Zack Vayda and All the Words

Since I'm often driving cars around for my job, I listen to a lot of FM radio. I started with the pop stations (97.9, 107.9), then moved to classic rock and oldies (93.3, 101.7, 103.5, 103.9), then I went to extremes with classical (101.1) and alternative (102.5), but for now I've primarily settled on 89.7, National Public Radio. 

Yes, I do understand what kind of a guy that makes me seem like. Now all I need is an outdoor grill more expensive than my car and an unfinished basement "man cave" project. I've recently learned that it's important for my self-worth and general happiness to constantly be learning, and NPR certainly is good for that. I enjoy the variety of information the programs provide, from current events to history to personal stories that are good for emotional growth. Politics is a constant conversation topic on nearly every one of their programs. I enjoy listening to this topic because it's an area that is becoming more and more important to understand. 

Several of the political programs involve bringing on a politician to answer questions called in from people throughout the city. What surprises me is that the guest on the show (as well as the host) often spend way too much time trying to figure out how to politely tell the caller that their question is stupid and irrelevant. They can't just tell the caller that the opinionated, biased "question" is based off incorrect statistics, rumors or downright lies. 

A couple things occurred to me today. Firstly, there really is no excuse to not know the facts. We each have an incredibly powerful tool in our hands that allow us to access all the knowledge on this planet. Use it before you ask a dumb question, especially if it's on air.
Secondly, it's weird to think that even though we live in a time where we have easy access to all opinions from all points on the spectrum, that access has actually numbed our minds to all of those points. Putting it another way, because we have all the words at our disposal, words have become meaningless.

Imagine what it would be like without your laptop and without your tablet and radio and all the other ways you get information. Your only source of information is word of mouth. Then, a stranger approaches you and tells you something you hadn't heard before. Whether you liked the words the stranger said to you or not, you're going to listen to them. You're going to internalize them, mull them over, consider the options, think about how it fits in with how you see things. That's an important process that we don't have now. Today, we hear words, and then we change the channel and hear completely different words, and then we pull Facebook up on our phone and read something else entirely. We don't give ourselves time to grasp what we're reading and to decide how we feel about it. I have a feeling that is what allows us, as a society, to be so stubborn. If we don't like the words, we find different words. How can we expect to advance as a country if we only listen to the words we like?

I'm going to make a habit of hearing all the words that come across my path and considering what they mean to me. I'm going to use my access to all this information to make myself more knowledgable, not more opinionated..