By HEATHER C. COX
Staff Writer
reporter@sbnewspaper.com
Heather Cathleen Cox
I could try to sell you my philosophies on why the world is cruel. I know a story about a man who did something so awful to his two-year-old daughter it earned him 30 consecutive life sentences in prison. I spent years wishing I didn’t know that story.
But stories alone, however insightful, cannot help people who will not continue learning about a topic once it has been presented to them. When unsound information is given credence and repeated, it can easily become folklore, which simply defined means widely held but false or unsubstantiated beliefs.
The game of telephone, often played by school-age children or in a work setting for purposes of team building, would be an example of repeating unsubstantiated information. The game’s premise is this: 10 people stand in a line, all waiting their turn to hear one message, which is originated with the first person. Person number one whispers, “Susie sold Sallie some seashells” to the second person in line; the second person whispers what they heard to the third person; and so forth. By the time the 10th and final person reiterates what they heard, Sallie might have stolen Susie’s suburban and quit school to sell smack in Sarasota.
Whether or not the message is distorted on purpose or accidentally, that game is utilized as almost a laughable illustration of this point: The poison of lies is not as blatant as we want to believe. Smart people are taught to be forever leery of crooks and hustlers, but not all liars have slicked-back hair and the audacity to stand beside a dilapidated van in a used car lot. Rather, it is for each individual to decide when and how to retrieve information; we have to decide who and what to believe; we must know why we believe.
If we don’t know whether a media source is trustworthy, we should test it with other media – and I’m not just talking CNN vs. FOX News. We can go underground, dig around on the internet or seek grassroots presses. We won’t like what we’ll find.
We’ll find websites with video footage of humans in refugee camps in substandard conditions, photos of bodies washing up on the shores of other countries. We might see footage of a dead body. We could hear someone boorishly exercising their freedom of speech and press in the shape of the “F” bomb.
It might turn our stomachs, make us sick and make us sorely afraid, but those feelings should be outweighed by the elation of outgrowing ignorance.
Rest assured that there is cyanide in the Kool-Aid, my friend, and you’re being served a big, sparkling glass of it every day. But what will you do? I Thessalonians 5:14 says, “Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that are idle, encourage the faint-hearted, support the weak, be patient toward all men.”
Those who don’t work with diligence, who think things can and will not improve, who think they have nothing to offer, who preach uneducated opinions, and who won’t take action should do better. It is so very dire that we understand this. Those of us who remain bigots, actionless, uneducated, small-minded, and weak-willed will suffer. We will also afford the suffering of our fellow human.
The only way to learn is to shut our mouths long enough to gain information. We already know what we know. We need to know what someone else knows. But we also need to remember 1 Thessalonians 5:21, which says, “Test all things; hold fast that which is good.”
It is always good to know the truth, but sometimes, the truth is not considered good news. Like I said, I once wished I didn’t know what that father did to his small daughter to merit imprisonment in the state of Texas – in the shape of 30 consecutive life sentences. But as long as people like that ‘father’ exist, they will reside in our communities unless they are arrested.
Ted Bundy was someone’s neighbor. If you request public information at your local police department, you will see that sex and drug trafficking offenses are not diminishing statistically. One candidate will be elected president whether or not you make it to the polls. So what do we profit by not bothering to know with whom and what we are coexisting?
Hosea 4:6 says, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge….” The person at the hair salon, the person behind you at the bank, the person who serves you a meal, the barista at the coffee shop, your family sitting in the living room, your boss in the morning meeting, the voices on the television and in your iPod, the congregation at church, and the contradictory political figures which abound – they’re all voices in the game of telephone.
We must at all cost seek to expose truth. People may or may not have malicious intent, though they remain capable of dolling out wrong information with conviction and regularity. Misinformation or lack of information is a handicap we cannot afford. We must combat this by refusing to suck up information in a lackadaisical fashion, like Kool-Aid from a straw. Doing so profits the inability to distinguish fact from fiction and comes to us with the lofty price tag of destruction.
To read this story in print, pick up a copy of the September 16 edition of the San Benito News, or subscribe to our E-Edition by clicking here.
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