They say hearsay

Pollution and global warming are definite concerns if the human race is to survive the next few centuries but there is a greater danger in the airs that would wipe out this race within a few moments if it reaches the right, or wrong for that matter, person. In the beginning mankind had not progressed very far that we could have a language represented by symbols and hence we relied more on word-of-mouth. Nowadays word-of-mouth seems to have taken a turn for the worse. Just look all around us, the vast amounts of information available to us and we can't discern what is true from untrue. The tobacco industry is one prime example, despite everyone knowing that smoking is addictive they had a way of twisting the facts to present something completely contrary to that! Or maybe they are telling the truth?

My concern here is not the kind of information out there or the quality (or lack thereof) of it but to me it seems that we always don't stop to think and analyse critically what has just been presented to us. We have a sound mind and sound reasoning (I hope to God about the reasoning bit, I feel too many people don't exercise good judgement) so why then do we continue to let people formulate our ideas? Sometimes it is hard to separate fact from fiction and I agree it's not an easy job but it is no reason for us not to responsibly approach information.

Edward Said (I am becoming quite a fan of his) in his book Orientalism briefly touches upon something along these lines; he states that sometimes books obtain this certain aura of being the truth and nothing else, that we then tend to see whatever it is through the eyes of the book. His argument was postulating that cetain books about the Orient written by Occidents had shaped the Orient as to how the Occidental wants to view them, never for once tryign to present information in its stark nakedness but always with the prejudice of the author. He goes onto saying that an author lends even more credence to himself if his work is proven right in anyway whatsoever, thereby appropriating for himself a near immortality and infallibilty in the literature world.

This is also true for second-hand information whether it is presented in graphical form, audio/visual form etc. So what do we do to balance the scales? We need to try and not formulate any ideas beforehand and then we need to, if given the opportunity, to go out and experience it. Hearing, reading or watching something presented in a particular way, which is at the complete mercy of the material's creator, we will always be fed a judgemental piece no matter how much we know of the person's impartiality. One can't separate the orchestrator from moving the orchestra according to his inner prejudices; it is impossible to try and approach a situation without keeping in mind one's previous experiences. I am sure you have, like me, many times approached a problem in a particular way only to be confounded by it, but along comes someone else with a different approach and Voila! We have instant success. Out of the box thinking? Yes, but let us just settle for critical analysis because out of the box has become synonymous for creative thinking and not necessarily critical thinking.