social commentary

Today is Father’s Day. My father-in-law wanted to go to White Spot, a very BC, Canada restaurant, and so my wife, her sister and brother-in-law, and her parents went for lunch. I couldn’t help but notice families at two other tables, which offered a stark contrast in dynamics. Both tables had a person who looked like they were in their 50’s. The woman at one table was with her father, the man at the other table was with both elderly parents.

The woman was fully invested in conversation with her dad. She kept eye contact on him and leaned forward again and again to hear what her father was saying. The conversation seemed to flow, and they looked like they were having a wonderful meal.

The man at the other table was on his phone. He didn’t let it go, it was an extension of his left hand. Even when he spoke to his parents, he did not look away from it. He was typing full paragraphs into it at times, and he scrolled. And he scrolled and typed, scrolled and typed. Food arrived and he occasionally shovelled food into his mouth but his phone stayed glued to his left hand. I wasn’t watching all the time, but at no time when I looked did I see him making eye contact with his parents. The woman at the other table was always looking at her dad.

Back at the doom-scroller’s table, parents had finished their meal and their son was only about half finished his meal, still typing and scrolling as his parents waited. I had to get up to let my brother-in-law head to the bathroom and I looked over at this man’s phone. He was on Instagram. After desert his parents pulled their phones out as well, but I didn’t really pay attention for how long they had their phones out too. I can say with certainty the man never once let go of his phone during the meal. The last time I looked over, his dad was paying for the meal.

It was so stark that I had to make sure that I was paying attention to my own table, not to be too distracted by the entertainment of seeing this contrast play out in front of me. Put your phones away at meal time, if you struggle with this, don’t take your phone to the table. Your family deserves more.

Happy Father’s Day!

I remember when I used to look to the news for objective truth. I believed the role of a reporter was capital ‘T’ Truth, and their job was to remove as much bias as possible. I’m not sure if that ever existed, but we are now at a point where that idea is dead and buried. It seems like every news outlet is intentionally choosing a biased starting point before reporting what they share.

Maybe this isn’t new, but the level to which this seems obvious right now is alarming. One of the problems is the willingness of politicians and even executives to blatantly lie. Because then even the choice to be objective and just share the news becomes a choice to share misinformation. If a newscast willingly shares a quote that is an obvious lie or exaggeration, and does not share commentary on the lie, then ultimately they are promoting the lie.

We know from research that hearing wrong information repeatedly will make us more likely to believe it. So even a ‘non-biased’ reporting of misinformation is a kind of dose of that misinformation seeping into our brains as a potential truth. And so we are being hit with misinformation in two different ways. The first is intentional: overly biased news that fully intends to sway our opinion. The second is an attempt at being non-biased but ultimately sharing lies.

What we are left with is a need to have our bullshit detectors fully on at all times. I’m frequently left wondering if something is true or not? If the repotting is based or not? I often get my news from social media, and I end up having to spend time verifying the source or confirming the information shared. Just yesterday I saw some outlandish quotes that I thought were satire, and when I went to the actual source, I found out they were true. In this case it was the message and not the reporting that was outlandish. In other cases it’s not necessarily a misquote, but a real quote taken out of context. And then there are outright intentional lies being created and shared.

To me, this loss of trust in news media is scary. I am left wondering how many people actually take the time to check sources, rather than just believe the news that fits their narrative and beliefs, and discredit things that don’t fit with their beliefs? We seem to be in a sort of post Truth era where we either question and verify everything we hear, or we just accept that news is just a fiction dancing around the truth.

It leaves me feeling like I’ve got to keep my BS detectors fully on at all times.

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