This morning I am thinking of how we deal with available information that bombards us in petabytes on a daily basis and how we have to make sense of it all for ourselves and for our children.
This from a semi avid blogger who contributes in kilos to the petas. What got me thinking was an off hand remark from an acquaintance recently. When asked if he had heard about a recent large scale, headline item, power outage in India he remarked that he did not pay much attention to the news - in fact he did NOT listen to them as a rule.
That got me thinking. Was he serious or delusional or somehow had more sense than most of us walking around?
Recent tragedies including the one in Connecticut just yesterday which had our president step out and say 'Our Hearts Are Broken Today' was headline news.
Whether that is something you can ignore or take in stride and move on is what I am trying to determine.
For all its achievements humanity stuns us yet again. Media plays an important role in curating all this data and presenting for mass consumption. But given today's rating driven society the objective is not always clear.
I think the bottom line if there is one is that you have to do an immensely solid job of putting things in perspective. Further you have to be able to constantly extend your perspective that you may have gained in the past so that new data can define the range of possibilties and be clear about outliers versus the standard practices.
There is no escaping that the so called Black Swan events have always been around and will continue to rattle the status quo. Whether its a massive Tsunami or a human losing its balance causing untold sorrow our perspective to value 'life as the ultimate there is' makes us vulnerable. There is no getting around that and tuning it out.
Here is another essay on the subject of first names. As in birth names. Or names provided to an offspring at birth. While the developed world tends to shy away from the exotic like Refrigerator or Coca Cola for their new production there is a plethora of Jims and Johns and Bobs or Robs. Speaking of which I do not think there is a categoric decision point at the time of birth if a child will be hereafter called as Bob. I mean have not yet met a toddler called Bob or Rob for that matter. At some point though the parental instinct to mouth out multiple syllables runs out and they switch from calling the crawler Robert to simply Robbie to Rob. Now speaking of - it is strange that the name sounds like something you would not want Rob to do - i.e. Rob anyone. Then why call someone that? After all Rob Peter to Pay Paul is not exactly a maxim to live a young life? Is it? Perhaps Peter or Paul might want to have a say in it? Then there is this matter of going to the John. Why degrad...
Singing in tune, or out of it, could be a temporary solution..better than listening to the news, at least.
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