Week 5 565

Has Cable television ruined America? Well what do you think? Whether you are a radical Tea Party member a right wing conspiracy nut, a ultra conservative right winger, a centrist liberal an anarchist or non political you probably have noticed the polarization found in American politics. You can now glam on to a favorite boutique program on cable that will spout rhetoric you find appealing. Most people do not bother to listen to the other stations as their rhetoric is obviously false and in no way relevant. Sure even when there is absolutely nothing on all 200 hundred channels I still enjoy flipping along the stations and taking in a sentence here and a scene there. My intellect know I would be perfectly fine without all those options in fact I probably only watch about a dozen channels on a regular basis. There is some value in all the options. One unintended consequence however is the loss of a network devoted to finding an audience of or for the majority (at least the majority of 20=40 year old's or whatever the money spending demographic is) Now you find your niche with a few million fervent followers and preach to the choir.

It does make it less stressful listening to just the intelligent and well informed even if it is totally biased and one sided. Most of you probably already realize this but it bears repeating. You are really not opened minded people even those of you who are more open minded than most. Your brain filters information, it actually uses different synapses to process information that agrees with your world outlook than those messages that do not agree with your hard wired brain.

I think the internet while having this great capacity to spread knowledge to the entire world also has the ability to limit an individual world view as we search for similar voices and information that resonates with our views.

ok so this was off topic and tangential to say the least but with a rap up paper and a culminating blog coming this week I did not want to be to repetitive.

thanks for reading the blog.