Think first, talk later-the order is the important part

By the end of many a weekend night, I’m in the kitchen of someone’s house party,… By the end of many a weekend night, I’m in the kitchen of someone’s house party, listening to another passionate, if not slightly slurred, dialogue about the state of the world. I tend to gravitate toward the kitchen for this exact reason. I like the idea of big talk in the wee hours of the morning, of solving the world’s problems in a vodka haze. The visionaries of tomorrow hang out in the sticky, poorly lit kitchens of today.

Every time, though, there’s someone who spoils the discussion by, well, by not actually discussing. Instead, they attack, Rambo-style, with whatever piece of fluff information is at their disposal. It doesn’t matter what the topic is – these people have opinions and they must be heard.

Not to rain on anyone’s parade of self-indulgence, but as someone who’s been paid, sort of, to have opinions, I have to request that if you find yourself preparing this kind of tactical strike, take a timeout and reconsider whether you really have all the answers. If you enter a conversation like Moses coming down from the mount, chances are you’re fooling only yourself. And, of course, the people who already agree with you.

Recently, for example, I got into a discussion about the campaign for a living wage. This is a complicated issue, full of questions about society’s role in balancing the scales of affluence, but one listener summed it up thusly: “Hey, if these people making minimum wage, without any health care, can’t support their families, why don’t they just get another job?”

Upon hearing this, I looked down and realized the blood spurting from my nose was the result of a massive brain hemorrhage. Rather than hack through that Gordian knot of self-absorbed ignorance, the logical part of my mind had chosen to self-destruct. It hurt, and I cried. Then I ripped off my shirtsleeve and tried to staunch the bleeding.

But I can’t blame these people, really. After all, this is America, Land of the Free, and that includes the freedom to start a sentence with, “I don’t know much about the topic, but …” and somehow continue speaking.

In fact, this syndrome – not letting your ignorance get in the way of bombastic proclamations and sarcastic slams against those who don’t agree with you – seems to be a learned response. It’s how we “debate” in the information age, by parroting sound bites spewed by television’s talking heads.

Neal Postman, writing with Steve Powers in “How to Watch TV News,” defined the problem as “information glut.” Media outlets, locked into the 24-hour news cycle, have a lot of time and space to fill – with running tickers, sidebars and celebrity gossip. As we, the audience, try to process more and more information, it carries less and less meaning, because there is little to no context for it. Sound bites are, by their nature, disjointed – how much of a thought can you express in seven seconds? Yet it’s the sound bite, the information bite, that sticks in our heads.

Sift through channel after channel of all-day news and you’ll see this effect in action: the story of the hour bouncing around the media echo chamber, becoming more simplified with each repetition. Every story is rung dry, reduced to its most basic components.

Unfortunately, it’s this attenuated news that’s dropped in our laps, prepackaged and undemanding. ‘Undemanding’ is OK if you already agree with whatever media outlet you get your news from, but it doesn’t allow for much debate – kind of an important step in forming a real opinion, vs. internalizing a cliche.

Counting on typical media outlets to keep you informed is a bit like counting on the police to keep you safe from house fires: You can hope all you want, but you’re missing the point. The job of the media is not to inform you, not in any meaningful sense. Their job is to keep your eyeballs tuned to their newspaper or channel in order to sell you ads.

Knowledge is much harder to come by than information. It requires a genuine investment of time and energy. It doesn’t come from any one news source, but from the synthesis and analysis of many sources – always keeping in mind the unique bias present in even the smallest bits of information. This is a difficult process; part of the reason experts who tell us what to think are so popular.

So what is the best way to counter the parrot-head effect? Socrates was wise because he knew enough to know he did not know. Learn to recognize when you don’t know what you’re talking about. Be willing to admit it. Postman, for one, recommends reducing “by one-third the number of opinions you feel obligated to have.”

Jesse Hicks has a whole new opinion every week. Share yours with him at jhicks@pittnews.com