A Puzzlement

How do you react to those e-mails that order the recipient to forward them, often within a certain time frame, lest some dire event overtake you? They’re apt to suggest that if you do follow instructions, you may win a lottery or the Nobel Prize. Do you accept every opportunity to win an iPhone or a Dell computer or a $500 gift card? If you’ve fallen for the bait even once, you’ve discovered the price you’ll have to pay even to qualify. Someone is trying to sell you something, you may be sure.

When I think of the expanse of the Web, and the numbers of people who are reached by these enticements, I reel mentally. A host of disquieting thoughts about what the possible consequences to our country, our economy, our future might be if a significant majority who respond to these fake carrots dangled on glittering sticks follow them. How can we find out without getting a bite, which are vegetables and which are plastic?

It’s hard enough, even with a determination to delve deeper, to detach the whole truth from what information is available to us about corporations, political candidates, about unfriendly nations, about allies, about governments, about our neighbors both near and far. A biographical article, for instance, may not contain a single direct lie. It also may leave out a score of relevant facts that can reverse the impression a reader gets.

Equally disturbing are the people who claim to have all the information about public figures and institutions that is not common knowledge. They are often impervious to any assessments contrary to their own. It doesn’t matter what authority is presented unless it agrees with the authority they trust. This inability to see personalities or institutions clearly and from all sides makes for too many closed minds. Entrenched positions make compromise virtually impossible. If the argument is that loyalty at all costs is the mark of virtue, it seems to me that the inevitable is an impasse — that or a battle, if not a war.

A friend holds me to task regularly because he is convinced that even if I had read everything published about a controversial figure (read “politician” or “candidate”) I still wouldn’t have the wit to sift the facts from the nonsense. He has already decided what authorities he will accept and won’t even read others. Well, to each his own, I’m afraid. It seems as if even good intentions and some diligence will be poor props for one’s decisions.

Remember The King and I? Every day I feel more and more like the king — about far too many aspects of life: “is a puzzlement.”

Money and Computing, News and Issues, The Internet, Issues, Politics, Senior Women Web, Articles, Joan L. Cannon, Authors Add comments

A Puzzlement

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