What are we doing?

There has been a thought that has been nagging me for a long time now. Why is there so much wrong with our world? Well to cut to the point, we are what is wrong with the world. I am not expecting this essay to receive any likes, nor am I really expecting for it to be published but it needs to be said. We have all been fed this idea that someone in the world must be hated. No one has said it bluntly like that obviously, because of course no one would want to agree with that. It is, however, very true. Everyone feels that they must hate someone.

Why is it that politics have seemingly only become messier and more impolite? Would you want to watch it if they were objectively debating the issues at hand? More than likely not. The news and media companies are not feeding you lies. In fact they are simply feeding you the very things that you want to hear. This is good right? No it is not. Every media company operates off of a very basic principle that we all know about and understand but for some reason choose to ignore. They operate off of viewership. The more viewers they have the more likely they are to sign more deals to advertise more products. But you know this right? Then why do you assume that they are not just catering to your interests and telling you what you want to hear? They are not lying to you by any means. They are simply carefully filtering the information that they feed you so that they do not disagree with what the majority of their audience want to hear. Everyone just eats it up. People love the fact that their favorite news station agrees with them because obviously that proves that the individual themselves are correct. Of course this makes sense because there is no way that the information could have been tailored to your own beliefs.

Think back to the 2020 presidential election debates. How would you describe them? Were the answers that the candidates giving concise and well thought out? Spoiler they were not. Oftentimes the moderator was being talked over while each candidate fought for their time to say something that truly meant nothing. The candidates who were campaigning to be the next President were acting like five year olds fighting for attention. The debaters of Ancient Greece and Rome understood one important concept. There is no winning an argument. In the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” Dale Carnegie commits a portion of the book to simply explaining that in most circumstances there is no way to alter someone's opinion on a matter through the means of argument. Essentially there is no point in arguing. There is plenty of reason to debate, however, what we watched during the presidential “debate” was hardly a debate at all.

A debate is meant to be a civil exchange of differing thoughts and ideas with the understanding that no matter the outcome must be respectful and carried out in a polite way. Both sides bring great arguments to the table that must be talked about in order for society to continue. Each side must accept the fact that they could be wrong about their point of view. This means that each side must listen to each other. Otherwise, there is no point in being on stage in the first place. Each argument must be heard out and scrutinized in order to determine which is correct.

Next time you turn on the news or watch a political debate, compare it to a reality tv series. The similarities may shock you. Except instead of it being about which Kardashian is going to get their makeup done, it is instead about the future of everyone's lives and the country they live in. Please just think for a second if the people in leadership are the best we can have? Or are they simply playing a game of who can hold your attention the longest?