Problem with reliability

September 11th, 2023

This is a widespread problem and something that I feel personally a lot — the tendency to discourage people from trusting their own capacity to think. Especially to think about problems that really and personally matter to each one of us. There is too much data, usually presented in a chaotic way, so we, in a rather pathetic way, patiently wait for specialists to find out what to do, where to go, and what to think.

The result is a dichotomy of skepticism and childish trust — we are cynical toward most of the things presented in an official way by the people in the know and people with influence, and yet on many levels we believe without questioning what we are told by people with any kind of authority. Or because we just want to believe in something, so why not in things that already align with our thinking and our ideas?

This unlikely combination of cynicism and naivete is very typical for a modern individual — its essential result is a discouragement of doing our own thinking and our own analysis and then deciding for or against and judging the importance of any single thing that might have an influence over our lives. I do the same, sadly. The only reason for this is, that with the cornucopia of data and information available, it is not possible to dig deeper into any given subject to find out the truth. I cannot spend time collecting data, judging its importance and truth, and then analyzing it to achieve a coherent result. The amount of information on any subject is suffocating and even though I have already stopped paying attention to so many things, it seems that I need to cut a lot more from what surrounds me. I want to minimize the quantity of things that I pay attention to and concentrate only on the crucial things in my life. I want to minimize the incandescent chatter of idiotic and useless things that fill the air around me. I want to learn to ignore things.