Healthy Skepticism

As I said in Sunday’s sermon, we are guinea pigs in an experiment that has never been done in the history of humanity: what happens when you subject people to unrelenting information? News, think pieces, entertainment, etc. are not only available, they are aggressively pushed out to our phones, pop-up notifications on our computers, etc.

If that information were objectively factual and unbiased, it would be bad enough. But it’s not. We often talk about the need to teach critical thinking in schools, but my adult friends, we need to begin with us. (And boy, am I including myself in that!)

I believe we must begin a practice of questioning everything, literally everything, that is presented to us. It’s not enough to read past the headlines. We need to question where the information is coming from, why is it being framed the way it is? We need to question the questions themselves.

You know who is doing that hard work? The young adults. Bless them, they have never known a time of trusting the news media, so they question not only the stories, but their own assumptions.

Here is a great example. This is about 30 minutes long. I really believe it is worth watching, because the creator takes a current news story and breaks down all of the assumptions and deliberate choices that normalize certain attitudes, in this case, misogyny. She shows how questions themselves can lead to certain answers, and what a role word choice holds. Like “traditional views” rather than “oppressive sexism.”

The Media Is Framing Misogyny Like It’s An OPINION!

This is how we regain our power – by making a healthy skepticism our default.

Did anyone else have a grandmother who read tabloids like “Star” and “National Enquirer” and believed the stories? I loved my grandma so much, but oh how she frustrated me with this. We would sit at the breakfast table, drinking her favorite General Foods Instant International Coffees, as I patiently (okay, impatiently) would explain why these were not reliable sources.

Now, it’s not just the tabloids. The profit-driven media has soaked up some of the same slanted practices. And as formerly-respected newspapers are purchased by billionaires and their news divisions controlled by their interests, we must begin with an attitude of suspicion.

This is where our power comes from. They can feed us stories that attempt to influence our thinking, but we have the power to question, and yes, to do our own research.

Because I know none of us want our grandchild, or anyone, to sit impatiently with us over a cup of Suisse Mocha explaining why we’re being manipulated.