We live in a world where we have been conditioned by quick sound bites. On radio and tv, it’s in ten words or less! No matter what the medium, we insist on top line highly condensed ”information”. Because of our hectic lives, our subconscious frequently cries out “spare me the details; I don’t have time for anything else!” We tend to view quiet time as either a luxury we can’t afford or an undesirable waste of valuable time. Even worse, we may have become so intellectually lazy we do not want to be challenged!
So what do we get from the quick sound bite approach to life? For starters, we get more time for more quick sound bites! More significantly, we take a whole lot of risk when we let others tell us what we should think… feel… do. A meaningful example would be how we get information needed to make intelligent decisions about important or meaningful matters in our lives.
In our work lives, many if not most have grown to prefer top line or bottom line results over details. Since executives, managers, and supervisors set the example of what good looks like within the culture, it doesn’t take long for subordinates be hehave in kind. “Spare me the details” becomes a lifestyle up and down the organization. This is easy to check out if you are so inclined.
Another place to look would be contracts for computer applications or cell phone services. They go on and on, written in language specifically designed to encourage the consumer to go to the “I accept” button quickly. We value short, crisp language, and these contracts are anything but. And we are not discussing the legalese that very few consumers can properly evaluate, such as insurance policies, mortgage agreements, tax codes, or contracts of all sorts.
Another example would be how we consume “news” in video or print formats. I had a friend many years ago who was a foreign correspondent for a prestigious and particularly well-written international newspaper. This was just prior to the days of CNN. I remember how appalled David was with the popularity of the new USA Today because its format was a collection of brief bites with catchy titles. Because it had almost no in-depth reporting, He called it a “ten minute read on a good day!”
In an ideal world, “news” is really information distilled and interpreted from hundreds, thousands, and maybe even millions of bits of data. Our passion for “getting to the point” and “spare me the details” has all too often led to “information” passed off as “News” with little or no supporting data. My friend David was prescient about what this would lead to. I was not! Far too many societies/individuals have drunk the coolaid of the unchallenged mind, and have grown to like it.
Thomas Jefferson wrote that a “society that wishes to be free and yet uneducated expects what never was and never will be”. He was obviously calling for an informed civil society, but it has a wider application. We need to make room in our lives for meaningful reflections based on a lifetime commitment to personal education…finding enough data we can translate into information…immersing ourselves into other points of view, all leading to informed decision-making.
Health gurus have long written about the value of physical stretching throughout our lives. This is a call for intellectual stretching. Start with meaningful reflections. The minute we stop learning for whatever “practical” reason is the minute we become the manifestation of Eric Hoffer’s 1963 admonition: “learners inherit the earth while the learned find themselves perfectly equipped to inherit a world that no longer exists.”
Meaningful Reflections! -Dr. Bill DeMarco
