I find it amazing that we live in a world where it is so easy to directly hear what people are saying, to directly see places that are far away from you, and to get first-hand accounts from numerous individuals of what is happening, and yet people still choose to get filtered, edited information second-hand from organizations whose first responsibility is provide entertainment and serve their advertisers and stockholders—businesses that believe the only way to make money is by following a writing formula of shock and conflict.
As a side note to this, it still amazes me that people think there are only two sides to any question or situation, and that if one side is right the other must be wrong. No, they can both be wrong. They can be talking about something irrelevant. They could be asking the wrong questions. You can put two liars in a room and have them accuse each other of lying–neither of them have to be telling the truth just because one accuses the other of lying.
To an honest person, it is hard to imagine that somebody would form an organization that claims to be providing information but is actually focused on entertainment. But to the formers of these organizations, it is hard for them to imagine that anybody really believes them fully.
In short, I think there is a lot less conflict in the world than there is portrayed to be, but a LOT of conflict reported. That is, a lot of the conflict and things that you are angry at are actually the media channels giving you the information, even though you might have believed you were actually angry about the thing being reported. Usually if you go directly to the source, you’ll find things are a lot less dramatic than than they are represented to be.
Max Kanat-Alexander 