How much information can daily news give us? Plenty, of course. But most of the information they feed us is trivial, on further reflection. As we can be fooled by first impressions, the shallow depth of information that we gather from news may also fool us. Let me explain.
If today we read about an important news - the result of a general election for example. How can this information help us, if we still cannot be sure how this new government would perform? Are they going to be responsible, generous, or corrupt? So we read the news again tomorrow, and many days to come - until eventually we get a certain impression of the elected government.
So far, news seem to be useful - to judge governments, for example - until we realize that we only need a summary of events between the previous and future elections, in order to decide wisely on whom to support. All that time wasted on reading daily news could have been used to read our history.
But what is the purpose of learning history? "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it". Obviously.
There is actually nothing new in the news (if you pardon the pun). News events are nothing but repetition of the same mistakes - done by different people, at different times, in different places. I think we'd be better of reading history.
That's why i rarely buy newspaper. Same story, and the next day the paper is worthless
ReplyDeleteFunny enough, that's exactly what one of my teachers said when we asked him if we could send our homework a bit late. He said, late submission is like today's newspaper: it will be worthless by tomorrow. :P
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