Information Overload

As much as we’re “lucky,” and I use that word so loosely that it would splat on the concrete if it were a bungee cord swinging from a bridge… to have the volume of information available to us that we do, in order to make decisions that may impact our lives in some way, I wonder if the reasons for the decisions that we make, make any difference.

Obviously, I’m not talking about decisions affected by information like “Tornado heading YOUR way right now, YOUR street, #3708 Main Street, Everywhere, please go into an interior room”, which quite simply mean, please make all necessary physical adjustments or you, in all likelihood, based on current laws of physics, will be dead.  I loves me my doppler radar and the weather channellers, even though they’re crazy climate change assholes from time to time, but still. Basic “you need to move or else” information is welcome.  Or, whether we decide not to blow away our neighbors because they have a barking dog all night or that their kids throw beer bottles on your lawn, only because that is really not a public policy that is conducive to keeping the community healthy. I mean, those are basics. Plus, it’s wrong on a really moral local level. Which is the most affective

I’m talking about all the swirling septic tank of everything that we all get caught up in, from politics to celebrity idiocy to…Wait a minute. I will NOT give up Flavor Flav or Top Chef. Screw you.

Excuse me, I had a moment, there.

Specifically, I wonder if, back in the day, like back in the DAY, as in 1200’s until the present, if the general populace had access to the information that we do now if things would have been different. Voting wise. Electing peoples wise. Shoring up the kingdoms or dictators or feudal lords wise.

My theory is, No. Based on my ongoing personal thesis that there is no progress, only change. Of course that is also based on my belief that the human race has inherent flaws, also based on religious beliefs,  that drive us as they’ve always driven us, along with our attempts to overcome those flaws, which account for the good things that happen from time to time. Not necessarily due to us, but still, we try.

So, if the serfs had up to the minute scrawls along their donkey carts do you really think they’d have done anything different? Maybe they’d insurrected faster, but the outcome would have been the same. The same snitches would have been paid off, the same courtiers would have been trouncing around in their push-up empire waist gowns ho’ing out the princes, the same whistle-blowers and government overthrowing operatives would have been manipulating the scene, only at a faster pace, with the same result.

Which leads me to my everpresent thought, in contrast to those who believe voters should be “qualified” in order to cast a vote, or that particular groups’ reasons for voting for whomever is of less import, (mind you, not that I agree with particular voters’ reasons for voting, but that’s why we live where we live, and he who prevails prevails), or should be abolished, that whoever wins an election…just wins.

There are equal numbers of intelligent, informed, rational people who vote on either side of our elections, removed from the crazinesses of a Wright or Ayres or Hagee or alltheClintonstuff, that make the information avalance a wash.

Smart people vote on both sides of the aisle. Stupid crazy people vote on both sides of the aisle. Now, we can just arrive at our decision faster, armed with the machinations, wafflings, hyperboles, titillation and scurrilousness that take minutes rather than decades or centuries. And the results are going to be the same regardless. Absolutely regardless.

True and scary. But, we’re all scary.