[Neurons] 2022 Neurons #37 SANITY IN SPITE OF THE MEDIA

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2022 Neurons #37

September 12, 2022

 

SANITY IN SPITE OF THE MEDIA

 

Today everybody knows that the news is not exactly the epitomy of sanity.
Today we know that what is called "the news" is 90% bad news-news of
tragedies, catastrophes, diseases, disasters, war, threats of war,
inflation, government corruption, riots, and on and on.  If something bad
happened, it is "news."  If something good happened, well, that is fine, but
don't expect it to make the evening news.

 

Now there is just something wrong and twisted about that.  As a culture, we
discount the good stuff in order to highlight, foreground, and devote lots
of energy to the bad stuff.  Giving it that much attention and energy of
course, implies that the bad is more important than the good.  Of course, if
you do that in your relationships, you are "looking for a fight."  John
Gottman's research indicated that for every negative word or exchange, you
need five positive words or exchanges just to stay even.  So, what does that
say about our social relationships with each other when the news is 90%
negative?

 

Now if only that was the only thing wrong with the media, but it isn't.  The
media is not only overly focused on the negative, which is obvious, today it
is mostly biased and prejudiced, which is not so obvious.  How much?  I
don't know.  Some media outlets seem to be nearly 100% biased, others only
70 or 80%, but they are all biased.  Each media outlet has for the most part
stopped providing journalism and is now into advocacy and persuasion.  Some
are fully into propaganda.  The "woke" agenda that drives so much of the
mainline media has gotten to the point where Orwell's vision of a
totalitarian future is well underway.  No longer can you count on the words
or names they use to mean what they have traditionally meant.  And when a
Secretary of Education cannot even define "woman," you know things have
gotten really weird and completely biased. 

 

For decades, we have been aware that various media outlets have been
"spinning" the facts.  And to some extent, this is inevitable given the
nature of human perception and thinking.  Putting a positive (or negative)
spin on things comes with our subjectivity. We cannot be fully and
absolutely objective.  But now spinning the facts and the truth has reached
a crazy level.  Biden's big announce in August that we have "Zero" inflation
is a case in point.  Zero inflation?  This was not only a spin of the truth,
but completely out of context.  If he had said "from July's inflation rate
of 7.1% to August's inflation rate" it is zero, that would have been
understandable.  But he did not.  He left the impression that there is no
inflation-a completely false idea.

 

To stay sane in the midst of the current agenda-driven and highly biased
nature of the media- you and I have to do a lot of critical thinking.
Otherwise we will be brainwashed with the media's propaganda.  Critical
thinking means questioning what you hear, the language it is coded in, and
the hidden presuppositions that are implied but not stated.

 

Media today inevitably controls our perspective of things.  By presenting
only the facts that fits with a given media's agenda, by taking facts out of
context, by quoting someone only in part, by presenting 15 negative stories
about someone and only 1 counter-balancing positive story, all of these
influence the so-called "facts" that we use to reason.  Once upon a time you
could hear both sides of an issue on any news broadcast.  Today that is
becoming increasingly rare.

 

Like the "January 6 Commission," which conducted all of their interviews and
questioning from only one perspective.  Those Representatives who could have
questioned and interviewed from the other perspective were cast off of the
commission and not even allowed to participate.  Just knowing that tells you
that those in charge of the commission already had their conclusions and the
hearings were designed to confirm what they already wanted to prove.  It had
nothing to do with a search for truth.

 

Recent corrections and apologies from the CDC (Center for Disease Control)
revealed that they had put out a lot of mis-information about shots, masks,
social distancing, etc.  As it turns out, getting the shot did not prevent
covid and masking children does more harm than good.  If yu listened
uncritically to the media, you would have accepted a lot of false
information.

 

For training in critical thinking, there's no better place to begin than
with the NLP Meta-Model of Language.  You can find it in The Structure of
Magic (1975) and the extended Meta-Model in Communication Magic (2001).
Just knowing how language works in our neurology will give you a great heads
up for how to be an independent thinker in a biased media environment.

 

To then deepen your critical thinking skills, Executive Thinking (2018)
provides lists of cognitive biases, distortions, and fallacies to be wary
of.  And because bias is built into the human brain as default patterns for
thinking and reasoning, once you know what these are, and become practiced
in recognizing them, you can save yourself from a lot of unsanity.

 

 

 




 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

ISNS Executive Director

P.O. Box 8

Clifton Colorado 81520 USA

(970) 523-7877

drhall at acsol.net 

 

 

The book Unleashed! (2007) which is the foundational book for the processes
of how to unleash human potentials has just been released on The Shop: 

www.neurosemantics.com/shop/page/7/ 

 



 

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