Here we go again. We listen to the latest news or watch it on cable. Perhaps we even read a print publication. We scan Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp and Instagram just to name the four most popular social media platforms. And we feel engaged. But are we?

First, before we can even consider getting engaged, we need to ascertain if the “news” we read, hear and see is accurate. And what does accurate even mean in today’s world of avatars, bots and algorithms? An article about how bad coffee grounds are for our garden just crossed my desk. Is it true? Have I been making life difficult for my cherished plants? How can I verify the information? Where will I find the time to do so? Is it not easier to keep doing the same old thing?

Personally I can recall a simpler time, back in the 1970s when I first started paying attention to events beyond my own little world. News came from a handful of trusted sources that pretty much everyone referenced, no matter their age, political affiliations, education or personal biases. Of course we still tended to disagree about how to respond to the news but its credibility was seldom questioned. 

It can be argued that this was not good, that we lived with a slanted view of the world, managed by political agendas or corporate greed, much like the Russian people of today are experiencing. And like them, we would not be any more aware of this manipulation than a fish is aware of water. This argument suggests that today’s cacophony of information sources keep us better informed and prevent the manipulation of information, putting us all on an equal footing.

The problem is that our brains did not evolve to drink from a firehose of data. It takes time to process new information and integrate it into the matrix of our existing knowledge. That’s probably why the older we get, the harder it is for us to learn new stuff. We have much more existing stuff in our heads that the new stuff has to somehow connect with. Ideas are not random thoughts that are dumped on the floor of our mind. They are constructs and concepts that need to find a place where they can integrate with existing ideas.

To accomplish this we employ coping strategies. One of them is selective perception. It’s been said that information is not heard unless it’s expected. And we’ve all had the experience of looking for something and not seeing it even though it’s right before our eyes. Usually it’s because the item is in a different place on the shelf and not where we would normally find it. Sometimes we need someone else pointing it out to us, before we recognize it.

This is not a “bug” in our wiring. It actually can help us process more data faster. Programmers  use this trick when sending digital video across the internet. The software is designed to evaluate a video and differentiate between the pixels that change and the ones that don’t. To save bandwidth and downloading time, it only streams the pixels that are changing and simply redisplays the ones that are not. Our mind does that too. But with the ever increasing data flow into our brains we can easily miss something that has changed. 

Now that we get our information from a firehose instead of the kitchen faucet we look for ways to turn down the “volume” so we don’t choke. That is becoming increasingly difficult as we live in a culture of information and are expected to be “present” in a multitude of platforms that all vie for our attention. And since new ideas, especially those that contradict a view we already hold or in some other way disrupt our comfort zone, take more effort to integrate into our existing mental framework, we tend to give preference to information that “fits” our existing thoughts.

Psychologists call this “Confirmation Bias”. Confirmation bias lets us give higher priority to information that supports the ideas that have already formed in our brain. This subset of information is easier to assimilate as it interlocks nicely with our existing view of the world. But confirmation bias often works in tandem with two other coping mechanisms; “Conformity Bias” and “Value Alignment”. 

Conformity bias filters for that bit of information that supports the ideas we need to nurture to hold on to our jobs, secure our next contract or just put food on the table. I remember when Al Gore paraphrased a well worn quote: “It’s hard to understand something when your job depends on you not understanding it.” This truism can be adapted by replacing the word ‘job’ with ‘social status’, ‘self esteem’, ‘power’ or ‘influence’.

Value alignment gets a little trickier as it can call on us to put aside our own time-worn concepts in favour of ideas that our community, family, or colleagues seem to hold. We want to do this to not upset them at a family dinner or perhaps to fit into the clique at work or the in-crowd at school. I suspect that this particular coping strategy is actively utilized by many Russian citizens these days but we in the west are not immune.

In all cases these strategies are designed to do two things. One, reduce the sheer volume of data that we have to cope with so we don’t choke on it and two, to avoid the dreaded cognitive dissonance that makes us so very uncomfortable when a new piece of information simply does not fit into the existing matrix of our world view.

All this has, of course, real life consequences. We see it unfolding in Russia. This very insightful podcast explores how a majority of the population in that country finds it more comfortable to accept the spin that Putin is spewing into society than to make the effort and face the dissonance (and consequences, for it is now illegal) of exploring outside sources that offer a counter-view.

We also see it in a growing mistrust of science as is eloquently explored in this article. Among many others it quotes Dana Fisher, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, who says: “We see that scientific information is very, very clearly cherry-picked. Increasingly, we see people looking for information that already supports their worldview, and that’s happening on the right and left. This includes policymakers who have a role to play in solving issues like climate change.”

But it goes even further. There are only 24 hours in each day and the process of drinking information from a fire hose robs us of precious time that we could spend actually engaging with the issues we learn about. Russia’s war is fueled by oil and the higher the price, the more money they get to fund the atrocities. How hard is it for us to cut our gasoline consumption in half to ease demand and help the world markets boycott Russian oil? We could walk, take a bike or ride the bus but that would take time away from drinking from the fire hose.

There is a rose in a vase on our kitchen table. The other day as we walked out of our local grocery store a stranger handed us that rose. He had just bought a bouquet and was handing them out to passers by, one by one, to brighten their day. No comment, no solicitation, just an act of spreading his light. Are we capable of random acts of kindness? Of course we are. Do we practice them often enough? Almost certainly not.

So why not try something. Instead of constantly drinking from the fire hose in ways that confirm our biases, why not help each other to act on the knowledge that we already have. We know that we need to end extreme wealth inequality, that we need to prevent our climate from breaking down, that we need to stop blaming others for our ills, that we need to stop contributing to the polarization and destruction of our civilization and that we need to preserve this precious world for all who call it home.

Why not do something real? Why not help each other to see beyond the horizons of our safe little constructs and embrace the future together?