Internet Information Can Be Helpful, But Also Confusing

While a variety of sources might be confusing, factual information is more readily available through the Internet than it was prior to the Internet. At one time, many people had access to only one or two newspapers, although most would subscribe only to one. While we may decry the bias in the media today, the media has always been biased, at least as far as politics go. For this reason, towns large enough for two newspapers usually had one that was biased toward one political party, and another to support the other political party, while small-town newspapers generally focused on local news, but there was likely a bias there, as well. This is worse today, I think, because newspapers are no longer owned locally, and the same bias is widespread.

Apart from politics and religion, most of the information that we received, from whatever source (newspapers, magazines, books, radio, television, or whatever) was factual; but was factual only so far as the author or the distributor of the knowledge understood it, which is to say that it may not have been biased in the sense of propaganda, but it wasn't necessarily true. As long as we didn't have contradictory sources of information, this served us well. We thought we knew what was going on. Of course, people who read a lot of books were likely to be exposed to information that contradicted other information they had received.

Schools, we were led to believe, were our primary source of knowledge and, for the most part, while I was aware that my teachers weren't necessarily right about everything they taught me, I didn't suspect that they were deliberately lying to me or indoctrinating me, at least not until I got into high school, and it was all too clear by the time I first enrolled in a college course. However, even back as far as the 1950s, and likely long before that, the schools were both indoctrinating and educating. Prior to the liberal, progressive, and globalist indoctrination that students are subjected to now, the schools were in the business of indoctrinating students into patriotism, although humanism has long been an element of the public education system in the United States.

If you grew up in the 60s, consider the books that were on your school reading list, and it's likely you'll see a bias there, although this may differ from one region to another, which is why there was so much of a push for a national curriculum.

Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean that our teachers were getting up in front of the class intent on lying to us. They probably believed what they were teaching us because they were themselves indoctrinated through whatever university or teacher's college they attended. This was more true of the universities than it was of the teacher's colleges, the latter of which focused largely on teaching students to teach, while the universities were indoctrination farms. Of my full siblings, I have only one brother who is a full-fledged liberal. He attended Michigan State University for his Bachelor's, then remained through his Master's Degree in social work, and followed that up with a career in social work. He didn't have a chance.

Today, the Internet has given us access to all sorts of opinions, most of which are presented as fact. Yet, an opinion itself should not be so easily dismissed, in my opinion, because a well-expressed opinion can help us to process facts in ways that might differ from the way that we would ordinarily process it, and that can be helpful in determining what to believe and what not to believe. Plus, a well-expressed opinion generally contains facts, and these might be facts that we were not previously aware of. Of course, we should substantiate these facts through whatever means that satisfies us.

It annoys me when people choose to allow a biased media to be the substantiator of what they are willing to accept as a fact because it gives too much power to a media that hasn't earned that level of trust, and it erases the advantages that multiple sources of information can provide. I suppose it's easier to allow the Washington Post or CNN to do your thinking for you, but it doesn't leave much room for discussion. If you can't believe something is true until the Washington Post agrees with it, then it's easy to remain a liberal, and if that provides satisfaction, then I guess it works for you. Perhaps some people do that with Fox, but I'm not one of them.

Also today, the scope of bias goes well beyond religion and politics, as science is very much involved in propagandizing, and that includes the medical sciences. Just as some people will leave their religious thinking to their pastor or denomination, and their political thinking to newspapers and television pundits, there are those who would never so much as consider entertaining a thought that was contradicted by established science or medicine, and the only reason they might see continuity there is that if a doctor or a scientist disagrees with the agenda of the day is drummed out of the club, and no longer considered an established medical professional or scientist.

The search engines and social media platforms are doing their best to ensure that none of us is ever presented with a contradictory fact or even another way of looking at things. Once they perfect their plans, perhaps we will once again live in a world where our sources of information are severely limited. That's the ideal for those who want to control what you believe, and for those who don't really want to think for themselves, anyhow.

 

I take that approach to anything that's important to me. Like with other information, I don't feel confident that what we are expected to accept as established medical science is necessarily designed to help me stay healthy or live long, since I'm thinking that I care more about my health than they do, and history demonstrates that absurdity of so much of what was once considered medical fact. At the same time, that doesn't mean that I'm going to embrace the first person who comes along selling snake oil or magical elixirs.

I view doctors much as I do repairmen. If something breaks and I can't figure out how to fix it, I'll pay someone to fix it for me, but I'd rather learn how to keep something from breaking, to begin with, and doctors don't seem to be very good at that. Looking at the number of medications that people are taking in the United States, it doesn't make sense to me. As a paramedic, many of my patients were victims of complications from medications, and I can't imagine how some of these people could be expected to keep their medications straight, given the sheer number of them. Then, just considering my own experiences with doctors, it seems that they are always wanting to prescribe a medication, even when more natural alternatives exist. One doctor that I had told me that he believed everyone over the age of forty should be taking a statin drug. While I may not be a doctor, that seems just plain nuts, and I am controlling my cholesterol just fine through diet, exercise, and some less problematic supplements like fish oil.

When someone who I believe to generally make sense suggests something, I'll often consider it, but that doesn't mean that I'll rush out and buy it. If it's a food supplement that is supposed to keep someone from getting cancer or something, I'll spend some time on the Internet trying to figure out if it even makes sense. Usually, it doesn't make sense, or it adds something that I'm already getting through sensible food choices. I'll also consider the dangers. Having had cancer twice, getting cancer is a reasonable concern. However, I am not going to take something for the rest of my life, in the hopes that it might reduce my chances of getting cancer if it's likely to cause me to die of something else instead. With or without whatever it is that they are recommending I take, I may or I may not get cancer. So that kind of thing is a hard sell. If I can find no reason to suspect that it might cause harm, and it's not overly expensive, I might take it. Even then, after the first bottle runs out, I'll often reconsider and think that it's stupid to be taking this stuff, and not reorder.

However, if it's something that is supposed to help fix a problem that I'm having, and which can be measured, such as cholesterol levels, I'll still go through all of the steps that I mentioned above, but then I'll be more likely to try it and see if it works. Thus, I am taking fish oil capsules. Having finally succeeded in getting one doctor to quit nagging me about statin drugs, when I heard she was leaving, I wanted to avoid having to go through it all again. So I tried the fish oil capsules. While a succession of three different doctors wanted me to take statin drugs, none of them suggested fish oil capsules, and they doubted I'd be able to control it with diet and exercise. After getting it down to the high-normal range through diet and exercise, I added the fish oil. When the labs were done, my cholesterol was well within the normal ranges. When I told my doctor I was taking fish oil capsules, she said that was a good idea, and now my Advantage Plan will pay for them, but I doubt she would have recommended it.