Can't Believe a Word of It!

Knee jerk reactions, no matter what side of the fence they originate on, continue to be defined primarily by the term "jerk". Years of brainwashing have apparently led many of us to believe that anything that is printed is fact. It used to take a while for the printed word to reach the more credulous of us but thanks to the wonderfully rapid aspects of the Internet truth and falsehood appear with equal speed and indiscriminate respectability. But that same Internet can and does provide the means to filter through the VOLUME and attempt to reach the ESSENCE.

I fear I have angered people I respect and admire for their many contributions to the community they live in; people who don't have the desire to transmit falsehood; people who truly believe they are "doing the right thing" by passing on information which proves that they are correct to take the stand they take on any given subject by pointing out to them that they are contributing to spreading false information in the best of circumstances and outright slander in the worst of the circumstances.

The least dangerous of these cases are the multitudes of emails we collectively receive pleading for us to pass on the picture of the poor little girl or boy who is dying of cancer in a remote hospital and whose parents lack the funds to save the beloved child's life. Of course, Microsoft and AOL have agreed to contribute toward the treatment of the poor child ONLY if they can squeeze a profit out of it and so you are urged to not be cold-hearted and pass the email on to everyone in your address book. It only takes a moment to either spread this urban legend or go to snopes.com and find out that if you do you will be contributing to wasted time, wasted bandwidth and worst of all, the pilfering of empathy and the sincere desire to help someone.

Of the same ilk but much more mean spirited are the rash of emails that take a tiny bit of truth as yarn and knit a wildly incongruous and untrue tale that usually pits the fears of one political faction against another.

The clue is to follow to look beyond the obvious. What does the originator of the email want to achieve? What is the agenda of the originator? Don't judge the sender's objective since the sender is probably a victim of Internet Abuse. They may well be your colleague, friend or family member. You hesitate to correct them because you don't want to seem patronizing or create conflict where nothing but friendship resides. But please; find a diplomatic way of having them look beyond the obvious. Send them this blog if you think it will help!

A recent email claimed that the left was proposing banning the American Flag. Research showed that the "truth" was that a school in LA had banned the wearing of clothing sporting the American Flag ONE DAY (5 de Mayo) to avoid conflict. Fox News spun this event into a online survey titled "Should the American Flag Be Banned -- in America?" which was then spun by others to claim that the left was supporting the banning of the American flag. Massive emails went out to ask the conservatives to show the liberals the true tenor of the American people.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/05/06/american-flag-banned-america/#ixzz16QrIZa2L

The sad reality is that we have become too eager to react without checking facts. Are we too complacent to check our facts or too secure in our own limited collection of knowledge to risk seeing beyond what we currently accept as truth? Knee jerk or just jerks?