Reality or Illusion

Recently there has been a lot of talk about Fake News. But all news media reports are often not true or only partially true as they miss out important facts about what they are reporting. Live news reports have a time limit and the person doing the report has to choose which bits to keep in and what to leave out. This often gives a distorted view of what is actually going on.

So what about the reality of all this? According to one dictionary definition, reality is the state of things as they actually exist. We all know about our own reality, the things we do, what we see around us in our daily lives, etc., but we rely on the media to tell us what is happening elsewhere and to tell it as it is not what they think it is. The media is often used to persuade us to see things differently, to not see the reality but to see the illusion they are sharing with us. The dictionary definition of illusion is a deceptive idea or impression, a false idea or belief.

Over the last year or so we have seen false ideas and many false impressions of what is going on in the world. Look at Brexit, the US Presidential election, the war in Syria and the issue at Standing Rock for starters. How can we decide what the reality is in those areas? This is difficult if we know nobody personally who can tell us. But then we all have a different perception of what we see so what is the reality of these situations? Is it what we see or hear from others or what we are told in the media?

I currently see two world situations where I am concerned that the truth is not being told and that we are given false ideas of what is going on. One of these is Syria and the other is Standing Rock. I am lucky that I have what I call a ‘gut conviction’ of what is the truth and what is an illusion but it is still hard to know what is the reality and what is media hype. It seems as if the whole world media want us to believe things are different from what they really are and I wonder who is paying them to do this. For me it is all about being controlled by people who don’t want us to see the truth, the reality of our world or they would lose their power.

I will stop here as I am sure that many of my readers will have lots to say about this. I look forward to reading your comments.

Sifting through words to the truth

This week has been busy again but I have had time for thinking. One thing that strikes me this week is how the media choose what they want to tell us about and ignore other events that we should also know about. I’ve always known about this but it just seems worse this week.  I do not read the papers that I know change events to suit what their agenda is and who also tell lies. I try to only read what I know is a balanced piece of writing about an event. But what about those people who believe that what is in the newspaper is absolutely true. I have seen this happen when sitting on a bus and listening to someone reading a paper I would never dream of buying.This person believed every word she read.

If we are going to change our world then we have to listen to our inner feelings and thoughts about what we read and what we see on the TV. There are some good reporters but not many. There are those who edit their reports so that they only show the bad bits and not the good bits. Unfortunately unless we are present at an event we cannot know exactly what happened and if we were present then we may not want to talk about it.

So how do we sift out the truth from what we read and hear? I always seem to know what is true but this is because over the years I have honed my intuitive side so that it becomes easier to listen to. I always trust what I call my gut reaction as well and find that I am rarely wrong about things. But sometimes it can be easy to ignore the gut reaction and look at the logical side of things. But this can be wrong and I have found that experience in trusting my gut reaction has been important. How do you deal with what you see and hear about current events?