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[KNat <knat AT sprintmail.com>]

Gene GeRue wrote:
> We are ingesting too much  
> information. Information is available as never before, more than we  
> can handle, I think. Among the results are that we believe we are  
> experts on subjects beyond our former ken. We instinctively know that  
> knowledge is power and the mass media is happy to profit from that  
> urge. Alas, "if it bleeds it leads, " and most of the information we  
> consume today is bloody, awful and highly negative. So-called  
> journalists compete for consumers of "news" with the most incendiary  
> subject they can find. No wonder my friends think the sky is falling.
>
> It is said that our physical selves are what we eat. My thought for  
> the day is that our minds are what we read, watch and listen to.
>
> Choose knowingly.
>   
Funny how the old adages recycle. My Grandmother used to knowingly and 
openly filter away some conversations around her. She passionately 
avoided violence as an accepted norm instead of a quick sympathy. 
Missionaries who wanted money to take food to starving children could 
have some support but not her acceptance. She rejected a normalization 
that theirs should be a paid position in the world instead of the normal 
goal of all the people who lived with the children. She never failed to 
note the assumption that their adults were somehow disempowered to a 
point that children went hungry and concern the children being fed were 
being similarly acculturated. Fear based manipulation by the media was 
lost on her because she rejected them. Her time was for positive 
activities and listening and talking about doom are not positive.
She quoted to me the children's lines: Be careful little eyes what you 
see... Children being raised to see the good was a critical part of 
being civilized to her and sorely missing in our generation (now the 
grandparents of this culture.)
We must choose our information yes. But I think it is not the 
information you were "debating" but the assumptions and presumptions in 
the offered interpretations. A debate between fans of teams in the 
sportfields of pubic discourse. We don't normally disagree over what we 
personally should do, just what others should do. Grandma would offer, 
do what you can, no one can ever ask more.

Peace,
Kathyann (who'd vote for it being the beer deluding that friendships 
could ever depend on global economics)