For a long time now I have been a fatalist. We, as a species, are doomed. The 4th estate is a corpse. We are emotional creatures that cannot handle the onslaught of information that we receive, wrought relentless random in an adult manner. We’re not equipped to deal with it rationally. And I saw nothing short of state-mandated coursework in critical thinking as the way out. And I didn’t think that would do a shit bit of good either. But I had an epiphany today. And it made me more optimistic.
I think we’re the problem. Our generation, and those generations prior that are still among the living. We all lived before the digital age, and we remember what it was like before. We grew up in it.
We believed what we read in print. What we saw on a screen. Because back then putting anything in print or on any screen took money and work. It had an air of legitimacy. It was easy to believe.
But now it’s cheap. Everybody’s got a megaphone. We, and all other previous generations still alive are spellbound and easily manipulated by anything that is in print or on video for that reason. The youth, however, the millennials, or whatever you call the pimpley-faced kids these days, are not so easily manipulated, or at least they shouldn’t be.