may become shorter to compete with the low attention spans of Americans? Why do you think that is? Do we all have Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)? I don't think so (even though that's what people want to believe when they can't “pay attention” so they can get a magic pill and be “cured” -- another rant for another day). Americans have so much stimuli coming at them (example: portals of information listed above), even from people lacking the ability to shut their mouths, keep their opinions to themselves and go about their business (I'm one to talk ... ), that we have learned to tune things out.

We are tuning out the world because it's too much stimuli for our minds to filter. We are turning our brains on keyword auto-pilot – your mind perks up with it hears or reads something that perks your interest. It's like having a radio station turned on in the background while you work and only listening when the conversation or song is something you enjoy or something that is of interest.

So, if we are tuning out the world, only listening to things of interest, how are we ever going to know what is true? Do people even want to know what is true? Could you ever know what is true?

What is your news source? Is it bias? Really, is it bias or not? Does it lean one way or the other? And I'm not trying to start some liberal Fox News rant. I'm talking about considering whether or not the information you seek to use to make decisions and use as justification for your moral compass is true or is what you want to believe. As they say, “tell em what he wants to hear.” It's a slippery slope.

It's like when you go to buy something that's a “big ticket item,” like a car. Would you go to some slippery car dealership and listen to whatever the car salesman tells you (knowing full well they work on commission) or would you “do your homework?” Most people will say they do their homework, maybe using Consumer Reports or a company like CarMax. So, why do you do this when you are spending money (greed is another rant for another day also) but not when you are learning about a situation or news item or anything else?

People, in general, are quick to speak or act but not to consider the ramifications or the impression their action may give to others. So, if we believe this, why would you believe everything and anything?

What is truth? Is it what happened or is it what we want to believe?

The human mind is a complicated thing – everyone has filters for seeing the world with biases and emotions. Life is just one big game of “he said, she said” as people try to get more money and “find” happiness.