If you were given 7 out of 20 pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, it would be plain to see that you do not have all of the pieces to make up the picture. In life, we become adept at gathering data as we go and trying to form analogies or patterns to make us feel comfortable in an uncomfortable (new) scenario. However, when it comes to grasping new concepts, it will not be apparent at the time whether we have all of the pieces of the picture to make up a true perspective. These days, conjecture seems acceptable, especially in the eyes of Social media, where conjecture has become the food that fuels many hungry machines.
What if, when we’re about to spout our latest conjecture/theory, we instead ask ourselves “Now, what are the facts? What do I really know?” and take it from there – maybe fleshing out the subject matter with some research from a reliable source. How many people want to be bothered with doing that in what has become an on-demand society? Patience is not a common virtue these days, but spouting the latest revelation is, no matter how ill founded.
Now, I’m not trying to knock back those who share their frequent viewpoints, but there’s already masses of misinformation on the web which begs another question: “Why do I want to put this idea out there? What am I seeking to prove? Who is this information going to help?” If you can put hand on heart and quantify that, go ahead – share away.
Bearing in mind that we are all very different from each other, is there any point in sharing our conjecture routinely just to tick the box of ought-to-postings that feed the latest algorithms of the social media machines? Isn’t that exactly what they want us to do? Hmm, does that feed independent thinking or even feeling? I leave you to decide.
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