We Really Don't Know

So... The Bengals are 6-0! And that doesn't have anything to do with politics, but I'm figuring out what I am writing about right now, so I just wanted to let you know that excitement. 

So... The world is complex and complicated as usual, and we all pretend to know what's going on, because that's what people DO! 

Because let's just be honest, how much do we truly understand about the insider positions of the politics, or about the inner positions of Syria, or how Germany will respond to the immigrants when they come through. 

So what I would love to see happen is that news providers are willing to admit that there are lots of things that we just don't understand about the world. 

Speculate! Speculate! Speculate!

So much rampant speculation. So any conclusions jumped to. So much talking, so little knowledge to back it up. But whoever notices.

Today, as I was having difficulty deciding on what to write about and thought about how easy it would be to choose a topic if I decided that it didn't matter if I knew anything about it. And I honestly wonder now if other writers on the internet even care, especially blogs.

So you know, I have a commitment to truth, and I would rather not lead people astray by not accurately checking information. Admittedly I am a busy college student, whose opinions are not entirely set in stone, so I can't guarantee everything.

But I do wonder (and given the nature of this post may I emphasize that word a little bit more) just what other sources do. It seems enough of a warrant (especially given the other possibilities of misinformation) to maybe not just trust all the information that you read all the time.

So some examples of speculation from the mundane to the serious that might just make you think.

Stana Katic hasn't signed a contract for the next season of Castle, so she and Nathan Fillion are obviously not getting along on set...

Jeb Bush was the frontrunner of the Republican candidacy, so he obviously was going to win the nomination. That certainly looks so certain now. right?

Or just think about any time that a crisis occurs, school shooting, terror attack, or anything else, there is so much talk about what we don't know, and before long, we're talking about the causes of an incident we don't even need.

Whatever Happened to Ukraine?

Let's face it. The world is a huge place and a significant amount of importance happens every single day. There is no way that a news source will cover everything that happens throughout the entire world.

That's all commonplace, but I think we all tend to think a little warped about the effect that this actually has on the news. 

Because here's the thing. We tend to believe that an event simply has resolved itself to a new equilibrium if the news stops reporting on the unrest in the area. For instance, there was a ceasefire agreement in the conflict of Ukraine and Russia, but we heard reports early on that tension still remained and that the ceasefire was extremely fragile. 

Then the IS story was stressed in the news because it's kinda a big deal, so we stopped hearing about the conflict along the border of Ukraine. As we stopped hearing about it, we obviously stopped thinking about it entirely, and may even believe that it has simply stopped being an issue. 

I have posted in the past about keeping up with secondary sources to discover the truth about the news stories that are being presented, but what about doing research on issues that were in the news, but now are no longer? Do we continue to follow them to the full resolution? Or do we just let the news tell us that this other story is more important because it is more immediately dangerous and we all know danger sells? 

Yeah, so I don't think that's a good idea. I don't think we should let the news determine what we are interested in from current events around the globe. Unfortunately, we can't know everything about every culture in the world, but we should ensure that our extensive knowledge is not dictated by the coverage news sources provides.

If you were interested in the Ukraine crisis and the plight of those people when the news was covering it, you should still be interested in it now, and be looking to see what is happening as that progresses.