The Wheat and the Chaff

There's an interesting post over at It Is A Numeric Life this morning, dealing with the so-called mere exposure effect, the idea that if people are repeatedly exposed to a subject, they begin to prefer that subject over others. She notes also that "Many psychology experiments clearly demonstrated that our brain always prefers the familiar."

This is both good and bad. On the good side, I think we all need that certain level of comfort that comes with what is usual, expected, and familiar. We prefer our country to others, think our home is more "homey," and our children are more intelligent and attractive than others. On the other hand, exclusive attention to the familiar chokes out new ideas and inhibits learning and personal development.

People smarter than I have noted this effect in the realm of the media: when there are hundreds of cable channels to choose from, we choose those which appeal to our narrow interests. There are tens of millions of blogs, more than we could ever hope to read, and so we tend to limit our visits to those we find that appeal to our interests and agree with our points of view. Between my job, my dancing, and doing most of the cooking and housework at home (since Agnes works two jobs to my one), I don't have the time I'd like to read more widely, although I make an effort.

It's important to look at various points of view in order to understand where others are coming from. A blog I visit regularly is titled "Raising Yousuf, Unplugged: Diary of a Palestinian Mother," and it's written by a lady who is a Palestinian journalist and mother who divides her time between Gaza and the United States. Her blog is relentlessly political, very well-written, and utterly infuriating in what I view as its perpetuation of Palestinian victimhood and tendency to blame everyone but the Palestinians and the larger Arab world for their plight. I've posted two mildly critical comments to this blog over the months I've been following it...the first never made it out of moderation; the second was accepted, but generated only a few silly ad hominem attacks against me for not toeing the Palestinian line (the best simply told me to go back to Bag End). As you know if you've been following my blog, you know that I am equally critical of both the Palestinians, who would rather revel in their victimhood and strike out violently than take responsibility for bettering their situation, and the Israelis who, while understandably motivated by the shadow of the Holocaust and the fear of terrorism, have evolved a political outlook based on raw power and the need to dominate their neighbors.

I'm not smart enough to sort out the festering snakepit of the Middle East. If I were, my name would be in the papers instead of Dennis Ross's and Tony Blair's. But I like to think that, by looking with open eyes at both sides of the argument and trying to look for both the good and bad points, I can better see potential ways ahead that don't involve suicide bombers on the one side and boots on necks on the other.

We need to see all points of view, but we also need to be able to determine which of those points of view have merit. We have to be able to separate the informational wheat from the chaff of stupidity and closed-mindedness. It's especially hard in a time when political and social discourse is so polarized, but that just makes it all the more important.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to start sorting through the vast mountain of chaff already generated by the 2008 presidential campaign. I find it hard to be as optimistic as the boy who looked at the pile of manure and implied the existence of a pony.

Right now, it's just manure. And the wrong end of the political horses.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo