Remember when the Germans were questioned about the atrocities that went on during World War II? They said and they maintain to this day - `We didn´t know`.
Having seen the research into the mysteries surrounding 9/11 and having experienced people´s reactions to the real truth I can believe in this claim to ignorance.
In today´s world, where we have all the technology available to us for re-education of the facts, where we can listen to news 24 hours a day and then research alternative news to compliment or contradict, where we can have virtual tours of cities miles away and talk with people whose world is very different to our own, we have all this available to us and yet the majority of us still prefer to wear blinkers. We take what is spoon fed to us by those that haven´t even earned our trust.
In 20 years time when we are questioned about what is going on now in Iraq, will they accept our answer when we say ´we didn´t know´?
1 comment:
In some ways the mass media circus that we have today (tv, radio, internet, papers, blogs, pod casts etc etc) probably adds to the confusion and makes people even less inclined to find out for themselves.
There is SO MUCH information out there, it would require a considerable investment of time and effort to go wading through it all trying to sift the factual from the fanciful and even then how do they know which is correct?
We are told increasingly these days that a person's most valuable commodity is their time and with so many demands for their precious free time (kids, work, sports, spouce, entertainment etc etc), trawling through acres of information to try to see if what they said on the news is real or not is not going to be a priority.
People trust what they are being told because they have little other choice in their day to day lives.
I think what we could do with here are some new approaches to journalism which give a person all the angles of a story... maybe that would help to open people's minds a little and make them come to their own conclusions.
Or maybe having to actually THINK about an issue is just another demand on their time which will quickly be left by the wayside.
"Just tell me what to think"
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