Vigilance

Well. I feel it is necessary to post on Joseph's lovely little presentation. I was impressed with the fact that he actually had something interesting and worthwhile to say on the subject. When he first told me that he wanted to do a presentation on bullshit I was immediately kind of curious but mostly doubtful. I guess I should've known better since it was Joe, but I thought he might talk about bullshit just to talk about bullshit. When he first pulled up his slideshow and started his presentation my doubts disappeared and by the time we got to the end I was like 'wow, it did have a point.' So congrats, Joseph.

What I wanted to talk about though was this idea of vigilance that he ended with. Knowing the difference between truth and lies. It's easy to be skeptical and question everything but it's very important that your skeptical questions lead you to some form of an answer. The phrase "don't believe everything you hear" has recently become "don't believe anything you hear." I guess my point is that questioning doesn't do you any good if you don't come to any conclusions.


I think mainly what it means to be vigilant is to be educated. Don't just doubt what you hear but read up on things, learn both sides of the situation so you can come to educated conclusions. You can tell people to use their common sense but common sense really isn't all that common. It's important to hear the opinions of outside sources, people who have more experience with certain issues. Their insight - while you don't have to take it all as completely true - is helpful.

So yeah . . . that's basically all I had to say on the subject.