Getting To The Point.

Has our nation become so democratic that we no longer view the facts as facts, but just one side of the story?

Granted, there are those subjects that are better determined by opinion, emotion and experience, but in some cases there are defined sets of facts that are clearly stated, yet ignored because they conflict with what we want to believe.

I once saw an experiment where two people voted on the sex of a rabbit. Even though the two votes were different, neither changed the fact that the rabbit was male/female.

This is where I see one of the biggest problems we face today. Information. To find out the sex of the rabbit, all you have to do is raise its leg, but how do we find the truth in more important matters? Matters where money and power, and the need for financial support can sway the information we’re given.

If it’s important to you that you know the truth, you may spend countless hours scouring documents to get the one piece of information you’re looking for, but if it’s something that doesn’t really matter or effect you on a personal basis, you just go with whatever opinion you like best because it’s just too time consuming to do otherwise. Possibly perpetuating the spreading of false facts.

A personal example of this:

I once tried to find out statistics about heart and lung disease in my home town. I heard that we are near the top of the list of areas for high industrial pollution (it was in the local paper,) but trying to match that against, say... the effects of second hand smoke, was damn near impossible. Those statistics are out there, I know they’re out there. But because they conflict with popular opinion, they’ve either been buried, or are just not available to the general public.

A more recent example:

Something about the hearing involving Michael Brown just didn’t sound right to me. If he were actually guilty of not doing his job, then why wasn’t he fired immediately? No ‘ifs’ ‘ands’ or ‘buts’ the man had a specific job to do, if he didn’t do it, why is there a debate? It took me less than ten minutes to find out exactly what his job entails. While it seems pretty open on what FEMA is suppose to do (seems to be mostly financial aid and coordinating resources,) it is quite clear what duties FEMA is not responsible for. My suspicions were right, from what we were shown of the hearing on the news, his actual duties were not even addressed.

And those are just two examples of the breakdown of knowledge.

So my final question is this: As the general public, how do we go about getting the actual facts when it seems that the actual facts are no longer important? How do we go about demanding to be told the truth?

Continuing On Again....

After reading some of your comments, I’m starting to feel a little better. There are people out there that are open minded! But just so you understand where I’m coming from, belief is some something that I don’t know, it’s something that I have to take someone’s word for (like science, plumbing, history and so forth,) knowing is something I’ve experienced and know to be true. Faith is my word for religion ;o) People use different words for different things sometimes, I just want to be clear what mine are.

With that in mind, here’s the next thing:

Assuming you are willing to learn new things, where do you get your information? Who do you and/or what will listen to? How harmful is it if we listen to the wrong source?

How much of it is we simply believe what we want to believe?

Continuing Thought...

I suspect that a lot of people (if not all people) do mistake belief for knowledge. How do you know something that you didn’t personally experience? And even if you personally experienced it, how do you know that your previous experiences didn’t color your perception? You don’t. You either believe or disbelieve the given facts and correlated experiences.

That’s not such a bad thing, mind you, it would be pretty hard to know most things that we commonly believe. But it does lead to my next question...

When do you give up a belief? If you were faced with an undeniable series of facts, would you change the way you think, or would you unswervingly hold onto the old idea as truth? At what point does emotional and intellectual knowledge become stunted because of an unwillingness to consider new and challenging information?

What If...

You take away what you believe in, and replace it with what you know?

How would it change your life?

What do you know?

Ever Been In One Of Those Situations...

Where you really want to go off on someone, but you know it's no use because they'll never be able to understand?

Sorry! I Cut The Wrong Wire Thingie...

Secure my ass.

Ever get the feeling that you're fighting the wrong battles?

I Think I'm Back!

It's tentative for now, because I did the work on my computer myself, but I think I got it :o)

So what did I miss???