Fragments, Freedom, and Fallout--Part 13
An Out-sized Fragment
What do you think of MSM? Is this one of the food supplements that is good for you? Maybe it's one of the terrible ones on which people waste good money, to no benefit. Maybe it actually causes harm or damage. So many questions about methylsulfonylmethane. Why do people usually take it? Is it found in nature? Can it be manufactured in a laboratory? Learning about this organic sulfur can apparently be a lot more complicated than we knew. What is the recommended dose? Can people overdose on it? Is the recommended dose likely to cause side-effects? This sounds like something people should not take without having some of these questions answered. Do people who like MSM skew toward being suspicious of conventional medicine? Are the people who like MSM mostly Christians? Mostly not Christians? Maybe they're mostly people who have inflammatory issues such as arthritis. As some of you have already guessed, this post is not really about a dietary supplement, but about another kind of MSM, the acronym for mainstream media. The topic of mainstream media can be queried similarly to the food supplement kind of MSM.
What do you think of mainstream media? Is it good or bad? Authentic or manufactured (i. e. fake)? Why do people ingest it? Can varied dosages be therapeutic or deleterious? Does ingesting of mainstream media reveal or affect a life of Christian faith? Can people overdose on it or be deficient in it?
In musing about the political persuasions of young people both of us knew, one person voiced this question in my hearing: I wonder if it [the way those young people think] is because they don't have access to Fox News (because they belonged to a church that didn't have radio or TV in their home). I managed to avoid snorting right then and there. I didn't say a word. My brain was very full of indignant words, but I couldn't sort out anything that would have been helpful at the moment.
Since then I've boiled my thoughts down to one statement that I might even be able to say casually someday: No one on earth suffers from a Fox News deficit.
*****************
What many of us suffer from is ingesting disinformation without being cognizant of it. I hope disinformation is something that all Christians can agree on as being problematic. Disinformation is another word for terms familiar to all who read the Bible. The ten commandments use the term false witness. "Thou shalt not" bear false witness. A lying tongue is one of the seven things God hates, as recorded in Proverbs 6. "Lie not one to another . . ." is an injunction found in Colossians 3:9. We've all heard the term "fake news." Perhaps no other term encapsulates the nuances of definition in the term "disinformation" as does fake news. It certainly has a more memorable ring to it than does "fact-checked news" which is presumably the opposite of fake news.
I see myself as having a lifetime commitment to dispelling disinformation--to provide information that might prevent others from unwittingly falling into deception. Nothing besides the prompting of the Holy Spirit energizes and motivates me as does this. I pray also that I don't fall into deception myself.
I may return someday to the mainstream media topic, but for now I'd like to offer a learning opportunity that goes far beyond anything I could offer. Here is a Link to a mesmerizing video. I'm removing the rest of my written content (the part that originally appeared beyond the asterisks) that I had already prepared for this post, in hopes that you will take time to watch this extremely informative video, even if you need to do it in several hitches as I did. It was created by a journalist who was himself the victim of a disinformation campaign in P--k--s--t--n. You might find it worthwhile to prepare to jot down the list of seven principles of effective disinformation campaigns. I didn't, and wish I had done so.
Disinformation is such an out-sized fragment of our social and political realities right now that it should possibly be called something that gives more credit to its magnitude than "fragment" does. The fallout is certainly substantial, and gaining freedom from it no doubt will require concerted effort and perseverance.
What do you think of MSM? Is this one of the food supplements that is good for you? Maybe it's one of the terrible ones on which people waste good money, to no benefit. Maybe it actually causes harm or damage. So many questions about methylsulfonylmethane. Why do people usually take it? Is it found in nature? Can it be manufactured in a laboratory? Learning about this organic sulfur can apparently be a lot more complicated than we knew. What is the recommended dose? Can people overdose on it? Is the recommended dose likely to cause side-effects? This sounds like something people should not take without having some of these questions answered. Do people who like MSM skew toward being suspicious of conventional medicine? Are the people who like MSM mostly Christians? Mostly not Christians? Maybe they're mostly people who have inflammatory issues such as arthritis. As some of you have already guessed, this post is not really about a dietary supplement, but about another kind of MSM, the acronym for mainstream media. The topic of mainstream media can be queried similarly to the food supplement kind of MSM.
What do you think of mainstream media? Is it good or bad? Authentic or manufactured (i. e. fake)? Why do people ingest it? Can varied dosages be therapeutic or deleterious? Does ingesting of mainstream media reveal or affect a life of Christian faith? Can people overdose on it or be deficient in it?
In musing about the political persuasions of young people both of us knew, one person voiced this question in my hearing: I wonder if it [the way those young people think] is because they don't have access to Fox News (because they belonged to a church that didn't have radio or TV in their home). I managed to avoid snorting right then and there. I didn't say a word. My brain was very full of indignant words, but I couldn't sort out anything that would have been helpful at the moment.
Since then I've boiled my thoughts down to one statement that I might even be able to say casually someday: No one on earth suffers from a Fox News deficit.
*****************
What many of us suffer from is ingesting disinformation without being cognizant of it. I hope disinformation is something that all Christians can agree on as being problematic. Disinformation is another word for terms familiar to all who read the Bible. The ten commandments use the term false witness. "Thou shalt not" bear false witness. A lying tongue is one of the seven things God hates, as recorded in Proverbs 6. "Lie not one to another . . ." is an injunction found in Colossians 3:9. We've all heard the term "fake news." Perhaps no other term encapsulates the nuances of definition in the term "disinformation" as does fake news. It certainly has a more memorable ring to it than does "fact-checked news" which is presumably the opposite of fake news.
I see myself as having a lifetime commitment to dispelling disinformation--to provide information that might prevent others from unwittingly falling into deception. Nothing besides the prompting of the Holy Spirit energizes and motivates me as does this. I pray also that I don't fall into deception myself.
I may return someday to the mainstream media topic, but for now I'd like to offer a learning opportunity that goes far beyond anything I could offer. Here is a Link to a mesmerizing video. I'm removing the rest of my written content (the part that originally appeared beyond the asterisks) that I had already prepared for this post, in hopes that you will take time to watch this extremely informative video, even if you need to do it in several hitches as I did. It was created by a journalist who was himself the victim of a disinformation campaign in P--k--s--t--n. You might find it worthwhile to prepare to jot down the list of seven principles of effective disinformation campaigns. I didn't, and wish I had done so.
Disinformation is such an out-sized fragment of our social and political realities right now that it should possibly be called something that gives more credit to its magnitude than "fragment" does. The fallout is certainly substantial, and gaining freedom from it no doubt will require concerted effort and perseverance.
posted by Miriam Iwashige at
6:51 AM
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