I was active in my Presbyterian church in the Dallas area about 30 years ago before I moved back to my beloved central Texas. I had a friend, now deceased, who was an elder on the same session as I. He was absent a lot one year, and he explained that he had been working to lay the fiberoptic cable across the Atlantic to England. This friend was very excited about all the possibilities of the new technology, and I have frequently reflected that, in his excitement, he, like the rest of the technocrats of the time, unintentionally opened Pandora’s Box!
You know the old Greek story of Pandora who was so curious about an unknown box that when she opened the box, she released all the problems of the world? Well, fiber-optics and all our great technology of today is like that, a double-edged sword, the good with the bad!
Witness the ongoing concerns and attempts to regulate it in Washington and elsewhere, the ability or inability to control, or at least monitor, social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. The amount of information, of misinformation or “disinformation” out there is scary.
Johnny Cash asked in his great country song, “What is truth?” I, too, enjoy my cell phone and computer! I love texting and “Googling” information. The ease, the speed of our technology is incredible, but what have we lost in its use?
The term, “disinformation,” a comparatively new term currently in common usage, is a definite negative. Individuals or groups can fabricate stories which they repeat over and over! The Russians have gotten really good at it as seen in the last two national elections. We, the naïve general populace, begin to accept this “disinformation” as the truth. There is actually a term for this phenomena. It is sometimes called the “Fox Effect!” Look it up! Cash had it right: “What is truth?”
A number of years ago, I was asked by a distant relative why I did not support a candidate for national office. I looked at her and simply stated, “I read.” She hasn’t spoken to me since, but oh, well!
Several years ago, I walked with friends before I tore my meniscus in my knee. The group of walkers used to go to a local donut shop for coffee. There was a long table populated by a great group of San Saba individuals who would come in and discuss local issues as well as national and international news. Sometimes discussions would get a little heated, and I, like the pompous, know-it-all person that I am, always cautioned that all of us needed to be better informed and to seek multiple sources of news. One of the men in the group,
One of the men in the group, a soft-spoken local rancher and horseman, a gentleman, always said that we should seek many sources, read broadly, process all the information, evaluate and formulate our own decisions. I always concurred with him because it is too easy to be misled by news media and by purposefully generated “disinformation.”
At any rate, because the issues progressively became more heated, some of us decided to seek coffee elsewhere. This is sad because I so very much enjoyed those individuals and miss the coffee klatch group! Interesting that friends can become dysfunctional like that. A recent guest at my ranch said his 81-year-old uncle had a rule that family never discussed politics and religion! How sad!
How do we learn if there is no discussion! Several weeks ago in this paper, I said that we, as good Americans, need to agree to disagree! I wish. I miss those guys at the donut shop! We would all be better Americans and friends if we agreed to disagree.
Socrates, the great Greek philosopher and teacher, advocated for questions. That is to be truly educated when we question. We should all question our leaders, conservative or liberal. We and they would learn. There would be no need for AK-47s on the streets of our cities. . . saved for target practice! That is the American way! Peaceful dissent! Peaceful protest! The beauty of our democracy! Majority rule and peaceful change from one position or philosophy to another! Oh, for those days of the politics of compromise!