By David Hegg
As we plunge deeper into the information culture, it is clear many want to do our thinking for us. Issues swirl around us, and each news cycle brings yet another bombast that demands our attention and our verdict. If we’re not careful about what we take in and how we understand it, we’ll find the media doing all our thinking for us.
The problem is twofold. First, manipulating our beliefs has become a significant industry. Many advertisers, pundits, politicians, journalists, salespersons and businesses, big and small, aim at creating certain beliefs in us. They do it through rapid-fire images and commentary, smooth presentations, sentimental vignettes, and too often, partial truths or straight-out lies. Compounding the problem is the fact that we now see this as the new normal. We have become almost completely duped into thinking outside influences can be counted on to tell us how and what to think about nearly everything.
Second, as we become more and more responsive rather than proactive in analyzing facts and forming our own opinions, as a nation, we are losing our ability to think deeply. Like children addicted to sugar, our intellectual digestive tracts are becoming incapable of digesting the meat and potatoes of substantive fact and critical argument. We’re so used to having shallow, simplistic tidbits of information thrown at us that we no longer yearn for the breadth of information necessary to form a valid opinion. We’re becoming intellectually soft and sentimentally obese on a diet of drive-thru information.
So, what are we to do? Simple. Change your information diet, and take responsibility for finding, knowing and using whatever information is necessary to form intellectually reasonable beliefs and provide a strong basis for ethical living.
Look for facts, not meaning: The most significant problem with most media outlets and marketing organizations is their goal is not news, but interpretation. They exist to form our opinions, not merely inform our minds. They do it through a biased presentation of the facts that often goes unnoticed if we share their bias. But while this may leave us cheering, it diminishes our opportunity to think for ourselves. My advice is to also tap into those news outlets that don’t share your bias, as well as those that do the best job of actually presenting facts well. Gather the facts, recognize the various slants, and then do your thinking to form your own opinions.
Refuse to eat junk food: Stay away from the “one-minute” news story in all its forms. Work hard to end your addiction to information outlets that make you think everything can be reported and explained with some images accompanied by a paragraph of inane commentary.
Form your ethical grid first: The best advice I can give is to form an ethical grid to strain everything you hear. If you were to peel back the layers of your experience, what would you find at the core of your existence? What forms your identity? What values determine who you are and how you intend to live? For me, these all flow out of my belief that God exists, has created me for His glory, and that when His glory shines through my life, I’ll be most useful to Him and personally joyful. When I listen to or read about the events of the day, I first make them pass through my grid as the first interpretive layer on the way to forming my own opinions on how these facts should create or adjust my beliefs. By so doing, I start the process of thinking for myself rather than letting outside influences do my thinking for me.
By now, the cleverest of you have thought, “So, if I shouldn’t let anyone else do my thinking for me, how come I’m reading this short opinion column?” Well done! I’ll be the first to admit you shouldn’t take what I write directly into your belief system. However, you should use this column as a catalyst to jumpstart your thinking on the subject at hand. After all, my intention isn’t to do your thinking for you, but only to get you to think deeply about your thinking. It’s time we stopped letting others think for us, especially since they’ve often led us away from the foundational values upon which great countries and righteous lives are built.
Local resident David Hegg is senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church. “Ethically Speaking” appears Sundays.
