“You can’t believe everything people tell you – not even if those people are your own brain.” – Jefferson Smith, Strange Places
In a time where misinformation, fake news, and propaganda flood every imaginable media source, it is becoming increasingly harder to separate reality from fiction. A worldwide pandemic, the likes of which our current society has never experienced, has been made into a weapon used for global political stances on how populations should be treated and protected from an invisible assassin gripping our very existence.
As individuals we must be wary of what we here, always investigating the sources of what is being told to us through television screens and smart phones. We cannot and should not believe everything we see or hear. In today’s time one subjective outlook can be manipulated into either truth or falsehood about a current situation.
We must always be seeking out the objective, the facts that turn reality into truth. A truth which quickly rips away the mask of facade like an old school Scooby Doo episode. An inquisitive itch is one way to always ensure one is diving below the surface of the water of what we hear or read into what makes up these stories. As we all know, headlines are meant to sell newspapers, not necessarily always to convey the best summary of current events.
If we simply believe just anything, we will risk everything when it comes to making informed decisions about our futures. Misinformation may seem harmless online – but apply this to our professional or personal lives and it may lead to chaos and ruin in the end.
The next time you feel the urge to believe whatever you are fed, stop and think to yourself:
- Is what I am hearing reality?
- Where is the factual evidence to back up such a claim?
If you come up blank on either of these questions, you know you can only take what you are hearing at face value. Quality information leads to quality decisions. Learning to filter out the noise and seeking out the truth no matter how strange it can be is a smart way to help lower the risk of making poor quality decisions.
