Feeding My Ignorance

We are only a few days into the new year and already items in the news have shocked me - have inspired me - have worried me - have surprised me - have saddened me - have ..... What we find out about the happenings around the globe has the capacity to affect us in a huge number of ways. What about - and this is entirely in keeping with the blog theme - the things we don't know about?

...

THE NEWS - and I have capitalised it to indicate that what I am talking about here is information gained from "the media" in its many guises - is - necessarily - selective. There is no way that we could cope with "knowing everything". I've no problem with the need for that selection - however, I am less convinced about (some of) the motives used in making the selection. There is, throughout the world, a long history of what could best be described as a "self serving" use of propaganda. Both for good and for bad - but often with neither rhyme nor reason.

I am sure that the 'spin' put on much of what we are told is seen as necessary by those who are responsible for feeding us the tidbits of information that comprises our daily diet of "news". Now and again, though, I really do wonder about the motivations that are at work - just what is it that manages to push story A to the front pages whilst story X gets thrown in the trash or relegated to a small paragraph on page 10? For the most part the answer is pretty obvious - however, just because it is obvious it doesn't mean it is a good answer.

I have no idea how many people have died around the world since the start of the year - but I am guessing it is quite a large number - just a few of those deaths have made it into my mental "inbox" - and they have got there for all sorts of different reasons - people I know, people related to friends of mine, people who have been deemed "newsworthy" either because they are 'famous' or simply because the manner of their deaths was 'unusual'.

Now, although death is something which we will all face, it is still something which makes us sad when we lose someone who is "important" to us in one way or another. Yet - the 'media' seem to decide for us on some occasions that someone's death should be important to us all. I am going to take the liberty of quoting (in full) a post that I saw today on social media related to this.

Is there any way I can filter out all the Bowie stuff? Maybe I missed something but, although he was an innovative sort of bloke, no one had played his music on air for years and he was never mentioned in the media... and yet judging by the weight of coverage you'd think he'd single-handedly delivered world peace, an end to hunger and resolved the threat of global terror. Although many will take this post as "mean spirited" it is meant to provoke some thought as to what our society seems to think is of importance. Governments are rising and falling all around us, North Korea has tested a fusion weapon and the Chinese market is in turmoil - the repercussions can only be guessed at. Closer to home, Europe is struggling with the economic and social impact of mass migration, the oil price crash has decimated one of Scotland's core sectors and half the UK is underwater. And yet worryingly it seems that the world ignores all this to worship a slightly depressing sounding singer with a penchant for weird hair dos and make up... By all means spare a thought for Bowie, but let's keep a sense of perspective. Now I'll get my coat - bah humbug...

Now - to put this in context - David Bowie died yesterday after a prolonged illness. The above post reflects that fact that this became THE number one news story - pushing everything else down the ladder. What's more it wasn't just a reporting of his death - it was a "media blitz" with all guns blazing. Unlike many of today's "famous" people - Bowie did at least earn his fame - albeit many years ago - by being innovative and a little bit different from the 'standard' stars of the popular music scene.

(as an aside - it was interesting that after some time - around 24 hours - there appeared a number of people expressing similar sentiments to the above - questioning the ubiquity of Bowie's fame)

Was he - as was said in one tribute - "one of the most influential musicians of his time"? If so - how does he compare with this person "Through his own radical music and his profound understanding of the music of others, he transformed our experience; we can only be deeply grateful for his influence". That was said about Pierre Boulez - who died last week. Now, in my opinion, it would be rather like comparing oranges and acorns to compare Boulez and Bowie, so this is not about who was "better" or "more influential". My point really is that outwith the specialised musical circles Boulez was not mentioned last week. He certainly did not dominate the news in the way Bowie has in the last twenty four hours.

None of this is to decry the legacy of either Boulez or Bowie. Rather, like the quoted post above, it is to question the priorities that we put on things. Similarly 'unfair' situations exist in all sorts of different spheres of life - where the "celebrity" is lauded - often simply because they are a celebrity. I wouldn't count Bowie in this, but there are far too many people who are lauded because they have made a point of getting themselves in the public eye.

TV competitions such as "Britain's Got Talent" play on this - I think I have mentioned before that the thing that is most proved by that programme is that very few people with REAL talent appear on it - they are already doing rather well without the 'help' that BGT can provide. Conversely - those who do well (and many who do very badly!) on the show will ensure that they become "celebrities" - not because they are 'better' than the many hundreds of less desperate people who do not appear on the show, but because they are subjected to the media hype (good and bad) that the contestants are exposed to.

Of course talent shows have a place - however like anything that is judged on a subjective level it must be remembered that the "winner" is not necessarily the "best" by the criteria of the contest itself - but the "most effective" in terms of convincing the judges (often the 'general public' in the case of the big TV events) that they should be the one receiving their vote. There are no rules that determine the way that you should vote - and there have been plenty of examples where the "professional" judges and the producers of the shows have tried very hard to influence public opinion.

At its extreme, there are plenty of situations where the "public vote" type of TV show actually leads inevitably to the 'wrong' person winning (that is if you define the "right" person as the "best" at whatever the show is attempting to measure - dancing skills, singing, general "talent" or whatever). The criteria for voting is - more likely - which contestant makes for the "best" TV viewing experience - and this can be simply someone who is genuinely incompetent at whatever is being judged!!!

This 'rant' has wandered a little from the central topic which is the extent to which we are led by the media regarding what is 'important' in the world today. Whilst I appreciate that there needs to be some way of filtering the huge amount of "news" that occurs daily it is only as I grow older (and wiser???) that I see that most of the "rules" used by the media are increasingly self serving. The "goal" seems less altruistic. Perhaps the pioneers of "the news" providers were motivated simply by a desire to bring to their "readers" the best possible in terms of coverage of "what we know"!! This probably (perhaps?) worked when the goal was only to bring the local news - although even then there must have been some filtering into "important" and "unimportant".

The global interconnectedness that we have now means that "news" as a term has lost much of its meaning. Every single event in (most) every part of the world can now be instantly reported - hence the slightly absurd practices that have grown on social media - I've seen several cartoons recently along the lines of "was your food not very good" - "why" - "you haven't taken a photo of it"!!! Yes - of course there is a "point" to that - to keep those "near and dear" to you informed about bits of your life that they would otherwise miss. Updating your facebook status with the contents of every meal is going rather OTT though!!

Yet many people do this - or its equivalent - and what Archibald Fortescue Smythe had for breakfast becomes "news" adding to the millions of such items that get generated every day. For most people filtering this huge number to a meaningful update on "how the world has changed for them" is a task that is just never going to get done. So it is essential that some form of "collection" service is provided to filter out the 'unnecessary'.

The "media" however does not exist to do that task - they exist to ensure the continued existence of "the media" - it is an autopoietic system seeking to maximise the 'value' of its content - which would be good if value were solely focussed on accuracy, quality, relevance and even enriching. Unfortunately the main values that are sought are (in common with many other businesses) primarily to line the pockets of its shareholders and to better its competitors.

As with any task - the "goal" that is chosen will determine what aspects of the task gets the most focus - and that can fundamentally alter the effects - unexpected consequences are a recurrent theme of this blog - and here they raise their head in an interesting way.

There is a "high level" task that we each continually attempt to complete - which is "get through to tomorrow". It is, perhaps, the fundamental task of life - survival - living to "fight" another day. The 'simplistic' goal is to ensure that we wake up tomorrow morning. Yet few (if any) of us formulate the goal like that. Instead there are various alternatives like "eat healthily" - take exercise - increase your bank balance - it depends which of the alternatives dominate. They will change the effects of our action of "getting to tomorrow". What is more - the one chosen will strongly influence the actions that we take in order to reach the next day.

So it is with the way that the media is driven to "make money for itself" - by attracting "readers", "advertisers" and "investors". All of its actions will be coloured by these strategies. The coverage of David Bowie was therefore an imperative - in part because it was an "easy" story - plenty of material to draw on - in part because anything that is to do with "celebrity" will attract a considerable portion of the population - and - of course - in part because of who David Bowie was and the "connection" that many people feel with him.

It is easy to get suckered by cognitive biases - and this is a really great example of multiple cognitive biases working together to really mess with our senses. Business Insider has an infographic that lists "20 Cognitive Biases That Screw Up Your Decisions". By my calculations the focus on Bowie's death evidences at least half of those. These biases also tend to create blind spots - we only see what we expect to see.

I know that I am no better than anyone else in that the biases are often affecting my own thinking and decision making - I can only hope that the fact that I do have some knowledge of them - and their effects - renders me more sensitive to them and more likely to catch myself when they arise. I am also no better at deciding what is - and what is not - important around the world. I sort of understand that something bad in a relatively minor way that happens "close" to us is going to be more important than something much worse happening further away.

Although I have used "close" and "further away" I do not intend simple geography - people on the other side of the world can be "close" - some of our neighbours may be "far away". It is a sort of emotional distance that is important - we might well be more affected by the death of a British soldier serving in Afghanistan than we would be by a group of Americans being ambushed and killed in the same country.

To the general British psyche there is no doubt that David Bowie is "closer" than Pierre Boulez. Bowie's popularity (and his longevity for a 'pop' star) ensure that many people felt that he was much "closer" than was really the case. Because we know so much about such people we assume that we know everything - but that is almost certainly far from the truth - you have only to look at the incessant stream of "surprise" stories about celebrities to realise that in actual fact a huge percentage of their life is really hidden from public view. (Witness the break down of the Lineker's marriage reported today - months after the event)

This post has been less focussed - there are a number of inter-connected themes - but I make no apology for that. Too often we lose the connectedness because we become focussed only on a single aspect of something or somebody. The reality is that there are always multiple threads, multiple perspectives and multiple forces at work - we would do well to pay more attention to the "interconnectedness of things".