Black and white look

Marc a media boy in Cancun with a friend. Cancun 2003

To those who understand what they hear

Thank News

The food is prepared and my sister just set the table. We all gathered to eat with the TV on in the background as one of the channels offers a news program. A disconcerting headline, a powerful image and a well-argued account usually generates a review. It had been less than three minutes but its effect was devastating. Everyone felt enlightened enough to make a judgment and have a strong position with regard to what was being reported. Whether you talk about a war in Asia or strike duty in the neighbourhood next door, there are always two sides that are right and those who are not, and fortunately we are always on the side of those who are right.

Thanks to the news we have become accustomed to receiving simple information that has gone through the judgment of others and that can be chewed for easy digestion. We have ended up seeing the world without nuance, without colours, a world of good and bad, a world in black and white.

Simplifying everything

Never in the history of mankind have people been able to create and store as much information as we have today. According to Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, humanity had created until 2003 an amount equal to 5 exabytes, and now this number is generated every two days. An exabyte (EB) equals one million terabytes (TB). But never in the history of mankind have people given their opinion in a way as simple as it is today. There is a tendency to parrot the information we receive without incorporating a critical approach. By perceiving the media as having absolute truth does not allow us to understand the complex reality that it really is. As Joseph Goebbels said: “if you repeat a lie repeatedly, it eventually becomes true”. In a world where it has never been easier to study and be discerning, you need to have the courage to discover the truth directly instead of letting others shape your own opinion. In this society in which we could be free we usually decide to be slaves voluntarily by feeding the answers that soothe our fears.

The picture of reality

Individual opinion is not fashionable, it never really was. Now more than ever our social behavior is marked by patterns led by the media who has the power to indict, prosecute and convict without any lawyer to mediate in the process. And we are seduced, and even amplify certain judgments through our emotions rather than through our judgment and discretion. A free society begins at home, by the individual position and individual attitudes that we each face before us. It is our responsibility to deepen and broaden our view and put under suspicion all truth that we sell as absolute. Perhaps the best way to win freedom is through the use of reason. We have never had to reach a palette with many colours and yet we paint our sad reality in black and white. Are you ready to discover the world as it really is? Are you ready to see everything in colours? Decide that you are interested in landscape, discover the different points of view, understand the opinion of impartial experts and build your reality according to your own experience. Do not let others dictate the answers, draw your own conclusions, wake up, thank God we can.