Garbage Processors for a Better Union

From our first gasp for air to our last, we are assimilating - taking in air, clean or polluted, and likewise food, nutritious or otherwise. This process is particularly important when it comes to our emotions, ideas, stereotypes or beliefs. We’re walking, talking filters of all of these things.

During our younger years there are certainly limits as to how much we can control that which goes into our psyche. But as mature adults, when it comes to our minds, we each get to decide whether we want to just “go with the flow” or be intentional about what we “consume.”

Photograph by Stijn Dijkstra

Mentally stable adults are in a much better position than kids to filter out the crap, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have limitations placed on what we take in. Things like poverty, oppression, levels of literacy, and the lack of a well-rounded education can certainly influence the quality of what we fill our minds with. Each of these factors can effect the ways in which we understand the world around us.

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A prime example of this hit close to home recently when a family member texted me. He alluded to the 2020 election as being stolen. I asked - “Can you help me understand why the extremely loyal Attorney General Bill Barr who was hand-picked by the former president would come out publicly and say that he’d lost, if he hadn’t? And why would dozens of judges all across the United States including nine appointed by Trump himself, refuse to say that there was evidence of substantial election fraud - if they’d found any?”

He responded, “This is where we’re just going to have to agree to disagree.” He might as well have said, “I’m sorry, but facts don’t matter to me anymore.” He followed that comment by pointing out that Newsmax was the only worthwhile source of news nowadays and that I’d be an idiot if I watched anything else.

As a nation, it seems that all too many of us have lost the ability or the desire to sift through the “garbage” for the kernels of truth within. Millions have been swept up in the current of alternative facts, and agenda / greed- driven “news.” Critical thinking has given way to blind acceptance of a narrative. And with that acceptance comes an allegiance not to a country or constitution but to the worst that our country has to offer.

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I have two questions for my readers

1. At what point do the echo chambers that people immerse themselves in overtake rational thought and preclude the honest interpretation of new data?

2) Could it be that willful ignorance has become the greatest threat to our democracy?

By our words or our silence, and by our action or our inaction, we get to influence the choices that people in our circles choose to make. The legacies we leave could easily be marked by either the fist-grip or pinky-hold we have on reality.

Photo by Stephany Jockschat - Unsplash

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